Flights of the Fabulous
Because the scent of the Reina de la Noche ("Queen of the Night") is rumored to intoxicate the person sitting downwind of its perfume, it was sometimes planted with specific reference to the wind's direction and for just that purpose—to release someone from the constraints of the rational, the prison of the particular, the pedestrian. According to botanists, the reina de la noche that we see are escapees from cultivation, for the flower is officially extinct in the wild. In the family Solanaceae, it is native to and originated in tropical regions of South America,
along the Andes from Venezuela to northern |