A thorny kind of love

I hope all you lovers out there had a happy Valentine’s.

The day before Valentine’s, I was "caught" malling in the early afternoon at the Rockwell Power Plant by my Tita Menchu Tantoco Lopez. She herself was busy overseeing a special flower stand she put up at the ground level of the mall — special because it would be open only for the two days through Valentine’s to capitalize on the single most important flower-purchasing-and-giving time of the year (though as most Rustan’s shoppers know, flowers are always sold year-round inside the various Rustan’s supermarkets).

Now, as all of us lovers know, roses are the flower of choice during Valentine’s. So what was very interesting to me as I glanced through Tita Menchu’s offerings that afternoon was the very wide selection of different types of flowers, well beyond your standard roses. While many of these flowers are obviously purchased as decoration for our homes, I am sure some of these non-roses are also given as gifts of love and wholeheartedly accepted by the receiver.

Which brings me to this whole notion that during Valentine’s, why not give a treasured loved one something unique, like a blooming cactus plant? In my biased opinion, cactus blooms are among the most beautiful in all of nature. Their different shapes, colors, sizes and textures are most appealing indeed. I have often heard non-cactophiles say that they are quite surprised that these generally thorny denizens of our dry deserts can produce such beautiful flowers. One just doesn’t expect it of cacti.

One other important point is that many cacti and other succulents start to flower right around Valentine’s season, as the various photos depicted in today’s column attest. Mexican rarities like the genus turbinicarpus are among the first cacti to flower for me each year. The more common mammillarias also oblige around this time, and some will continue to flower throughout the year. Species from these two genera are daytime flowerers. Their blooms open in morning and shut at mid- to late afternoon. Their flowers also last for several days. Such is the norm for most of the cactus kingdom.

The Brazilian discocacti, on the other hand, have quite a different and more delicate flowering regimen. Firstly, only more mature plants that have produced a wooly cephalium in their growing apex are able to produce flowers. Secondly, these flowers are generally produced over a single day, with buds emerging from the cephalium in the very early morning, then slowly growing in size and length before bursting open to produce fantastic, sweet-smelling white flowers by the very early evening. A most perfect, if unusual, flower offering for an evening’s love date, if you can get the timing right. The discocactus’s flowers stay open all through the night, attracting night pollinators with their dama de noche-like scent. Unfortunately, upon daybreak, the flowers start to wilt and eventually die later in the day (like some scorned lover, if you want to be melodramatic). But for that special night of bloom, the discocactus’s flowers are a most enchanting memory that will never be forgotten.

Hopefully, the same can be said of your Valentine’s evening.