Brahma Kamal & Brahma Kamal: Nature's Double Bonanza

Brahma Kamal! Lotus of Brahma .... the god of creation! That too straight from Nandan Kanan ...the garden of haven! That was enough to impress a 10 years old kiddo's mind .... courtesy to my uncle who has just returned from the Valley of Flowers- Hemkund Sahib trek and brought a few dry flowers loosely wrapped in a news paper! I was thrilled to have a look of it! .......my uncle opened the pack carefully to revel the flowers with a great air of suspense! But that light brown paper-thin wilted petals failed miserably to wow the mind of the little girl!

Fast forward a quarter century.... we live in a small house in Bangalore with a tiny backyard garden. The garden has a few known-and-unknown plants planted by the earlier tenants. It was Summer and the plants were trying to cope with the harsh weather in a very dry rubbish laden soil. There was a unique plant with tall branches/leaves growing in every direction in a very haphazard manner ... no sense of symmetry at all! But anyway this guy was doing well in that drought condition! Then came the rain. We didn't give it much attention until one cloudy morning we suddenly saw a big flower bud coming up from nowhere .... actually it was attached to a leaf of the plant ..... something that I have never seen before!

We were yet to know what was coming but was already impressed by the elegance of that dangling beauty! We waited excitedly the whole day and in the evening the flower started to open up reveling its inner beauty! But the sky started pouring and we retreat hoping to come back the next morning to see the full bloom. When we reached for the flower in the morning all was gone! And that's it .... no more flower until July next year. By this time I knew its name  ...... Brahma Kamal! Again! But no complain here..... this flower with its elegance, size, beauty, fragrance and rarity can easily take the seat of Parijat (flower of heaven)!

And finally last year on our Valley of Flowers trek we saw its namesake ....the original Brahma Kamal on the slope of the hill towards Hemkund Shahib ..... and realized why this flower is considered so special .... you have to see it on its homeland .... in the lap of that mighty Himalaya... then only you will realize the divine glory of this delicate flower!

So here you are! Two completely different flowers with the same name. Both are elegant, divine, elusive but different. I'm emphasizing on the word different because if you google a bit with this name you will get so much confusing information in the web! People have used the photos and information of these two flowers interchangeably! So time for a little technical note to get it clear!

First comes the Brhma Kamal from the Himalaya whose botanical name is Saussurea obvallata.

The generic name, ‘Saussurea’ is named after the Swedish plant taxonomist, Horace Benedict de Saussure; specific epithet ‘obvallata’ is derived from ‘obvallatus’, meaning surrounded by wall referring to the yellowish-green papery bracts.

So the petal like things that you see in the photo are actually the bracts, which provide protection to the purple flowers hidden inside from the cold mountain weather.
This plant can be found in the Himalayan region and they survive only at altitudes between 3700 and 4600 m. Being the state flower of Uttarakhand, Brahma Kamal is found in many places like Kedarnath, Hemkund Sahib and Tungnath.
The flowers bloom in mid-monsoon (July–August-September) and remain intact throughout its life cycle. It blooms only one night in a year, exposing its star-like petals. The one who sees the blooming flower, it is believed, is blessed by Brahma, and will have prosperity and wealth. Being regarded as a spiritual flower Brahma Kamal is offered to the deities in the tamples of  Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath, Kedarnath and Tungnath and also distributed as "Prasada" at the times of big festivals. No wonder this flower got its place in so many stories of Hindu mythology! Check this link for few such interesting stories.
Now the sad part .....this flower is going to be extinct very rapidly! Everyone who visits those temples wants to come back with a few flowers to bring goodwill to their house. There are few other reasons hastening the extinction process like climate change, grazing, construction work etc but I believe the most destructive reason being the greed .... people are now going up the hills and plucking the flowers to sell them in sacks to the devotees. If you are a devotee or tourist or botanist whatever just think twice before plucking or buying this flower. Shall not it thrive in the adobe of god? What my (or your's) uncle unknowingly did many years back, let's not repeat that again. Otherwise the day is not far when this flower will get its permanent place in mythologies only!
Let the flower survive. God will be obliged.

For some information about Saussurea obvallata check these links below:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259308185_Brahma_Kamal_-_the_spiritually_revered_scientifically_ignored_medicinal_plant
http://bsienvis.nic.in/writereaddata/Uttarakhand%20State%20Flower%20_Final__3_11.pdf
https://www.hindustantimes.com/dehradun/offered-at-temples-over-harvesting-threatens-survival-of-state-flower/story-KFxpYUYBgDfOPP2vzm7geI.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saussurea_obvallata
http://www.indianbotanists.com/2013/04/epiphyllum-oxypetallum-brahmakamal.html

Now comes our very own Brhamkamal aka Epiphyllum oxypetalum

Yah! This is our very own BK because it has make Bangalore its home long before we did so! It is so common here that there is a high chance to spot this plant if you visit a house that nurtures at least a small balcony garden!
In our house the owner, my good-friend uncle, has many Brhamkamal plants in his garden .... last year he gifted me a mature plant too! We have around 5-6 plants in the house now. Most interestingly all those plants bloom together in a single night once (sometime twice or thrice) in a year. As if they get a "ishara" in air someday .... a cue from haven to bloom! The blooming time is somewhere between June and August! One mature plant can easily give 25-30 flowers in one shot!

Can you imagine ..... those spectacular white flowers in the backdrop of night sky with that heady fragrance and so many in numbers .... you have to be there to get the feel of it! The day it happens we all feel excited from the morning .... after dark they start to open up revealing the inner beauty! At midnight it opens completely ..... and when we go back in the morning .... all gone! So a year long preparation lasts just for a few hours that too in the middle of night when all the world is sleeping! No eyes to appreciate its beauty ..... also no hands to destroy its delicate presence!

This plant is a species of cactus and has many sweet names like queen of the night, Dutchman's pipe cactus, Gekka Bijin or Beauty under the Moon (in Japan), Kadupul or flower from heaven (Sri Lanka), Wijaya Kusuma or flower of Triumph (in Indonesia) and so on! Being a cactus variety they are very drought tolerant and easy to propagate from cutting! I'm planning to write a detailed post on this plant soon .... so for more details check my space!