helmutii taking it slow

I was excited to see this flower since some time now knowing it should be intense yellow with large white center, but it grew really slowly. With other lithops flowers I had it was always very quick when there's a lot of sun! We had nice sunny days lately with other lithops flowering but this helmutii wasn't easily persuaded. The last couple of days it was gloomy-rainy and, what would you know, the bud grew and swelled and opened as soon as the sun came out again.

It's not only the flower but the whole flower-plant color contrast I like. So pretty! :)

It is alone at the moment but the lovely japanese "yellow edge"-helmutii are in hot persuit. Well, as 'hot' as it can get with helmutii, haha, considering how long it took the other plant. It is not visible on the pictures but each has two flower buds to boast so far.

aucampiae pals

You might remember these two: last year I was writing about how different they looked when I first bought them and how they've become fairly alike with time. Both grew two heads and, I think, found their true selves this year: pretty much alike but also a little bit different, haha. Fine with me. :)
(click for XXL)

dorotheae flower 2

While several plants have already finished flowering (and I'm waiting to see the results of pollination, or at least some hints of success haha), others are still at it or showing new flower buds.

This dorotheae flower has a particularly long 'neck'. There are more pictures of this plant here. ;)

(click to enlarge)

life goes on

Well, look at that! After the difficult times it was through this little guy is regenerating. Hopefully its fellows in misery will do the same soon. I'm very excited to see their real color and pattern. After all I've known them since they were seeds. :)

three stages of a flower

The recent 'Green Horn' flowers have turned out to be so fluffy! :)

kousougyoku

These are two specimen of an utterly beautiful fulleri cultivar called 'Kousougyoku' (jp. 紅窓玉) from Y. Shimada. Seing it on pictures before I couldn't believe it's a julii at all. The colors and patterns are just so unusual and mesmerising. I also have 'Kousougyoku' seeds but from another source. Will they turn out anything like these beauties, I wonder.

(click to enlarge)

This one looks like a starry sky. I think I can see the Great and the Little Bear, can you? :)

(click to enlarge)

curly petals

The white aucampiae flowers are all done by now. The flowers didn't last long, actually they've withered the day after I tried pollination. It says it is a good sign in the books but I am not certain about anything at this point. It's just too bad they were done so soon. To see an aucampiae with big white flowers is a unique sight indeed. :)

I was also pleasently surprised to see that one of the flowers had curly petals. You could see they're curly right from the start when it was still a flower bud and they stayed this way. It looked so strange but also really cute. Do you know what makes them do this? Is it predisposition or happens spontaneously?

saving space

The number of my lithops plants increases all the time so it was only natural that they needed to move into containers more space-saving i.e. square pots. I've used up all the 5x5 ones but managed to pack up all the smaller plants compactly! :) It was really surprising how little room they take up now. After all, considering all the seeds I want to sow in the near future every inch matters.

(click to enlarge)

This is about 1/2 of my collection. The smaller half. The rest of the plants is still in round pots - they will all have to go into 7x7 containers (see bigger pots on the pic) or even larger (if you remember the 8- to 11-headed lithops bushes from Japan).

Anyway, I'm really happy with how they look in their new homes. :)

PS: No, I don't use labels for grown up plants. I label them labeling pictures I take. ;)

first seedlings update

These seedlings are from April 2008 - my first try to grow lithops from seed.

They haven't changed much compared to last year, but of course they've gotten bigger. I assume, experienced growers would get fully grown and already flowering plants in this time but if you consider that these guys didn't get any fertilizer for a year growing in pumice they did very well thanks to my mother's care. :) There are only two of both aucampiae and the greenies now though. The latter look like greenie-terricolor at the moment: dots all over. They say, 'Storm's albinigold' and 'Albinica' look the same but when I compare mine, or even pics of them from the net, it seems that C036A have more green while C36B have more yellow in them. Is it just me?

If you look closely at the 'bitten' lesliei v. minor, you'll see that the thin upper layer bursted as the plant responded to water after the pot-change and began to expand. This is a good sign: the plant is willing to grow and the roots are okay. Also, I already can see new leaves coming up in one of them. The sooner they get rid of the damaged 'skin' the better: this hard dried out shell won't let them grow properly, and I don't even know if they get enough light through it. I'll keep watching them closely.

sun needed

The salicolas are all done since yesteday and I'm still not certain whether the pollination was successful or not so... this post is for the picture. :D I like it.

gaping cleft

More flower buds are coming but if I keep posting about that I'll never get to write about my other beloved plants. :)

This is not an angry monkey face! It is the bunch of L. fulviceps v. lactinea C222 from March 2009.

Aren't they cute? :) Pretty color, lovely dots and all. But what's with the cleft? Well, I didn't know until I read about it in 'Lithops - Flowering Stones' by D. & N. Cole (review yet to come). Apparently this belongs to lithops abnormalities and is called "gaping fissure type". It "does no harm to the plant which usually produces a normal body the following season".

All three of these fulvies had gaping clefts in 2009 and one outgrew its "condition" it seems. But I don't mind them being like that at all. There's another one, a hookeri, in my humble collection, and it is really interesting to see the new leaves developing in there even though it'll take months until they actually get out.

troubled julii

I decided to get rid of the damaged head of the julii plant from before. Having cut it off with a cutter I waited for a day and then potted the remaining head into dry pumice. I'm not going to water it for a long time now.

About the other two troubled kids, I've looked into them (literally) and the new leaves are already visible waaay down there. It'd be nice if they could take care of the problem themselves. Although it won't be pretty either way.

more flower buds

The pictures are of aucampiae 'White Flower' but I'll be writing about the salicolas. You know I've been trying to pollinate the 5 flowers. Well, I have NO idea - did it work? What indicates it?

