Nick Silver Can't Sleep is Janice Kerbel's radio play for insomniacs performed by Rufus Sewell, Josette Simon and Fiona Shaw, and produced by BBC Radio 3 - The Verb.
The play tells a narcotic tale of thwarted desire for love and sleep set in an urban garden on a moonless night. Its characters are all nocturnal plants. Nick Silver (Nicotiana sylvestris), a nocturnal subtropical perennial in bloom, longs for Cereus Grand (Selenicereus grandiflorus), an exotic climbing perennial who blooms just one night a year. The two plants are destined, botanically, never to be together.
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JK: I am trying to determine which plants are strictly nocturnal, which have nocturnal properties, and which are nocturnal/diurnal. Is there a known database of plants that are strictly nocturnal? Is there a database of plants with nocturnal properties?
SH: No, not as far as I am aware. This material is scattered throughout the literature. The other problem of course is that diurnal properties of plants may change depending on where they are grown. So, a plant may be more or less nocturnal in some parts of the range but not others, particularly if the species is introduced. Nocturnal properties not only include flowering but also leaf movements.
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