Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various succulent plants of the genus Stapelia, native to southern Africa and having large foul-smelling flowers.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A genus of gamopetalous plants, of the order Asclepiadaceæ, type of the tribe Stapelieæ.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) An extensive and curious genus of African plants of the natural order Asclepiadaceæ (Milkweed family). They are succulent plants without leaves, frequently covered with dark tubercles giving them a very grotesque appearance. The odor of the blossoms is like that of carrion.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun botany Any of the
genus Stapelia of low-growingsucculent plants , predominantly from South Africa, and often giving off an odour of rotten flesh.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any of various plants of the genus Stapelia having succulent leafless toothed stems resembling cacti and large foul-smelling (often star-shaped) flowers
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[New Latin Stapelia, genus name, after Jan Bode van Stapel, (died 1636), Dutch botanist.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Stapelia ("genus name").
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Examples
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So the putrid smell of the stapelia, or carrion-flower, allures the large flesh-fly to deposit its young worms on its beautiful petals, which perish there for want of nourishment.
Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766
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Last week, he waited with the breathless anticipation of an expectant father as his South African stapelia started to flower.
chained_bear commented on the word stapelia
"'I have never seen it before,' said Raffles, gazing at the dirty brown and purple disc. 'It has a superficial resemblance to a staphelia, but of course it must belong to an entirely different family.'
'Sure it smells like some of the more fetid staphelias too,' said Stephen. 'Perhaps I should move it to the window-sill. He found it growing as a parasite on the glubrous bugwort. These viscid tumescent leaves with inward-curling margins incline me to think that it is also insectivorous.'"
--Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 100
March 6, 2008
mollusque commented on the word stapelia
Should be glabrous, not glubrous.
September 2, 2009