Ugly Unidentified Stapeliad Species

• 26 Jun, 2013
• 0 likes

This must be the most unpettable of all pet plants; my very most unfavourite. No fine spines , hair or colored, patterned skin to attract the eye, instead it produces ugly, impudently upthrusting, bare stems, giving the finger, right in the face and at least on my windowsill, fails to oblige with even a single one of its evil smelling flowers from some surely alien world. It is subject to infection by a debilitating black-spot fungus and any of its stems may die off at any time for no obvious reason. It has no redeeming features that I can think of, unless the ability to survive extreme drought, in some far off arid land hidden in the shade and protection of an even tougher shrub with dangerously poisonous spines which can kill rats is considered to be of some merit (Micro-climate, important part of the local ecosystem etc, blah blah blah). Some collectors are thrilled by the very thought of it: I am not. There is no accounting for taste. It’s a blot on the landscape; a waste of space and it has to go.