Night Blooming WTF?

The place where I work has this unusual flowering plant, where a few solitary flower stems grow at the edge of the plant leaves and the buds themselves develop over about week’s time. Then, all at once and for one night only, they blossom, magnificently so.

This image licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported License.

EXIF:
Camera: Olympus SP560UZ
Exposure: 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 4.7 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: On, Fired

I have no idea what this flower is. The central part of the flower is probably about 20 centimeters across. Just amazing to see. If you have an idea what this flower is, please share!

Photographically speaking, I was seriously concerned about overexposing this shot (and the 25 others I took), but I knew there was no way I could photograph these flowers in total darkness, especially handheld. I lowered the intensity of the internal flash to -2, the lowest setting, and set the ISO to 100ASA. After downloading them to my computer it turned out, thankfully, that the shots were underexposed and needed some PSE Level help to pull them up from the dark.  With only a single night to shoot, I was glad.

Update: Thanks to the wonders of Related Links, I found this site, and now know that this is a Night Blooming Cereus (OK-2 out of 3 isn’t too bad. :) )

More photos? Of course!

Night

Blooming

Cereus

A Sweet and Fruitful Year

This image licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported License.

לשנה טובה – Happy 5769!

EXIF:
Camera: Olympus C4100Z,C4000Z
Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/13)
Aperture: f/2.8
Focal Length: 9.1 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0/10 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire