Each tree’s flower of the Bituon Tree opens just for one night. It starts to open after sunset and falls off in the morning hours. Read more on wikipedia.

– Amazing beauty for just one night.

Wonder about the story behind the photo? Here we go:

My wife and I knew that there were several Bituon trees around in the Pintuyan Dive Resort, Philippines – and we wanted to see one of these marvelous blossoms unfold.  My SLR camera was already mounted in the underwater housing ready for diving the next day. So we decided to test the mobile phone camera of Ylfa. The built-in flash didn’t provide the ‘feel’ we wanted for the photo. So I used one of our UW torches to spot-illuminate while Ylfa took the pictures with her cell phone. We returned about every half hour to the tree to document progress and within 2-3 hours the series was completed.

Needless to say – Ylfa is passionate about high quality photo-sensors and lenses in cell phones.