Gorgeous plants! Thanks for sharing.

Xuan

Love this one "Adromischus marianiae herrei"

Great photos!

Really lovely plants!!! Incredible patience to grow those from seed :o) Dan

when you have enough other things growing to worry about, then patience becomes easy

Oops, a mistake, the one I described as Lithops dorothea is actually Lithops otzeniana

As always thanks for showing us your plants. You must be very busy getting ready for fall.

Great stuff, as always. Your D. Elephantipes is really "corky". Interesting how much variability there is in that plant.

Tom

Wow nice plants,love Dioscorea! How do Dinteranthus and Lithops differ? Also the astro,isn't that myriostigma or has it been officially renamed?

nice photos Xero,
I esp. like the Adromischus marianiae herrei, very unique texture. Dioscorea is looking very nice too and I can almost smell the stapelia from here.

thanks for posting,
-Ethan

reiver: I'm not that busy in the fall believe it or not. Some more tropical species, like Adeniums, are taken into my garage and kept growing under lights, but the majority of my succulents remain in an unheated greenhouse. A second wave of frost tender plants will be moved probably in about a month, and the last of the cold-hardy plants follow them in December.

greenlarry: Lithops and Dinteranthus vanzylii differ in floral and seed characteristics, they used to be in the same genus. Dinteranthus vanzylii needs more heat/sun and less water than any Lithops. Re: Astrophytum, I believe coahuilense is a ssp of myriostigma, also based on floral differences. It's really just semantics. Who really cares?

The Adro marianiae is as slow as molasses. It adds 1 or 2 leaves a year and blooms in the spring. The texture reminds me of Godzilla's skin from the old Japanese movies.

x

Thanks for some fun pictures.

Lithops,as tender as they look are outdoor hardy in California-at least to SUNSET zone 8, maybe lower.They dont say that but i do. They say only the desert zones of 12,13. Mine flower regularly each year in the non hot bay area. So do Fenestria.AND they take more water at the root then you would think. Keep the drainage fast and they wont rot out on you. They might be hardy enough for the mildest UK. Worth a try.

All my Lithops endure temps down to the upper 20's F every winter. It is much warmer during the day when the sun hits the greenhouse, rising into the 60's even if it's freezing outside. Most mesembs are equally cold-hardy, and many bloom during this time. I've had Fenestraria, Argyroderma, Titanopsis and some Gibbaeum blooming while covered with light snow.

StanofH is right about taking more water - in habitat, even though measurable precipitation is almost non-existent, nightly fogs and dews are so heavy that the soils are soaked several inches deep. The true winter growers can be misted heavily every morning while in active growth, and are almost impossible to overwater while blooming.

Those are beautiful pictures. My lithops didn't bloom this year and I'm not sure why because they are large enough. I just brought them into the greenhouse where they are under florescent lights. It's not the cold I'm worried about this time of year around here but more the lack of light. Interesting to read though that they do okay in the Bay Area. I intended to provide this link to a Los Angeles Times article on lithops in the summer, but got sidetracked.

Here is a link that might be useful: Eccentric Little Rock Stars

Capsules are the primary means of splitting mesembs into genera. Dinteranthus and Lithops actually have very similar capsules, they are closely related. Probably the only difference you can clearly point to would be the (usually) double keel of Dinteranthus, always single in Lithops. Dinteranthus rarely have as few as five locules, five is the most common number for Lithops, but six is common in both. The flowers are also similar in most respects. Dinteranthus seeds are really really tiny as opposed to just really tiny in Lithops. Dinteranthus bodies are usually keeled, sometimes quite strongly, this feature is not found in Lithops. The most keeled Dinteranthus species are clearly different to Lithops but some have a more typical Lithops shape. Dinteranthus windows are at best small and translucent, often absent or opaque. There are some internal differences not readily visible.

So you can see that the differences are really quite minor, it is easy to mistake a Dinteranthus for a Lithops, crosses between the two are relatively easy and result in strong viable offspring, but the demarcation between the two is widely accepted. Dinteranthus leaves are even more fused than Lithops, they require less water, and are adapted to even higher levels of light and heat. They are occasionally found at the same location but generally in different niches.