If you’re the sort of grower who likes a themed garden, and you’ve chosen a gothic theme for your plants – these are a must-have in the collection. The blooms are easily in my top 10 favorites, being dramatic, enormous, and easily stopping people dead in their tracks. The plant itself is fast-growing, and while it should grow in a compact clump, it can make for an attractive hanging specimen with a sprawling habit resembling tropical plants.
Habitat
A South African native, these are known from the eastern side of the country, in the Transvaal region.
In habitat, they grow in compact, upright clumps and strongly resemble Stapelia gigantea. In cultivation, they often receive enough water and shade to develop something of a sprawling habit to their growth (pictured also in this post from the South African National Biodiversity Institute).
Growing Stapelia leendertziae
These are enormously forgiving and very easy to grow, provided you trend towards under-watering, rather than overwatering.
Soil and Potting
While forgiving, they do require the key elements of succulent soil: well draining!
I pot this in a mix of 50% succulent soil, 25% pumice, and 25% orchid bark. If you’re in a particularly hot and dry climate, or have a greenhouse, you can make it 25% houseplant soil and 25% succulent soil instead. I do find that they grow faster and are more likely to bloom with a bit of richer soil included, but this can be mitigated with fertilizer.
When selecting a pot, you can go a bit bigger than typically recommended. I’ve moved mine from a 4″ pot immediately into a 6″, then into an 8″ saucer – and my largest plant has only been in my care for 2 years!
The hotter your climate, the brighter the area you plan to keep them in, the larger the pot you can put them into. If you’re in a cooler climate with more clouds and summer rainfall, you may want to increase the amount of pumice you use compared to soil.
Why orchid bark? I use orchid bark in my mix as opposed to coconut husk or coconut fiber because it produces a nice, chunky mix that better encourages drainage. I tend to mix orchid bark to replace at least part of what I would normally choose to mix with pumice as I keep my plants in a greenhouse, which gets very hot for large parts of the year. The orchid bark holds on to moisture longer than the pumice does, with plenty of air accessible to the roots, without being soggy or compacting the way coconut coir is prone to do.
Lighting or Sun Exposure
As evidenced with my plant, when grown in shade, they really sprawl. In habitat, they have a very tight, compact, and upright growth habit. In cultivation, with richer soil and regular water, they very very rapidly begin to sprawl.
There’s a careful balance to strike to encourage nice, compact growth. Immediately throwing a nursery plant, or a shipped plant, into full sunlight is almost guaranteed to scorch your stapelia.
If you want them to grow in the compact, upright pattern they resemble in habitat, slowly acclimate your plants to full sunlight over the course of several weeks. The best time to move them from a more protected, shaded area to full sun is in early spring, just as the first risk of frost is really past. Cloudy spring weather, shorter days, and milder high temperatures are all ideal for timing when you move a plant from shade or overwintering indoors to back outside.
I have mine growing in my greenhouse with 40% shade cloth, and that’s resulting in quite a sprawling, rambling growth habit. If you’d told me these typically have a growth pattern similar to Stapelia gigantea, enough that they can be mistaken for each other in habitat, I’d have thought you were lying.
So! Despite these being excellent hanging plant candidates, I don’t recommend them for indoor growing. If you have enormous, floor to ceiling windows that are south facing, sure, give it a try. But for us average people with average windows? Or if you’re in an apartment or condo? Nope. Keep them on your patio, or plan to provide supplemental lighting.
Water
While these are succulents, the hotter the days get, the more water they need. I enjoy growing these as they are very transparent about their water needs: when they’re thirsty, they wrinkle.
Even if they’re thirsty, they can be thirsty for days and be fine. The rooted cuttings I’ve plopped outdoors next to rocks or in random areas to experiment with hang on to life for a surprising amount of time – weeks, even months, without special care.
In pots, I have several of these plants, and they aren’t watered any more often than the rest of the greenhouse (for 2024, it’s about once a week, even during heat waves).
To Encourage Blooming
If you want those big, amazing blooms, the stapeliad needs to be well-nourished as it enters blooming season. I’ve seen mine begin to develop blooms in late summer, usually around this time of year in early August. It takes ages for the blooms to plump up and open! I think from first sight of a bud to actually seeing the flowers above, it was almost a month.
During that time, the plants are hungry. They need regular water and fertilizer. My usual go-to, the 20:20:20 fertilizer, works fine and resulted in blooms for me. This year, I’m experimenting with some bloom-specific fertilizer I have on hand for my bearded irises. The higher phosphate keeps the blooms nourished and (hopefully) encourages plenty of them to develop.
For my plants, being super hot in the greenhouse but also shaded, they are growing under less than perfect conditions. I had to closely monitor their water and keep up on fertilizing them each week to ensure the blooms grew. Several buds dried up and fell off!
Blooming is a good benchmark to determine if your growing conditions are as good as the plant needs. While Stapelia leendertziae will grow even if conditions aren’t ideal, it won’t bloom unless it’s really happy.
Stinky Stapeliads
I’ll wrap this post with a note: these do stink.
When mine bloomed, the greenhouse had a…very profound…odor. I think outdoors, with a breeze or general air movement as opposed to a walled greenhouse, the smell wouldn’t have been as strong.
The smell of the flowers is still strong enough that, again, I don’t recommend these as houseplants. Maybe if you live alone, or your house mates don’t mind a bit of carrion air fragrance? I’ve never met someone happy about the smell, so consider yourself warned!
I have several plants, and they’ve become quite unruly – as of this post, I’m offering unrooted cuttings at a steal of a price if you’d like to try growing some for yourself.
What about winter?
While these should be outdoors as close to year-round as possible for the best light, they can be brought indoors during the coldest part of winter. They’re very unlikely to bloom with indoor winter conditions, so that’s a minimal to nonexistent risk. The biggest concern is that these do not have a season where they’re fully dormant. When bringing them indoors, to slow down growth, it’s a good idea to dial back watering to the bare minimum. You may want to offer supplemental lighting, especially if your winters are often cloudy with snow or rain.
As soon as nights stop dropping below 30F at night, move them right back outside. I’m able to keep mine outdoors year round, and they’ve been fine with lows dipping into the high 20sF – but I’m also in San Diego, zone 9, so take that into consideration.
The good news is that they grow so quickly and produce so many arms that even if some look imperfect once you emerge from the other side of winter, you can trim, let them callous, and replant them.
