This week in the garden - #26

The plant of this hot and humid but very dry week in my garden is the Stapelia gigantea, also called the Carrion Flower. It is a plant in the Asclepiadaceae family and is native to South Africa. It looks a bit like a cactus but its four-sided fleshy stems do not feature spines.

A start of the plant was given to me by my friend Ursula a couple of years ago. I was a bit leery of it, to tell the truth, but I stuck it in a pot and basically just forgot about it for several months. That was in October. The next spring, there it was, hale and hearty. Obviously, the plant doesn't require much care.

In fact, in researching the plant's care later, I found that it thrives on having a cool, dry rest period in winter, so I had inadvertently given it exactly what it needed to flourish. In the growing season, it enjoys having full sun and moderate water, preferably in a well-drained soil (2 parts loam to 1 part sharp sand) with small pebbles mixed in for drainage. They thrive in pots and can withstand extreme heat. Sounds ideal for my garden!

This is a picture of my plant from a year ago, just as it was about to bloom for the first time. As you can see, it is still in a fairly small pot.

And this is its first actual bloom from last year.

Soon its blooms were drawing flies like...um, flies. You see, the plant's common name of Carrion Flower refers to the odor of the blossoms, which is something like rotting meat, and that, of course, brings the flies in droves. Last year, though, I really couldn't detect much of an odor coming from my little plant's flowers. Obviously, the flies could.

This is a picture of the same plant from a few weeks ago. As you can see, it has grown quite a bit in the past year and has had to be moved to a ten-inch pot, which it is also quickly outgrowing.

And now, it is blooming once again, and not just one or two blossoms. It is covered in blooms and buds of all sizes. And no longer is there any doubt as to why the plant is called Carrion Flower. The odor is quite apparent and you don't even have to stick your nose close to the flower.

Needless to say, the flies are ecstatic!