Newspaper Find: People View Night Blooming Cereus

Listening to Geneabloggers Blog Talk Radio last Friday, I was pointed in the direction of a great site which has many northern New York newspapers digitized and searchable. { www.fultonhistory.com }

Lucky me, that my husband has family from this area.  I plugged in the surname “Cossaboon” {which thankfully isn’t very common} and I immediately came up with tons of hits, which I will be sharing over the coming weeks.

I found this article interesting.  Maybe because I kill house plants and I was so impressed that they had their plant for 15 years. 🙂  Really though, have you ever heard of a night blooming cereus plant?  I hadn’t.  I thought that it was kind of neat that they had friends and family over to see it – and that news of the flower made the newspaper.  Small Town, U.S.A.

From the Perry Herald, Perry, NY, dated Thursday, September 18, 1947:

PEOPLE VIEW NIGHT BLOOMING CEREUS

   Many friends and neighbors called at the home of Rev. and Mrs. Nicholas Van Cossaboon on Friday evening to see their night blooming cereus which had a beautiful blossom in bloom that evening.  The plant had six buds but only one came into bloom.  The blossom, which was white in color with a tint of pink on the outside of the petals, seemed to grow out from the side of the leaf.

   The Cossaboons have had the plant for 15 years.  A blossom on the plant is a rare thing.  This is the second time in seven years that this plant has had a blossom on it.  All who viewed the blossom feel that it was a great privilege to have been able to see it.

During the evening photos were taken of it but at the time of writing the news it is not known whether they were successful in getting a good picture or not.

I got this picture from Wikipedia, not from the family photo album. 🙂  I think that this may be the flower they are talking about, or something similar. It doesn’t look very dark out, does it?