Little A. schooneesii monster

This little guy is doing some serious out-of-the-box thinking :D

"Wait... I didn't know I could do that. Let's try it again.. Ha! Nice!"

Plant friendship

This could be a plot for a sitcom. Three different plants were made to share one pot and the hardships of their life together has made them into the best of friends. :)

The plants in this case are Gibbaeum geminum, Neohenricia sibbettii and Adromischus marianae v. herrei 'green form'. I potted them together last September because I didn't have the room (planting every small plant into its own container is a luxury on the windowsill) and I did so without knowing they would be compatible. I think they like growing together very much. 

This just in: Argyroderma crateriforme (3 pics)

I've received this Argyroderma crateriforme from ebay today. It looks like a really old one, with all those layers of dry old leaves. In my view it is just beautiful. :)

It has arrived bare root but just unpotted not cleaned. And it is pretty understandable because the roots and the substrate have merged into a solid mass. Maybe I made a mistake and I should have just left it like it is but I wanted to free the roots and let them breathe. Of course to do so I had to brutally wash it, while pulling out imbedded stones and soil and tear out roots themselves (at least they were dry and inactive which should have reduced the harm). At the end I could bare the roots but felt really bad I had to disturb the plant like this. Acclimation is hard even without such drastic procedures. 

Well, after all the washing I first let the plant dry - and it took a while because of all those layers of dry leaves. Then I was thinking of putting it in dry pumice and just hope for the best but I felt so uncomfortable doing that that I decided to construct a paper towel skirt instead. I thought this way I can stimulate and reactivate the roots in a controlled environment (it worked before) and make the towel/root wet without letting the moisture touch the countless layers of dry leaves that could start rotting very quickly and easily. The plan is to wait until new tiny white roots appear and then pot it into pumice substrate. At the moment I'm still afraid I made a big mistake but we'll see how it goes...  

Side-branch compilation (6 pics)

I'm always excited when my plants develop side shoots, doesn't matter if this is a new lithops head or a new branch on other mesembs. While with some plants it happens a lot and is almost overwhelming with my limited space (Rhinephyllum and Stomatium are going crazy) in the normal case, for me, is it is quite rare. Therefore I'm always on the look-out for new side shoots and when I find one it absolutely makes my day, if not week :D

I've shown you this Aloinopsis malherbei over on twitter before. Here it is again, 10 months old and growing a "secondary" set of leaves.

Here is a Prepodesma. Lately I've reduced watering to bring out the tan (photos soon).

Rabiea expanding.

Not a mesemb but there's a whole line of new growth along its side. I'm waiting for the flowers to develop :)

Younger Titanopsis primosii is also getting more bushy.

My older plant is already a "tree" and the color is amazing!

A. schooneesii growing (3 pics)

Here is another perfect seedling, ten months old. The others are doing well, too. Unlike the one tiny seedling you can see in the left corner of the photo below (same age btw) the others are only slightly smaller than this kid. Hope the root is getting fatter as well. Love the darker color! ☆

Can you spot the side branch? ;)

My adult plant is growing new leaves, too. It is slightly elevated to give the leaf-ball more room to spread. I guess the leaves would have spread more horizontally if the caudex was buried from the start but I've received it already as a ball last year and I kinda like it :D

Titanopsis seedlings today (4 pics)

My Titanopsis calcarea seedlings are almost one year old (sown 1st of May 2013) and look at this beauty! Perfect shape, perfect color, perfect warts - love it! ♡ 

But not every seedling had a chance to grow just as perfectly as the one above. Two of them had some difficulties during the winter and messed up the growing point, the spot where the new growth starts in the middle of the rosette. All the plants give up on some growing-points now and then and just use another (like a side branch) to continue. It is just a bit tricky if it only has one. I'm not sure what exactly goes wrong in these cases. The seedling below had a pair of really strange crippled leaves that didn't want to grow and then grew into weird shapes (trauma at a very early stage like an insect bite?). Luckily the seedling is healthy and strong and didn't want to wait until that growing point sorts itself out. It just grew a side branch and the new grows is healthy and well-shaped. By now I already can see new healthy leaves coming out of the messed up rosette as well.

The seedling below has just completely dried off the main growing point and focused on the side branch. A less strong plant would just give up all together as we probably all have sadly experienced. With these seedlings I'm pretty confident that they will be fine.

Just like their parent :)

Adromischus leaf cutting

I've been doing some transplanting and rearranging today and was surprised this Adromischus I've been leaf-propagating has grown really nice fat roots. It is much slower with actual leaves :)