Moonflowers

Bushel gourd flower
Originally uploaded by Liz Castro

Yesterday morning, I weeded several rows of pumpkins. The bees were happily buzzing around the bright orange flowers.

But I looked over at the rows of gourds and they looked downright sad: wilted and closed up white flowers and no buzzing activity at all.

It was only because I forgot that gourd plants (lagenaria siceraria) only bloom from dusk to dawn and rely on night-flying insects for pollination, like hawk-moths.

This picture doesn't quite do them justice, but they are quite beautiful at dusk, very bright against an ever-darkening field of big lush (but malodorous) gourd plant leaves.