In general, carrion flowers like dry heat. Caring for Carrion Flowers Stapelia gigantea is a fine garden plant for arid, warm winter regions of the American Southwest Where it’s cold, grow carrion flowers in pots to move indoors before frost and bring out for the summer.
Growing lots of them around the chicken coop or dog run may prove to be helpful biological fly control where it’s too dry for other options. Over the life of each flower, hundreds of flies will leave their progeny, the accumulating corpses highly visible to the naked eye. But when the larvae hatch out, they have no food and quickly starve to death. Convinced there will be plenty of carrion for their larvae to thrive, female flies lay their eggs beneath the central pistil, where the scent is strongest. Such activity ensures flower pollination and fly death. Both share the fetid odor of rotten meat and death that originates at the center of the flower where flies of all types may be found vying for a place to reproduce. Some are creamy yellow (puss colored) with hairs while others have smaller flowers that are the color of red meat (these are more commonly available to gardeners).
When flies peak in late summer, it comes into bloom with buds like pointed balloons and unique leathery blossoms that actually look like starfish road kill. So just how do they kill flies? Let’s look at Stapelia gigantea, which thrives in the high heat and low humidity of the desert. Carrion Flower Fly Catching Desiccated maggots (fly larvae) dot the center of this meat-colored carrion flower. Prey are always prevalent and active, keeping these curious succulent flowers well pollinated. But death does not come until these insects have first pollinated the blooms. Unique carrion flowers have evolved very exotic starfish-like blossoms that kill the most ubiquitous insect in Africa: the fly.
One group of South African succulents, carrion flowers ( Stapelia spp.), does just that. Just imagine if you could grow a drought-tolerant plant that may actually reduce fly populations.
0 kommentar(er)