I went by the book: cross-pollinating the flowers from the second day on past initial opening (the stigmas weren't visible to me at all so I didn't know what I was actually doing). Now, it says the flowers age very quickly after successful pollination, right? It is day 5: the petals on one of the flowers are dried out (a success, probably?) while other four are just closed. None of the flowers opened yesterday (day 4), probably because it was rainy all day. It is sunny today, and if the remaining four flowers decide to open I'll try it again. It says I'll be able to see some progress within a week. Okay then, we'll see. I'm not very optimistic though.

ps: aaah these aucampiae have such a beautiful color! :)

one year difference

This plant belongs to this bunch. I like it how it has developed - it has grown a lot but is still quite compact. I've run out of pumice so it is to be transplanted (the roots need to be checked for nibblers, it's been two years) into its own square pot only sometime in late October after I've moved back to my place. At the moment it shares its pot with two "cucumbers", more or less. I still have to figure out what to do with them.

salicola flower

The salicolas have opened all 5 flowers. I'm trying pollination this year for the first time. Wish me luck. :)

Aucampiae 'White Flower' and lesliei 'Green Horn' are next in line.

dorotheae flower

I wanted to go on with the inspection and comparison, but it was sunny these two days, and you all know that's when miracles happen. ;)

quick update on the flowers

It's dark and rainy. They promise some sun during the weekend but it's hard to believe. Nevertheless the flower buds are slowly developing. Mr. Shimada's lithops are some hard-core plants. ;)

Dorotheae de Boer is ready to go!

The first white is showing on the Daikangyokus ... and we have a newcomer. :)

One of the aucampiae 'White Flower' C002A decided to join them.

The sunny weekend can come!

lesliei pot

Do you remember these guys? I got them as tiny one-year-old seedlings back in summer 2008. One year ago they still were quite small - there were 13 of them in this 9cm pot before I transplanted away two as a precaution last September. The remaining 11 have grown nicely and now live in pairs (more or less) in square pots of their own. I'll be posting individual pics soon. :)

PS: Sunny days seem to be over for now. German weather isn't lithops-friendly at all.

salicola follows

Yesterday was another sunny day and right in the morning I discovered a new flower coming through. Of course I checked other lithops immediately, but nothing to see.

My square pot order arrived and I moved to the garden to transplant some lithops - it's such a relaxing activity! The sun is shining, birds are tweeting, lithops looking pretty! :)
A couple of hours later I checked on the upcoming flowers to find out that two more salicolas were reacting to the sun. By the end of the day there were 4 flower buds visible, all on salicola 'Daikangyoku' from Yasuhiko Shimada (He writes that 'Daikangyoku' is a nature hybrid from S. Africa).

It's amazing how fast lithops flower buds go from "no sign of them" to "fully visible".

Lithops are little miracles indeed. :)

And now I'll go read the chapter on pollination in S. Hammer's book again.

first flower bud this year

I've noticed it yesterday - barely visible between the lobes. Today the sun was shining all day long and it grew really fast. If the weather stays this way the flower will open in no time! So exciting :)

L. dorotheae de Boer (from Y. Shimada)

PS: This marks my 60th post. :)

strange cases

While the most of the plants seem to be doing well (many look like pancakes - that's how I like them!), these four had growth troubles this year.

I'm least concerned about this hookeri v. dabneri. I've been writing about it a lot before. This year it grew two heads and was getting longer and longer for some reason. Now the bottom is definitely thickened so that I assume the new leaves are already down there, which is good news. Even if they won't break through on their own there is a surgical correction method I can apply. It's okay as long as the new lobes are on their way.

The hookeri seems to have a future ahead of it, but I'm not so sure about this julii ssp. fulleri v. fulleri. It's one of my oldest and most beloved plants (last year's picture), and it is painful to see it like this. Obviously it bursted because it was overfed, but look at its pot-mate - it grew just fine and is wrinkled all over while being firm and well-shaped. So how come? Well, thinking positive, other than that it looks like it's doing well. And there's a chance at least one head will make it.

The next two guys are simply weird. I sense bug activity, but will have to look at the roots to confirm. This hallii v. hallii C052 from before has turned purple and shows underdeveloped parts. Other than transplanting it (getting rid of possible nibblers) there's nothing much to do.

Same goes for this aucampiae v. koelemanii. It's twisted, bitten and what not, even though its pot-mates are fine. I guess things like this just happen. There are losses every year. It's just more noticeable if you don't have that many plants.

I'll keep you updated!

tiny nibblers

I've been transplanting some of the lithops to get rid of bugs on tuesday. Not only there were mealy bugs but also a lot of tiny grey stripy ones (don't know what exactly they're called).

I've seen the damage they do to cacti before. With lithops it's probably not as dramatic because the bitemarks will go away next year if the plants survive until then, but it sure isn't pretty. It was the worst for the little seedlings of lesliei ssp. lesliei v. minor C006. On others only the body was affected, not the top. The lesliei have the marks everywhere except where the old dried out leaves were.

Well, now that they were washed and bug sprayed, there's nothing more to do at the moment but wait. Tomorrow the new square pots should arrive so that other older plants can be checked, sprayed and transplanted. Some do look like something's nibbling on their roots.

what are you? 2

Remember this post? I was writing about a small (but ca. 3 year old) lithops plant I couldn't identify because it kept changing its pattern with every new pair if leaves. Here's what it looks like this year. Being a hardware store plant it can't be anything fancy: schwantesii, hallii, karasmontana and hookeri seem like possible candidates. A flower might help but no sign of it yet. If you click on the picture (it's XXL) you should see white dots along the fissure. Any guesses? :)