Lithops Love: Falling for This Curious Succulent

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Text and photos: Roy Li

Looking back on childhood, that must be more than ten years ago now, I often went to my grandmother's yard and felt endlessly comforted just looking at the flowers and plants. By chance, my aunt bought some succulents, and at the time I had no idea what they were called, but just looking at them filled me with tenderness, so fairy-like and delicate that you could not resist pinching them.

From then on I often went to the local flower and bird market, looking here and there, unable to put down all kinds of succulents, and from time to time I would buy some to grow, though the results were never quite satisfactory. But one plant that looked like a "butt" took deep root in my mind and would not fade, until years later when I returned to China and saw it again, and only then learned that it is a succulent from South Africa called Lithops.

Lithops, stone flowers, PP, brains - it has so many names, and it seems like a close companion sent to me by heaven, accompanying me forward, letting me experience the charm of transformation, letting me feel the power of genes, and so much about human nature as well.

Because I loved them, fellow growers introduced me to a few local master-level succulent seniors, and I had some conversations with them that benefited me greatly. My idea was simple: collect one pot of every number and just grow them slowly. But after talking with them, I realized my idea was naive and laughable, and not very practical; as a collector, doing that had little meaning. So I consulted illustrated guides and spent a lot of time admiring other growers' photos. Along the way I saw ones I liked and also did plenty of buying, observing how they changed and searching for the feeling that matched my inner taste. Gradually I formed a clearer sense of what I personally love in PP: extreme window faces, vivid colors, and intriguing patterns.

Here are some of my own collection for everyone to see; they are not well grown, so please offer plenty of advice:

Cafe au lait

A few words here: the possibility of "latte" coloration appears among all Lithops julii. The American horticulturist Hammer selected Cafe au lait from latte-form C309, and that is what everyone now conventionally calls Latte. Today, sowing C309 can still produce latte-form plants, but I do not think they can be called Latte. Without several generations of purification, it cannot be called by a cultivar name; it can only be called latte-form C309. (Unstable internal genes lead to an extremely high rate of degeneration in the offspring; if you then want to select it yourself, you are simply doing what predecessors have already done.)

Fred's Redhead

Horticulturists selected and stabilized a body-color mutation of Lithops lesliei, and after several generations of selection and purification obtained the wine-red body color, which is stunningly beautiful.

The offspring will still show a proportion of reversion. As said before, crossing wine-red pollen with other Lithops lesliei can produce individuals with wine-red body color, but they can still only be called: Lithops lesliei with wine-red body color. Sometimes when we should be rigorous, we should be a bit more rigorous, otherwise, to use a friend's saying, if the mother is Bingbing and the daughter comes out looking like Jin XIN, that is no fun. Below are flowering photos and sowing photos for everyone to view.

The two photos above clearly show this cultivar's reversion rate and how, after degeneration, it looks like an ordinary yellow-green Lithops lesliei.

In the process of learning to grow and sow flowers, I met many friends and encountered many things. Playing with flowers and loving flowers also requires a good attitude. We were all beginners once, and we all had a crazy phase of wanting to buy, buy, buy. I have been like that too. Looking back, I feel you do not need to want everything good you see, buy everything trendy you see, or always crave what others have. Do not follow trends, do not chase expensive things, usually look around more, find the taste that belongs to your own heart, learn more about growing methods, and understand more about the habits of the plants. No one knows what kind of presentation it will bring you when you grow it to its extreme state; only then can you play with it exquisitely and for the long run. Playing with flowers takes up a considerable amount of time. Love it in the way it likes, and do not stubbornly insist on your own way, because it may not like it, and sometimes it backfires. You watch its transformation, and it accompanies your growth.

There are always some flowers that may no longer be there, but you still think of them; every time you see their photos, they bring back a stretch of memory, for a long, long time, unable to calm down; and there are always some people, haunting your dreams, impossible to forget.

Companionship is the longest confession of love.

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