On the cover. Stapelia grandiflora isn't fooling everyone. CSSA member Karen Zimmerman, Desert Collection propagator at the Huntington Botanical Garden, snapped this photo when she noticed lizards waiting by its open blooms ready to chomp visiting flies. The flies, of course, are fooled. From their miasmic odors to their velveteen hairs, these flower have all the clotted hallmarks of road kill, and in frenzied visits the flies get tangled up in a deception that results in pollination (if they aren't snagged first by a lizard!). Later, horn shaped fruits, typical of any milkweed, split open and release seeds that parachute away on the lightest breeze. S.grandiflora, despite its name, doesn't have the largest flowers in the genus. That title goes certainly to the closely related S.gigantea. With flowers up to 40 cm across appearing on meter-wide mounds of clustering, fuzzy stems, it's no wonder S.gigantea is so well known and so widely grown. In this issue Gail Selfridge turns inspiration into illustration, showing us how to capture the life history of these remarkable plants on paper.
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