Any takers?

Hello everyone! It's been a while again. Tough times I'm trying to somehow overcome without slipping into full-blown depression. Taking care of the plants doesn't really help but I'm doing it, just like waking up, eating, working, buying groceries. Things you just do.
Recently I bought some plants I wanted to have but had to buy a whoooole lot just to get several I actually wanted. I was wondering if you would be interested in taking some of them of my hands and help me with the costs a little (20 cents for smaller plants, 40 cents for larger). No idea how much the shipping would be at the moment but I'd do it as much "economy" as possible. I also don't think I'll be able to send anything outside Europe...

Here they are. Some small L. olivacea. You can choose by numbers if you like. (UPD: ALL GONE!)

Some L. salicola (from their looks). Salicola don't grow at my place so there's no reason for me to keep them. (UPD: ALL GONE!)

As well as L. jullii (I think). The one with "undigested" old leaves has two heads inside. (UPD: ALL GONE!)

Drop me a line if you're interested (my email is somewhere in my profile). :)

PS: I've sown Titanopsis and Stomatium from own seeds recently. Those of you who got Titanopsis calcarea seeds from me might be glad to know they germinate nicely.

unexpected find

Browsing through the succulent section of the local garden store lately I was very surprised to find this lovely specimen among the regular green salicola plants. Doesn't it look quite like the Bacchus cultivar? It's very small and a bit too long. Knowing my luck with salicolas its chances to thrive aren't that high, but way better than in the flower shop.

Yes, they sell lithops here sometimes but mostly very poorly grown, overwatered and hopeless. 

problem case: salicola

I'm still in the middle of figuring out how to handle salicolas. Here is a recent example. Two plants (C351 and C086), one container, same amount of water and light. One of them went through the annual change just perfectly, the other is freaking out for some reason.

 I'm having the same troubles with the 'daikangyoku'.

happy holidays!

Merry Christmas everybody! :)

getting ready for winter

It's cold and dark outside. Sunlight has become a rarity and the plants have had their last watering. They will move to my place in several days which is a 3hour drive from here, so that they'll need to be carefully packed and put in boxes. I'm a bit nervous, not only about the move but also because of the start of the new semester. I wonder if it's going to be different now, one year later. Probably not. Also, I do look forward to all the classes I chose.

I think you can see from the pictures how gloomy it is now. The salicolas that have been flowering so beautifully last month are bearing fruits (they are, aren't they? :) ). One of them decided to push another flower recently but it looks now like it has changed its mind after all. I felt bad about it being so late anyway because it has obviously missed all the action.

some updates

I'm going to be away for a week. Tomorrow is Step 1 of moving back to my place. The plants will follow in Step 2 a couple of weeks later. It's going to be stressful but I'm looking forward to the new semester at the university. After all the moving around I long for routine in my life, some kind of stability, consistency. Striking roots would be really nice. :)

As for the plants, there are minor news like discovering that some of the young gracili are about to cast their skin. Or that this daikangyoku decided to flower out of it's smaller head a month after the bigger did (I really should take pictures of this). The flower might not open though, because it's gloomy all the time. This also means the pictures I take look just as gloomy. But no-sun worked wonders for all the badly wrinkled plants i.e. "pancakes", even one that I almost gave up on since it didn't show any response to water at all for a month and kept getting more and more wrinkles. Oh, and the misshapen hookeri had it's new leaves break through half way as expected. I think it's for the best.

To end this chaotic post here is the 8-headed otzeniana with a flower bud. See you in a week. :)

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.

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! :)

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.

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!

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.

salicola vs. light

I saw pictures of lithops salicola "Daikangyoku" (jp. 大観玉) on the web and in Mr. Shimada's "The Genus Lithops" and thought it was utterly beautiful with its dark net of lines on the lobes. A while ago in Tokyo I found this plant but it only vaguely looks like those pictures. I guess it's partly because of the bad light conditions and the resulting 'cucumber' shape, so I'm not giving up hope to see it in its whole beauty one day.

By the way, I noticed salicola tend to get misshaped more than other lithops plants I owned. Can it be that they need more light than others? Anyway I think I'll try to correct this one like it's described in this blog during it's next annual change. (It's the only place I could find a correction method illustrated, even though there are no pictures of the result there.) I will write here about my experience. :)