Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Night-blooming cereus is a climbing cactus with big white flowers that open at night. Herbalists use the fresh young stems and the flowers. Its Latin name is Selenicereus grandiflorus.
Western herbalists have used it as a heart remedy. They gave it for a racing or fluttering pulse. They also gave it for chest pain and for a strong sense of the heart beating during stress.
The evidence is thin. We found no human trials of this plant. Long use by herbalists is not proof that a plant works, and that holds here.
No one has shown how it works in people. The idea handed down by herbalists is that it calms an over-excited heart and steadies the beat.
The stems hold small amounts of amines, which are plant chemicals that can act on nerves and blood vessels. In old lab work, extracts changed the force and rate of the beat in animal hearts. That is lab work, not proof in people.
Because it may touch heart rhythm at all, it is not a plant to try on your own for a heart problem.
You will meet it in a few forms:
Fresh plant tincture, which is an alcohol extract of the young stems. This is the form old Western herbalists used most.
Dried stem in capsules or tea, though herbalists rated the dried plant as much weaker.
Homeopathic Cactus grandiflorus, sold as drops or pills. This is made by diluting the plant again and again. At 30C almost none of the plant is left, and trials do not tell such drops apart from a dummy pill.
Mexican and Central American in origin, this cactus came into Western use in the 1860s. An Italian doctor, Rubini, wrote it up as a heart remedy.
Eclectic and physiomedical doctors in the United States took it up and kept it in their books into the early 1900s. It stayed a niche remedy rather than a common one. It is still listed in some European herbal texts today.
Some reactions to Night-Blooming Cereus need urgent care. Call your local emergency number or go to an emergency department straight away — do not wait to see whether it passes.
Call emergency services now if you have chest pain, chest tightness, pain spreading to your arm or jaw, trouble breathing, or if you faint.
See a doctor soon if your heartbeat feels fast, slow or uneven, if your ankles swell, or if you get short of breath doing things that used to be easy.
Stop the herb and speak to your doctor or pharmacist if you get a rash, bad nausea, a headache that will not shift, or if you feel confused.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Night-Blooming Cereus is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
One email with the summary. We'll also send a short weekly evidence update — unsubscribe any time.
