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SARASOTA, Fla. – Hundreds of people gathered at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in downtown Sarasota<\/a> to witness the annual blooming of the Queen of the Night.\u00a0<\/p>\n The rare cactus produces hundreds of flowers<\/a> for just a single evening each year, prompting a spontaneous, free community viewing party.<\/p>\n Queen of the Night bloom <\/p>\n What we know:<\/p>\n The night-blooming cactus puts on a spectacular show by flowering only one evening per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n “When the sun comes up, the buds will close and that show is over until a whole year from now,” Jennifer Rominiecki, the president and CEO of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, explained.<\/p>\n Signs of a bloom <\/p>\n Dig deeper:<\/p>\n When the mature buds split in the morning, the garden team knows the flowers will open that night.\u00a0<\/p>\n “As the flowers open, we expect to have hundreds of flowers at the same time,” Rominiecki explained.<\/p>\n When the sun rises the next morning, the buds close, ending the event until the following year.<\/p>\n “My favorite part of this night is seeing the true wonder on everyone’s faces as the flower opens,” Rominiecki said.<\/p>\n Bringing a community together <\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n “Once people come and see it, they want to come back and see it again,” Rominiecki said.<\/p>\n Rominiecki explained that she enjoys doing this annual event.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I’m really happy to see a lot of people here sitting in beach chairs looking at a plant,” Rominiecki said. “What could be better than that?”<\/p>\n Sarasota community viewing party <\/p>\n What we don’t know:<\/p>\n The exact date of the bloom varies each year, depending entirely on when the buds mature and split.<\/p>\n The Source: The information in this story was gathered from the viewing of The Queen of the Night plant at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota.<\/p>\n Sarasota<\/a>Environment<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"article SARASOTA, Fla. – Hundreds of people gathered at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in downtown Sarasota to witness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[3242,1579,9,24,12,63,122,124,123,54721,99534,618],"class_list":["post-255500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-environment","tag-fl","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sarasota","tag-sarasota-county","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/screenshot-2026-06-03-223130.png\")
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