The Night-Blowing Cereus
From The Temple of Flora — a flower that opens once, after dark, and is gone by morning.
- Work
- The Night-Blowing Cereus, from The Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature
- Artist / naturalist
- After Philip Reinagle and Robert John Thornton
- Origin & date
- England, 1800
- Held by
- Wikimedia Commons (Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales)
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
$19.00
The story
The night-blooming cereus flowers for a single night a year, opening after dusk and collapsing by dawn — a plant practically written for Robert John Thornton's Temple of Flora, which staged its flowers as Romantic set-pieces rather than bare botanical specimens. This plate sets the cereus's huge, star-white bloom against a moonlit clock tower and a darkening sky, a composition meant to be read at the same hour the real flower would have been open. What to notice: the moon and clock together turn the whole plate into a kind of timer, underscoring the flower's famous, fleeting rarity — Thornton's engravers rarely had a subject so naturally suited to the theatrical treatment he insisted every plate deserved.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales)’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper: smooth, no glare.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guarantee.