Last month I was lucky to see a rare tropical shrub/small tree, Osa pulchra, in full bloom. Huge, trumpet-shaped flowers hung just overhead, still and improbable, translucent against light pouring through the magnificent high roof of one of Kew Garden’s conservatories.
At the time I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but I knew it was special. To an observer I must have appeared like a human version of the His Master’s Voice dog.
Slender green stalks merged into architectural creamy-white flowers, constructed from sturdy petals fused together to create five sections. The glossy leaves had wavy margins and deeply embossed veins that presumably act as water channels. As the leaves are slightly pendulous, the plant seemed to sigh.
Challenging to grow and endangered in the wild, Osa pulchra is most often seen in botanic gardens. Only cuttings taken from the top of the plant will root, causing obvious difficulties.
Searching for more information, I quickly came across a Google-selected summary from Wikipedia advising, ‘The plant is most easily propagated by seed’, followed closely by a site selling the seeds at $10 a pop with the warning ‘Not for beginners’.
More determined searching unearthed an expert’s 400-word testimony to the challenges of growing from seed. At best, 16% of his hand-pollinated seeds could be persuaded to germinate and ‘chopstick midwifery’ was often needed to try to ease the sprouts out of their seed coats quickly enough for the first leaves (cotyledons) to start photosynthesising before the seedlings ran out of energy and collapsed.
I’d have loved to sample the heady night-time fragrance which is designed to draw bats into this great pavillion of a flower.
Imagine what it must be like to experience a grove of wild Osa pulchras flowering in Costa Rica – a tropical moon garden.
Shared for Cee’s Flower of the Day.
Susan Rushton 
WOW!!!. Dying to experience this one. Bet it’d grow like crazy in coastal AL. Think I need a seed of this one. 😉😊🤍🌸💕
I like your confidence!
Very interesting post, thank you!
Joanna
My pleasure!
How unusual, it looks like something a bat would pollinate. How wide across are the blooms?
I’d say 6 in wide and about twice that long,
Amazing!
That’s really beautiful and a bit unearthly 😮 And thank you for all the accompanying info – fascinating!
I’m glad you liked it.
It is a unicorn.
I like that idea. It’s the right colour!
What an incredible beauty 🤗🤍
It had character too.
What a beauty. I would love to see one.
I feel lucky to have seen it.
Beautiful flower + bats! Love it. 🙂
Thanks, Tracy.
A beautiful and intriguing flower. 😃
It was memorable.
What a fabulous flower Susan. My friens has a similar flowered small tree in her garden. It’s a Brugmansia
Those are lovely – a bit wavier at the edges.
Their smell on a warm night is intoxicating
At first glance of the flower I immediately thought of the flying nun TV program with Sally Fields in her Daughters of Charity nun habit. 🙂 Just how big is the opening of the flower?
I’d guess about 6 inches (15cm) wide and about twice as long. I perhaps got carried away with huge, but that’s how they struck me at the time.
What a simply lovely, understated plant.
It makes a good contrast to last week’s frilly, almost fluorescent delphinium.