Attached is a photo of a lithops I picked up from a garden store around nine months ago. I've been doing my best to keep it happy, but am in a questionable climate for it. I last watered it around December and have been keeping it under a grow light/moving it into the sun on our rare sunny days.
In the last two days, half of it has very visibly wilted and I'm pretty concerned about it. Is this just part of splitting, or is it time for me to think about a succulent-sized tombstone?
by Ponkertina
4 Comments
It’s splitting. That’s good. The outer leaves will change color, they become a little translucent and ugly looking. Then they shrivel and pull away from the newer inner leaves. Don’t water till those two outer leaves have shrivelled up and dry.
When they split, the new “leaves” take nourishment from the old leaves, hence the wilting. With most that you’ll find in stores, they are huge because they’ve been overfed and over everythinged. This can cause the splitting to be difficult, in the sense that the new leaves often don’t need as much nourishment as the old leaves offer, so they can’t drain the old leaves as entirely or as quickly as plants in the wild. So watch the place where the split is widening on both sides, and if it looks like the old leaves may not dry entirely OFF of the new leaves, you can do some very careful surgery. What I do is enlarge that split with a razor blade or sharp cutting blade, just enough to allow the new leaves to push away the old as they plump up and grow. Otherwise sometimes the old leaves are like a too-tight jacket that the new leaves can’t get off.
Splitting. Dont water it yet
It’s munching its old leaves, all good