When my great-aunt Carrie headed to assisted living 25 years ago, her patio garden was parceled out to relatives and friends. I inherited her night-blooming cereus, a plant that has become a most unlikely family touchstone.

I know it was that long ago because my memories of our son's tumultuous first months are still perfumed with the flower's scent. Nathan is now 23.

The cereus, formally known as Epiphyllum oxypetalum, had been with us for a while before Nate came along. It already had outgrown one pot and had taken up much of our small front porch.

Most of the time, it was a gangly eyesore. A member of the cactus family, the night-blooming cereus has long, flat stems that look like leaves and are so thick and fibrous that even snails do little damage. Dead stems turn from a wan green to a gray-mottled yellow and then shrivel, hanging indefinitely until someone hacks them off.

But the flowers are showstoppers.

Desperate for any breeze during the blistering summer that Nate was born, I nursed him on the front porch in the wee hours, watching the blooms unfurl against a starry sky.

The plant is often known by the nicknames "lady of the night" or "queen of the night." In summertime, pink buds dangle from its stems, swelling to about six inches long. The crooked blossoms are no doubt what gave rise to the plant's other moniker, the Dutchman's pipe.

At dusk, the flowers open slowly, like a sultry tango dancer. Dozens of creamy white petals unfold to nearly one foot across, revealing feathery yellowish stamen and a vanilla-like fragrance so overwhelming it suffuses our yard and wafts into the house. The large white flowers attract moths, the nighttime pollinators.

One cereus bloom is spectacular enough, but when a dozen open on a single night, they're like that last fusillade at a fireworks show.

By morning, the closed flowers hang limply.

Nathan's first summer probably wasn't the first time our cereus bloomed, but so sleep-deprived was I and besotted by his arrival that the plant moved me to write poetry about flowers opening and children growing.

I wasn't alone. The plant has inspired a one-act opera, "Night Blooming Cereus," by the Canadian composer John Beckwith, and Margaret Gibson's 2002 poem, also called "Night Blooming Cereus."

My daughter, Miriam, arrived a few years later, and with two young children, I had to leave Aunt Carrie's plant on the back patio, more or less on its own.

Some gardeners fuss over their cereuses, certain that by carefully pruning in the fall and watering more in certain months than others the plant will bloom profusely.

But this native of the Caribbean and Central America seems to thrive on near-neglect, taking nourishment from falling leaves and bird droppings, a weekly hosing and the occasional extra shovel of potting soil.

Hotter summers are tougher on the cereus, unless gardeners take potted plants indoors during extreme temperatures. The plant likes some shade, and gardeners recommend using a slow-release fertilizer to boost blooming.

I've rarely fed mine, and some years the poor thing has cooked in full sun. Yet my erratic efforts were richly rewarded every summer with a series of nighttime extravaganzas.

We would summon the kids to see the blooms. Momentarily impressed but distracted by homework, television or friends, they darted back inside.

My husband, David, and I often lingered, watching the night sky and inhaling the scent. My mother, who lived nearby, sometimes joined us and her photos of the plant — and our kids — marked those growing-up years.

Mom took up photography as a hobby in her 40s and became so accomplished that she sold travel shots to magazines. But when illness hit in her late 70s, she pretty much had stopped shooting.

By then, the cereus had the wingspan of a condor, and with no small effort we had successfully transplanted it to the biggest pot we could find.

Mom took her last pictures of the cereus blooms, struggling to use a camera she once operated fluidly. She died almost seven years ago, and those photos are among the best we have.

Last summer, after Miriam left for college, the silence in our house was so overwhelming that David and I often escaped to the garden in the evenings after work. When the cereus flowers opened, the just-the-two-of-us began to feel OK.