my favorite yucky flower

One of my favorite weird plants has bloomed for the first time this year. For much of the year Stapelia gigan­tea grows low to the ground, form­ing a dense suc­cu­lent mat about eight inches tall. But in the sum­mer and fall it perks up and pro­duces these amaz­ing flowers.

Stapelia gigantea with my hand for scale

Stapelia gigan­tea with my hand for scale

The pro­por­tion of the size of the flower to the size of the plant almost reminds you of alpine plants, where the flow­ers start to dwarf the plants they grow on. (Pro­por­tion­ally, imag­ine a rose bush four feet tall pro­duc­ing a rose four feet across…)

Stapelia gigantea showing furry petals

Stapelia gigan­tea show­ing furry petals

The flow­ers are a pale cream-to-icy-green color, with dark rose squig­gly lines run­ning all over them. And the flow­ers are cov­ered with fur.

Center of Stapelia gigantea

Cen­ter of Stapelia gigantea

I could stare into the spi­ral vor­tex of lines at the cen­ter of one of these flow­ers for hours…

And did I men­tion that if you stick your nose into the flower the aroma might remind you of ham­burger left in an unplugged refrig­er­a­tor for a cou­ple days? Although the cam­era scared them away, you can imag­ine that flies find this the most irre­sistible flower. It’s no sur­prise that one of its com­mon names is “car­rion flower.”

The genus Stapelia has other stinky flow­ers, though most with the excep­tion of S. gran­di­flora have much smaller flow­ers. A num­ber of closerly related gen­era in the Stapeliae tribe also have stinky but amaz­ingly intri­cate and beau­ti­ful flow­ers. Hoodia gor­donii, the plant that has become pop­u­lar as an appetite sup­pres­sant, also belongs to this same group of plants.

Grow­ing Stapelia gigan­tea is easy–actually, too easy in Hawaii and Aus­tralia, where it’s con­sid­ered a weed. Basi­cally give it bright light (it might not bloom in shade), pro­tect it from freez­ing, and sup­ply it with light to mod­er­ate water. (It tol­er­ates not being watered for two or three weeks, thanks to its suc­cu­lent stems, but it’s hap­pi­est with some mois­ture.) Mine is grow­ing well in a shal­low clay pot about eigh­teen inches in diam­e­ter, in reg­u­lar pot­ting soil.

If you or some­one you know has a young­ster attracted to crawl­ing, scary bugs, turn them on to this plant. They’ll be a gar­dener for life.

September 07 2008 07:01 pm | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • •

10 Responses to “my favorite yucky flower”

  1. Mary Ann on 07 Sep 2008 at 7:42 pm #

    Wow. That’s weird. And beau­ti­ful. These types of flow­ers seem almost like a myth in my local area — they wouldn’t sur­vive the win­ter. Hope­fully I’ll get a chance to travel to some far off trop­i­cal won­der­land some Sep­tem­ber to have a chance to gaze into the vor­tex and pos­si­bly take a sniff. The thing of legends.

  2. Jenny on 08 Sep 2008 at 4:45 pm #

    Oooooh… that has been on my list of things to grow! Maybe Santa can bring it to me. I have a twisted plan to grow the fol­low­ing together:
    –Stapelia get­tl­ef­fii
    –Stapelia var­ie­gata
    –Stapelia flavop­ur­purea
    –Stapelia hirsuta

    Can you tell you’ve hit upon an immi­nent obsession?

  3. lostlandscape on 08 Sep 2008 at 6:16 pm #

    Mary Ann–Apparently a lot of peo­ple grow this plant in a pot in a sunny win­dow when things get too cold out­side. For­tu­nately it gen­er­ally flow­ers when you can leave it out­side, so you don’t have to put up with the aroma indoors.

    Jenny–I’ve been intend­ing to get more of these species myself, along with some from the related Orbea and Huer­nia gen­era. The flow­ers aren’t as ginor­mous, but the pat­tern­ing on the flow­ers is soooo amaz­ing. We’ll see if Santa can’t pot up a cut­ting of S. gigan­tea and keep his elf helper from giv­ing it away to the neigh­bor like hap­pened last time…

  4. Greg on 13 Sep 2008 at 11:33 am #

    Fascinating…I sup­pose I could try this as a pot­ted plant that goes out with nice weather…but it won’t bloom on me in the win­ter and stink up the apart­ment, will it?

  5. lilly-flower on 15 Sep 2008 at 7:27 pm #

    It’s incred­i­ble! How mul­ti­form is our nature and how per­sis­tent is human to per­ceive it.

  6. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » dear santa: odd plants! on 08 Dec 2008 at 5:13 am #

    […] I’d posted on my Stapelia gigan­tea, and she men­tioned that she wouldn’t mind hav­ing one […]

  7. Rhys Comley on 05 Jun 2009 at 9:08 am #

    I found 3 of these plants grow­ing wild on our farm in South Africa. Does any­one know if it is native to South Africa?

  8. lostlandscape on 05 Jun 2009 at 9:43 am #

    Rhys, yes, this species is native to south­ern Africa, with recorded sight­ings in at least South Africa, proper (Trans­vaal, Natal), Mozam­bique, Zam­bia and Swazi­land. I’d love to see it grow­ing in the wild. There are a num­ber of related species with a sim­i­lar distribution.

  9. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » halloween hostess bouquet on 31 Oct 2009 at 3:51 pm #

    […] was either those or a bloom of the stink­ing corpse flower, which unfor­tu­nately is between flow­ers. Besides, it’s prob­a­bly bet­ter eti­quette, even on […]

  10. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » roadkill flower on 24 Sep 2010 at 10:51 am #

    […] grown another of these car­rion flow­ers, Stapelia gigan­tea, for a few years now. That plant has flow­ers that last for just a day, and I was expect­ing the same […]

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