Stapelia Grandiflora * Giant Toad Plant * Amazing Succulent * Rare * 3 Seeds

3 SEEDS Stapelia grandiflora is a tufted cactus-like plant with large and showy star-fish shaped flowers. Stapelia grandiflora is a very variable species with many hybrids both in the wild and in cultivation. This specie meets and intergrade with Stapelia hirsuta in the little Karoo and the two (quite similar) species can be separated by its thicker pedicel. Blooms are produced from the base on younger shoots they are large, flat, star fish-shaped, orange, dark-red, deep brown-purple to chocolate, with transverse brow to whitish corrugation and densely covered by long purplish hairs at the centre that remember the fur of a dead animal. Pedicels 3-7 cm long, 4-5 mm in diameter, thickened at the base shorter than the corolla. Undersides red to greenish. Corolla width very variable, from 5-22 cm (usually 10/12 cm) across and very deeply lobed. Corolla segments ovate lanceolate acute. Buds plump peaked that resemble the domes of a Russian Orthodox church. Flowers smell like rotting meat and are very attractive to the flies that pollinate them. Sometimes flies lay eggs on the flower. Larvae that have hatched from the eggs can be seen on the flower. Flowers are smaller than those of Stapelia gigantea. Blooming season: Flowers are intermittently produced throughout the late summer and autumn. Cultivation and Propagation: Together with Stapelia gigantea and Orbea variegata, probably the most widely cultivated of stapeliads. It is an easy obliging blooming plant when mature, which is happy in any average succulent house. USDA HARDINESS ZONES ; 9A-11B