Cestrum nocturnum - Queen of the Night, Night-Blooming Jasmine A night-blooming flower with a strong, sweet scent, this wonderful Saturn plant is a member of the Nightshade family (my favorite!), which has close associations with human beings in a large number of cultures across the world. The greenish-white flowers are insignificant in appearance, as we would expect from a Saturn plant, but they are probably the most powerfully scented flowers in the world. On especially warm evenings and on summer full moons (there's more than a bit of Moon to this plant--consider the name), their sweet, hypnotic scent, designed to attract pollinating moths, can be perceived up to 200 feet away. You can almost feel the scent in the air--it's very liquid in texture. Some claim that the scent can cause dizziness and other CNS effects. A native of the West Indies and Central America, night-blooming jasmine is now cultivated in India, where the Malasar people use its juice for cataracts and where it is made into a rare attar (raat ki rani) used in Indian and Middle Eastern perfumery. Befitting its Saturn nature, this plant was used in funeral rituals in 19th-century Louisiana. The unripe berries of this plant cause hallucinations but can also cause coma if eaten in large quantities, although birds love them. The plant contains glyco-alkaloids and atropine-like alkaloids.
People have used the leaves for various purposes, including for flavoring chili and in religious ritual. Like many Saturn plants, this floppy bush can be invasive--Saturn teaches us to pay attention to boundaries