Zulu Giant Ka'ena Point Natural Area Reserve

This is a sacred place to the Hawaiian culture...called Leina-a-ka’uhane

The plant you’re looking at in this photo is a Zulu giant, also known as the starfish flower. This is an invasive succulent that is native to South Africa and Tanzania. I saw this flower while just beginning a hike to the westernmost point of O’ahu. This part of the island includes Ka’ena Point Natural Area Reserve. This area is well protected due to the albatross that nest in burrows in the sand along the coast. They intentionally have fences and a gate that you must pass through to prevent predators like mongooses and rats from entering that might eat the albatross eggs.

Sea Cucumber

There is a layered sandstone rock on the oceanside of the trail as you make your way from the parking lot to the point. This is a sacred place to the Hawaiian culture. It is called Leina-a-ka’uhane, which translates to the leaping place for souls. The belief is that as people were dying, their souls would leave their bodies and wander about the island. If you were on the island of O’ahu, this is where your soul would end up. The soul would then face the ocean and leap into the company of its ancestors. At that moment the person died. If there were no ancestors there to greet the soul, then it fell into po pau ‘ole o milu, the endless night. These souls are referred to as night marchers and travel the island for all eternity as ghosts.

Now that we’ve learned some Hawaiian culture, let’s learn about the Zulu giant. This plant can grow to be eight inches tall. It’s a clump-forming succulent with 1.2-inch green stems that are thick. They bloom these large star-shaped flowers. The flowers have five petals, and they can be as large as fourteen inches in diameter but are more commonly ten inches in diameter. In order to attract flies for pollination, the flowers exude the smell of rotting flesh. For this reason, some people use the flower as an appetite suppressant.

Torch Ginger

The Zulu giant is in the genus Stapelia which belongs to the Apocynaceae family. Its scientific name is Stapelia gigantea. Other common names include carrion plant and toad plant. There are 32 species in the Stapelia genus. The Stapelia flavopurpurea is the only plant that has a sweet scent. That’s why this genus is commonly known as the carrion flower genus.

Other common names include carrion plant and toad plant

Did you know?

The flowers of the Zulu giant are hairy!
The scent of their flowers attracts blow flies of the family Calliphoridae. There are more than 1,900 species in this family.
These plants can only tolerate temperatures as low as fifty degrees.