This Stinky Flower Is Hiding a Secret

When you see a beautiful flower, your first instinct is to smell it. But what if that flower smelled like something had died? Meet the Stapelia gigantea.

With a nickname like “the rotting flesh” flower, you can guess how it smells! It is one of the grossest-smelling flowers on earth. But there is a hidden secret on every petal: An incredible fingerprint pattern unique to each petal and flower.1 God created more flowering plants than any other type of plant, and this is one example of the really cool plants we can investigate.

What Is Stapelia Gigantea?

The Stapelia gigantea is a succulent native to South Africa. A succulent is a plant with thick, fleshy leaves or stems that hold water. God designed succulents to adapt to store water because they need to survive in dry, desert places without a lot of rainfall.

The Stapelia gigantea plant grows about 12 inches tall and produces a beautiful flower about once a year. The flower blooms into a five-pointed star shape, measuring between 15 and 16 inches in diameter. That’s pretty big! The bloom is often a white to pale yellow with bright red lines or ridges. The flower petals are also covered in hairy bristles. But if you want to smell this flower, you’re better off holding your nose!

The Stinky Smell Has a Specific Job

One may wonder why God would create anything that would need to survive harsh, dry climates and rely on the scent of death in a very good world (Genesis 1:31). Well, in God’s providence, he designed adaptability into his creation, knowing the creation would be cursed. God designed this flower to be able to produce a special scent that smells like something had died. This smell attracts flies, and when the flies land on the flower, they pick up pollen. They carry the pollen to other plants, which helps the plants in reproduction. Since flies are the primary pollinators of the plant, this is an important and intentional design in God’s creation to help living things survive and thrive after the fall of Adam. The insects, which are important to help clear up the sad effects of sin (that is, death), are part of a symbiosis to help both insect and plant survive in a harsh world.

The flower also has hairy bristles. Scientists believe these bristles mimic the fur of a dead animal and, along with the scent, trick flies into believing the plant is a rotting animal, attracting them even more.

The Hidden Secret: Fingerprint Patterns

Now, here is the most amazing fact about Stapelia gigantea: It has unique fingerprints. Just like your five fingers have five different fingerprints, so do the five petals on the flower. The red ridges (or lines) you see on the petals are raised. This means you could run your finger over the petal and feel the ridges. God created this flower with a similar design to how he made the skin on your hands and feet, with raised ridges that form a unique pattern. And, because it has raised ridges, you can roll special ink on the flower and take its “fingerprint.”

Why This Matters

God is the ultimate artist-designer who has left his fingerprints all over his creation. And the flower’s rotten smell is a carefully crafted tool to attract pollinators and sustain the plant’s life. The Stapelia gigantea reminds us that even something that seems gross or unpleasant has a specific purpose in God’s creation.

Footnotes

1. Jennifer Hall Rivera, “Naturally Occurring Minutiae,” Journal of Forensic Identification 66, no. 2 (2016): 83–91.