Good grief. My succulent vendor at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market just sent me Dr. Barad’s astonishing Stapeliad site.
I have never seen such horticultural obscenity. Satan himself designed these flowers. Even though they smell like rotting meat to better attract their preferred pollinators, they don’t need a scent. Any small flying creature that caught a glimpse of one of these out of the corner(s) of its eye(s) would immediately buzz right into the middle of it and wallow orgasticly until it fell to the ground spent. It was all I could do to keep from licking the screen.
www.cactus-mall.freeserve.co.uk/stapelia/picturef.html
This link is to the Stapelia, but there are equal or greater obscenities in the other genera. Do go ahead and click on them to blow them up full size. We’re talking one sick doctor here, eyes dilated as he zooms in for another close-up.