| There are more than half-a-dozen of Piaranthus coming from winter rain areas of South Africa and Namibia. They are related to Stapelia and have 4-angled stems. The flowers differ from stapelias by being star-shaped, having 5 independent petals. The name Piaranthus comes from the Greek for fat flower. They form mats, typically in the shade of non-succulent bushes.
Piaranthus bloom in the fall, or early winter. They star-shaped flowers can be bright yellow (Piaranthus ruschii), stippled with red (Piaranthus foetidus), light yellow with very dense red spotting (Piaranthus pillansii), light yellow with irregular purplish brown stripes (Piaranthus barrydalensis), cream with some brown spotting (Piaranthus pulchella v.nebrownii) or various combinations of yellow with red spots. They have a variety of smells: rancid butter, rotting vegetation or even a sweet scent.
Piaranthus foetidus Piaranthus framesii Piaranthus parvulus
Desert Tropicals Home Page List of All the Plants | More in the Asclepiadaceae family Desert-Tropicals is dedicated to provide gardening advice, gardening ideas, and information about flower of all kind for landscape and collections.We try to check carefully the identification of the plants on the illustrations as well as the other information from the page, but occasionally errors do occur. if you notice anything that needs to be changed please contact us.Thanks. © 1998-2020 Philippe Faucon, All Rights Reserved. |
