Philadelphia Weekly

My favorite pastime during July evenings is to sit under my potted angel's trumpet tree and admire its glorious, fragrant canopy. It spends the colder months in my kitchen, looking to guests like a dead, bare stick ripe for the slushy curb.

But in July it's the glory of my garden: Huge lilylike blooms emerge from long zeppelin-shaped sheaths and open in the evening light, releasing an intense perfume that causes the eyelids to droop a bit upon inhaling. Fresh blooms start out a lemony white at dusk, but after a long night of trysting with countless lusty moths, they develop a gorgeous peachy blush about the mouth of their blooms by morning.

Night does strange things to the eye, and many nocturnal flowering plants exploit the low light levels of evening, which gives their predominantly white and yellow blooms a preternatural glow. The dainty fiery-red blooms of cardinal creeper that are the midday darlings of hummingbirds turn a dull charcoal gray as daylight ebbs. Blue, violet and lavender flowers have a brief moment during sunset when they seem to give off a light of their own, but they too quickly succumb.

I'm surprised more people don't start night gardens, since most people's free time tends to be during the evening hours. What you might sacrifice in range of color you gain in variety of scent: jasmine, peacock orchid and honeysuckle fill the night air with a melange of olfactory textures.

Just as some people can identify birds and frogs by their calls, there's a rare breed of night gardener who can tell the buttery notes of a gardenia from the clean citrus nose of an old-fashioned lemon lily. Such people are easy to find, as they all sport pencil-thin mustaches, wear ascots and drink brandy. Get to know them.

One of my favorite night-blooming annuals is the magnificent moonflower, which is easily grown from seed as a potted plant. Although it's a vine rather than a tree, the moonflower has gorgeous foliage, and its bloom has a very similar structure to morning glory and can be as wide as half a foot. Moonflower vines are vigorous growers once they hit their stride, and may require some trimming later in the season. They thrive in sun or partial shade, and can tolerate poor soils.

If you're looking for a hardy perennial, try evening primrose. Thought of as a roadside weed in some parts of the country, its bright yellow blooms nevertheless have an elegant simplicity. If more complex blooms are your thing, try the lovely vesper iris, which tends to bloom in late afternoon and slowly fades into the dark as night deepens. It also does well in full sun.

A botanical oddity that can do without any kind of sunlight is the white, waxy parasitic plant called indian pipe, or ghost plant, which lives off of the nutrients in soil fungus and has no green chlorophyll of its own. I've encountered this rare plant in the wild, and am doubtful it can be cultivated. Nevertheless, it's an incredible plant. Google it, and be amazed.

Perhaps the ultimate in nocturnal gardening--provided it could be propagated or cultivated at all--might be the jack o' lantern mushroom. It's a slightly toxic orange fungus that glows with a pale, ghostly light. The same enzyme that allows fireflies to glow--luciferase--is also present in this species. According to lore, early colonists would line their forest paths with this mushroom to light their way.

Enjoy your evening garden, and may the fireflies stay out of your wine glass; I almost swallowed one last week.