It's such a wonderful plant. It grows leaves all the time keeping me at ease (I always get worried when there hasn't been any growth for a while). I really love the texture of its juicy leaves, so velvety soft to the touch. Underground it has nice thick roots which I hope to display one day. It might take several years though. The plant was trying to flower last year but didn't make it (a problem I also had with lithops). Maybe this year?
About the flowers, I've started using valerian flower extract lately that should support flower buds (among other things). It does smell but not more than the medical valerian extract (with alcohol) so it's safe for indoors if you keep the bottle open just as long as needed. We'll see if it's good when the flowering season comes.
Looks like a collection of green tongues with obviously a great sense of taste. I have never heard of using valerian extract for promoting flowering. Interesting. But if it works it will be worth it because A. rubrolineata has really nice flowers. The specific epithet even translates to "red lined" referring to the flowers. Beautiful plant.
ReplyDeleteThank you :) I'm very fond of this plant and would love to see it bloom.
DeleteThe thing with flowers last year was not simply that a lot of the lithops started pushing up flower buds which then just have dried up and retracted into the plant body. The main problem came out later: after this retraction the rests of the flower buds have started to rot (?) inside the plants and damaged the new leaves. I've been looking for something to support flowers lately and German cacti & succulent collectors seem to swear by valerian flower extract (Baldrianblütenextrakt in German, I've just translated it word by word.. it might have another/proper name in English). Since I almost never fertilize and don't ever use any stimulants (even though pumice doesn't give anything to the plants) I've decided to give it a try. As an experiment it shouldn't hurt, I guess (10-30 drops / 10 l).
Очень красивое растение! У меня есть его семена, надо будет решиться посеять )
ReplyDeleteСпасибо! Обязательно посейте! Я вот тоже буду, как возможность появится...
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