Starfish Flower

by Kathy K McClellan

Title

Starfish Flower

Artist

Kathy K McClellan

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

Starfish Flower by Kathy K. McClellan is a photographic collage created for Week 5 of the 52 week Art Challenge (Theme: The World Outside).

This collage contains six images of the Starfish Flower. One photograph shows three buds looking like balloons as they slowly prepare to open. In another picture you can see a single bud as the petals are starting to separate.

Four other views in this collage show the blooms fully opened, one with a fly walking around a petal as he makes his way to the middle to pick up pollen.

The back of the petals are a soft pink while the insides are a pale yellow with red squiggly lines running around the blossom.

When the five petals have fully opened the flower resembles a starfish giving it one of it's common names.

The Starfish Flower, also known as the Zulu Giant and Toad Plant, is botanically the Stapelia gigantea, of the family Apocynaceae. Although it's stems look like a cactus the Apocynaceae family is actually the same family as the Milkweed plant. It has the largest flower (9-10" in diameter) in the world of succulents.

My neighbor warned me when I came to take pictures of her plant that the flowers stunk and attracted flies. Sure enough when I looked this plant up, my research revealed that the flowers put off the odor of rotting meat. The odor is evidently to entice those flies for pollination.

Luckily it was a cool morning and I didn't have to get close enough to smell the offensive odor.

This image has been featured in the following FAA/Pixels groups:

Challenge Addicts Club 10/05/2023

Uploaded

October 4th, 2023

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