Spring is on its way, they feel it (9 pics)

Finally, after months of darkness, we've had 2 weeks of sun (and temperatures below freezing). It is amazing how only 2 sunny weeks can transform lithops and give other plants a boost. After all the losses this year, seeing lithops actually not affected by the dark environment encourages me to focus more on them in the future. Other mesembs seem to be very touchy and even without water they stretch and die if there is not enough light. Lithops however, just proceed with their regeneration, no problem. They do fine as long as they're not being watered.

The old leaves are getting very soft first.

Then they get lines and wrinkles at the edges.

Then become thin and transparent.

Until they slip around the edges of the new leaves and disappear.

These look like the old leaves are deflating.

I was particularly relieved to see the below plant regenerate. It skipped a year meaning it has not regenerated last year at all. This year it just grows normally.

Bonus pic: Nothing says spring is coming like Sinningia leucotricha waking up :)

More current flowers (4 pics)

More flowers have opened this weekend. After a long working week what can be better? :) Plants are great! And here's another chance for this grower to take some sorta-artistic photos of Anacampseros flowers.

Another flower opened on the An. lancifolia. I don't think the pollination took with the previous one though. I tried to fit the whole plant into one picture somehow.

An. arachnoides has also opened a flower. It's small but cute and of a pale variety.

This Anacampseros sp. is probably An. filamentosa. It flowers in messy flower bunches of bright pink color.

A very special extra is this Parodia aureispina (so I'm told). It is the only cactus I own and I've had it since I was in elementary school. I'm 32 so it is in my care for around 25 years. And since it has not changed in size since then who knows how old it might be? It just piles up layers and sometimes, not every year, it flowers to remind me of our long history together.

one windowsill - over three hundred plants

Welcome to my "greenhouse"!

I've mentioned before that I grow lithops on my windowsill so this is how it looks like. ;) Luckily Lithops are small plants you can arrange compactly so that one windowsill full of them seems to be almost enough. Almost. ;) Allthough there are mostly Lithops, I also have a huge Crassula rupestris that will probably overrun the whole place one day, two lovely Titanopsis calcarea plants, a surprisingly fast growing Rabiea albipuncta, a cute little Frithia humilis, a crazy Sempervivum, a strange looking Haworthia limifolia and an ananas-like Astroloba skinneri, which are the most treasured presents ♥. I didn't want to sow this year but you can see there is a container with germinating aucampiae seeds anyway (the one with a plastic see-through cover), it's a curse. The most pots are 5x5x8 cm and the labels are in plastic sticker-pockets deliberately on the opposite side to not be seen immediately. 

By the way, it's been raining almost the whole day and even though the sun finally came out there are still rain drops on the window. :)

Rabiea albipuncta

This winter I got a most wonderful Birthday present - two new succulent plants. What else could you wish for? :) One of them is a big Crassula rupestris of which I still have to take a nice picture. The other is a Rabiea albipuncta. It had flowers when I first got it and is now growing very fast. I'm not sure about the proper care yet but will probably find out with time. 

The leaves have a very nice dotty texture. And the dots are see-through!

Kakteen Haage 2

A couple of days ago I've been to the Kakteen-Haage nursery in Erfurt again. Less photos, more purchases this time. :)
As you can see on the photo below, the lithops section was full. It had all different kinds of them to choose from. I was intrigued by so many but had to restrain myself (lithops are an expensive hobby!). Saw a lot of cultivars, aucampiae 'Betty's Beryl'/'Storm's Snowcap', lesliei 'albiflora'/'albinica', bromfieldii 'Sulphurea', terricolor 'Aurea' etc. etc. as well as rarely available herrei, francisci, geyeri, werneri, verruculosa and comptonii. I was very surprised to find julii 'Kikushōgyoku' I've been looking for everywhere (photos later). If you're somewhere near I'd really recommend to stop by there now because they've clearly updated their assortment recently i.e. put younger plants out for sale.
Anyway, I haven't taken any lithops pictures (they were too many) but there are pictures of conophytum under the cut. Click "read more" ;) (also see more photos from Kakteen-Haage)

Kakteen Haage

Sorry for not writing for so long. I'm still around, as well as the plants. They haven't been watered since some time preparing for winter and are wrinkly and weird now, even though some are still pushing flowers.

Meanwhile I've visited the oldest cactus nursery in Europe - "Kakteen Haage" in Erfurt which made me wish I had more room in my appartment and less room in my wallet. I've only bought four lithops there and will show them later along with other new tenants.

There are several greenhouses in the nursery with lots and lots of cacti. My knowledge of those is quite limited so please check out the pictures. 

Click "read more" to see all of them:

strange formations

It's been a while. The lithops are as fine as they can be, a couple are flowering. This post isn't about them though. 

There is a succulent family in my parents' garden that is going crazy this summer. Compared to the plant itself the whole flower-formation is enormous! Anybody knows how they're called?

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? :)

what are you?

I've been doing an inventory lately based on the pictures I've got saved on my netbook. Looking at the time stamps I can say when a particular plant was bought or re-potted, had flowers, got two-headed, etc. I have quite some plants from way back, bought in unspecialized stores. Still, I can tell whether they are lesliei or aucampiae or hookeri (these three species also seem to be the most common in german stores). With this little guy I've got no idea whatsoever! But it has a story.

I got it back in 2008 from a hardware store. Actually it was in a big pot with what looked like a big lithops "family", but the most of them were already dead and left behind only dried up skin. This lithops was one of the three still left in the pot, and also the smallest. I brought them home (It took a lot of convincing to get them half-price - even though it was clearly a rescue operation) only to see that all the help was too late for the other two: mealy bugs. This one survived but it's still a mystery because with every annual change it had a new color and pattern.

Any idea what it is? :)

(same plant the years before)

aizoaceae on the roadside

I apologize for going off-topic but I just had to show this one (and it's an aizoaceae after all). :)

These carpets of delosperma cooperii grow everywhere here in Nara, and seing them in full bloom now warms my heart like nothing else (even more than the weather: it's over +30°, muggy but no sign of the promised rainy season yet). They have such beautiful silky flowers! I'm definitely getting seed vessels before heading back to Germany.

(click to enlarge)