View allAll Photos Tagged lithops
I placed each seed in as close to a grid as possible.. these were the biggest lithops seed all the other seeds were like dust..
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.
My first Lithops and the one that more years lived, but one day... pufffff (roten)
Now I only have one (unidentified) "living stone"...
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.
Spider mites:
One day I was puzzled by something on the surface of my plants that looked like tiny white dust particls that slowly crawl around. They were so small that some of them could hardly be seen without a magnifyer, but all of them were actually moving. Along with the discovery of some deterioration of the side surfaces of my Lithops, I suspected them to be evil intruders that have to be removed. After having a closer look at them and the Internet, I identified them as spider mites. Some sources told that they were one of the hardest-to-eliminate plant pests, so I went to the gardening store to get armed with chemical countermeasures.
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.
Re-potting the survivors:
After fighting spider mites with an out-of-soil quarantine I re-potted my plants.
Two months without water and even soil cannot harm a lithops (in its winter dormant state), as you can see.
Lithops are extremely succulent plants originating from the semi-deserts of southern Africa. Their plant body rests under ground, while on top they have transparent windows to let sunlight in for photosynthesis. A camouflage pattern on the windows lets them appear more or less like a pair of pebblestones, so hungry animals may hardly find them. I like them because they look like ornamented knobs or gemstones.
DO NOT MISS:
Be aware that sites from the southern hemisphere
have a six-month-shift in the description of the
annual lithops growing cycle.
These have lived in this bowl for 5 or 6 years or more ,in peat and no real care.Lithops are great little people!
I love to hunt for unnusual plants in garden centers and other such places. I found a few good looking Lithops for a reasonable price (2 euros / pot). This is one of them. Anyone care to put a name to it?
Don't let the size of these seeds fool you... They are tiny! For comparison, I placed grains of sand which are the larger pieces in the center of the photo.
Focus stacked from 2 images to show seed and sand details.
This photo found linked from:
www.liubinskas.com/blog/2007/11/14/the-very-very-big-long...
Quarantine:
I spent four weeks gradually poisoning my pots to the ultimate level with everything available, but every time after giving my Lithops a dose, the spider mites emerged again a few days later. They seemed to have a hide-out somewhere in the pot. I realized that I had only one chance to do more against them: It was October now and my Litops won't need any water until next year. So I put all of them out of the soil and washed them thoroughly, whether they had mites crawling on them or not and threw away all of the used soil mixture. I discovered white nests sticked to the roots of the infested plants and brushed them off. After that I soaked all plants with Imidacloprid (Bayer Lizetan spray) and put them onto lids of cookie tins. Now I left them in out-of-soil quarantine for two months, giving them nothing but air and light. I had to wait until the last mite hatched from its possibly remaining egg to die outside. I lost some Lithops which sidewalls were damaged by the mites too much. They could not keep their water and dried. Some others were attacked by fungus because the total absence of soil probably lowered their immunity.
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.
The Lithops lobes derived from ordinary plant leaves: The top side transmits light and is hard coated for protection, the bottom side has microscopic apertures (stomata) for gas exchange. This is the same with Lithops, besides the "leaves" have got a huge water storage layer within. It is fully transparent, and photosynthesis is performed by the green cells near the sidewalls, which are the bottom side of the "leaf". Lithops are CAM-Plants, that means that they perform photosynthesis and gas exchange differently scheduled, to keep the stomata closed at daytime to reduce transpiration.
The Lithops top side is called window due to its explicit transparency. Perfect: A red tinted window! On the one hand it transmits red light for photosynthesis and on the other it prevents the plant from looking green, so plant-eating animals won't find it.
Inside the plant body, there is a next pair of lobes waiting to take over next year. The outer lobes will nourish the new lobes during their growth and are sacrificed in spring. So Lithops never afford more than two lobes, except when splitting up into two plants. When watered all time, they try to behave like "normal" plants and build up one pair of leaves after the other. This quickly causes heavy ruptures because their anatomy does not allow for that.