First Lithops

[jayhouseplant]

Picked up a few lithops. Some I'm keeping and some, I'm giving away to friends.

[Steph115]

Very pretty! I like the variety you have there. What is your plan for potting? Grouped or separate?

[jayhouseplant]

Steph - I'm planning on making a dish arrangement with these, but I'm trying to find other colors to add. =)

[Azuleja]

I love dish arrangements. I like when people use colored stones and the lithops really blend in.

[Steph115]

Definitely with you there. The dish arrangements are where the beauty lies, I think. The brightly colored lithops seem pretty hard to find. I only ever see the typical brown/mute lithops at the nurseries. When the brightly colored ones are for sale online, I can never justify buying them at $6 a piece, which seems to be the typical going rate. Especially since the goal is to have a ton to fill a large dish.

I bought about 12 varieties of seed recently with the goal of getting some of those bright colors. Specifically blues, purples, greens, bright yellows and reds. Off the top of my head, they were: Karasmontana v. fischeri, karasmontana var eberlanzii, bromfieldii v. menelli, bromfieldii var. sulphurea (no germination on this one - which is a big bummer bc it was my only truly yellow one!), hallii v. ochracea, julii fulleri, salicola, dorotheae... and some others. Unfortunately I fried several of these almost immediately by not acclimating them slowly enough to more sun. Lithops are so tricky. Some of them were totally fine and others bleached and died within 24 hours. Pretty good germination rates with all of them though. I ordered from Silverhill seeds.