Today my mother emailed me photos of her epiphyllum in flower.  Hopefully you’ll agree with me that this particular variety is simply stunning. 

  What I also want to share is her comment that ‘its a shame each flower is so short lived but its still worth the wait’.  And she’s right.  The flowers are fleeting with a long wait before next year’s appear.  However, I do think therein lies the charm, not only of this plant, but of gardening itself.  Whilst there’s the immediate satisfaction of a new planting or completed gardening task its more about the potential of how things will look.  Its in the waiting and watching that the true pleasure of gardening develops.  Well at least that’s how it works for me.

PS A few days later she emailed me photos of her white epiphyllum which had come out.

PS Don’t forget to check out The Plant Addict Shop while you’re here. 

You’ll find great gift ideas for garden lovers and fellow plant addicts!

Lithops are small succulents which grow in the harsh dry regions of South Africa.  They are commonly known as Living Stones and its pretty obvious why when you see how easily they can blend in with sand and pebbles.  My love for them first started when I was around 12 -13 years old.  Anything weird caught my attention and lithops were right up there.  Actually now that I think about it pretty much any plant I hadn’t seen before caught my attention and was quickly added to my wish list.

They are amazingly tough things which survive in extremely harsh conditions and require little effort to grow yourself.  They’re flowers (white or yellow) are daisy-like and are absolutely HUGE relative to the size of the plant.  Its no mean feat for a plant to produce a flower which is virtually as large as itself.  And after flowering they split in half, push out new juicy “leaves” and let the old ones shrivel up.

Watch out for mealy bugs, curious birds which might mistake them for grubs (it might sound funny but trust me its not) and excess watering/rain.  They need to be kept quite dry through winter and only receive moderate watering during the warmer months when they’re active.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve killed them by overwatering in summer (they swell up and burst) or by being lazy and leaving them in the open during winter rains (they rot away).  Either way its not pretty.

One final warning – keep them away from silk worms.  That’s how my very first lithop went to heaven.  In the belly of a hungry silk worm.

PS Don’t forget to check out The Plant Addict Shop while you’re here. 

You’ll find great gift ideas for garden lovers and fellow plant addicts!