Living Stone (I Presume)
by Meg Lynch, Editor  Another sure sign of spring, for me, is when my living stone (Lithops sp.) begins to shed its old body—which is really just pairs of water-filled leaves.
This is a succulent plant native to South Africa, where it sits low in the ground, protected from grazing animals by its pebble-like appearance. I had wanted a living stone for a couple years before I finally found a local greenhouse that had some. It was July 15, 2002, to be exact—I noted it in the cactus and succulent diary that I kept at the time: “LIVING STONES!!! !!! !!! Very excited! One is greenish and the other grayish/peachish—they look good and I will take careful care of them!” At some point soon thereafter the gray one died, though I don’t seem to have noted it. On March 1, 2003, I mention that lately the still-living living stone, the green one, which I dubbed Gerard, “started to open a pinhole and that turned into a large oval-shaped separation and inside there are what look like tiny Gerards.” I had been hoping it was going to flower. But it was just going through the routine of a living stone: to shed its leaves each year, revealing new leaves inside. Sometimes they open to show more pairs than the last year, and form large clumps this way. (Gerard has held steady at two pairs.)  It has done this right around the middle of February every year since. It takes a couple months for the old leaves to completely shrivel away. All of my references say not to water a living stone at all until it has finished this routine, but toward the end I do give it a little water. I think it helps to move the process along—the new leaves swell up with water, and as they do they shrug the old leaves farther off.
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Cacti and Succulents | Houseplants
2/26/2008 4:12:23 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) 
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