Night Blooming Cereus Up High on Haiku Road

Pine needles and night blooming cereus on Haiku Road. 

I felt like a tourist who had sighted a humpback whale for the first time. The kind of Maui tourist who also slows her car to a crawl oblivious to the long line of cars behind her, because the sight is so astonishing.  People on Maui are so nice that they don’t even honk when tourists do dumb stuff. I felt smacked by a miracle. Luckily it was early enough that no one was behind me and there was plenty of room to pull over.

Early morning two Sundays ago, I was driving down Haiku Road, towards the same stretch of Norfolk Pines below the white fenced Baldwin Estate that I had passed many times over the years. Around the bend, there they were, like big white fireworks suspended in a net of pine.

I had known about the cereus vine climbing up the pine trees, but didn’t know if it ever bloomed because it was so shady. About a month ago, I saw expired flowers along the trees, and realized it did bloom after all. But I had missed the big show. With all this extra summer rain, more than normal - yes, even for Haiku! - maybe the cereus is blooming more often this year.

In the middle of the photograph, there is a speck on a leaf which is a big carpenter bee pollinating the flowers. 

It’s humbling to see such unexpected beauty. Little did I know that I would be humbled by beauty twice in one day. This is what happened next.