This cactus relative looks like a dead bush for 364 days out of the year. However, it opens with trumpet-shaped, creamy-white flowers up to 8 inches wide for a single night in midsummer.
The flower blooms once every eight to twenty years. When it does, a single dark-purple petal appears beneath a tall central stalk, opening up to five feet wide or more.
Large swathes of hillside turn bluish-purple when the kurinji shrub blooms. Because the plant synchronizes its reproductive phase as a survival mechanism, it occurs roughly once every 12 years.
Rising above the talipot, the gorgeous display of 16-foot-tall flowers is not without cost. The tropical palm (found in Sri Lanka and India) survives up to 75 years but flowers only once before dying.
This Queen performs a flower show every 80–100 years with a flower spike that can reach up to 30 feet high. Upon flowering, the plant dies, leaving behind a stalk of 30K tiny flowers.
In spite of its name, the century plant usually blooms between the ages of 10 and 25. Before the plant dies, a single flower stalk that reaches 30 feet in height blooms with greenish-yellow flowers.
After about seven years, the 10-foot-tall plant produces massive white-and-purple trumpet-shaped flowers. The Himalayan lily is a mass of glossy green leaves when it's not in flower.