Unusual Lithops

When I set up the large propagator I added to my small collection of Lithops plants. They are often called Living Stones or Living Pebbles as that is what they usually look like.



When I saw this much more unusual one I couldn't resist buying it:



I had no idea whether it would have a recognisable flower or when it would show any. Yesterday I noticed a small speck of yellow. Today, while the Sunlight was blazing through I saw ...



A closer look:



Its first flower. All of 15mm across. It looks likely there is at least one more to open very soon. That helped to make up for a fraught day yesterday when, as a result of a burst water main locally, there was no tap water all day.

Last One For This Year

Flowering Lithops that is, not blog post. You don't get away that easily.

Just enough heat and Sunlight recently for the second of the white Lithops to flower:

This is Lithops Hallii in a 2 inch (50 mm) pot.

White Stones + Robin Investigates

Fortunately there has been enough Sunlight and heat these past few days for the first of my Lithops (Living Stones) with white flowers to come in to bloom:





I wonder whether there are any with red flowers. Certainly haven't seen any advertised. What I have done is to buy some seeds of a couple of Lithops varieties I have not seen for sale as mature plants. Not tried growing them from seed before so we shall see what we shall see.

Robin Investigates
I was in and out the back door so I had left it open. As I came back in I heard a suspicious rustling sound. On investigation I spotted a Robin disappearing in my bedroom. It had flown in the conservatory, through the kitchen, along the passage, in the living room and then to the bedroom. I shut the living room door to block that escape route and keep Penny out of the way. Opened the front door, which opens from the living room. Crawled in the bedroom on all fours so as to get past the Robin so it could fly over me back to the living room. Of course it went past the open front door to the other end of the room so more crawling to persuade it to fly in the right direction. Fortunately it did and flew out of the door. Phew!
Why not open the bedroom window? I have net curtains which would have to be moved, window unlocked, etc. which could have panicked the bird more than me slowly moving around. The Robin didn't seem at all upset but just flew generally in the direction I wanted and an open door was a larger target for it to aim for.

Blooming Stones

Some of my Lithops (Living Stones) plants are coming into bloom again:





The flowers normally only open while direct Sunlight reaches them. They had been trying to flower for a few days but hadn't opened even in direct Sunlight. It would appear they also need a decent daytime temperature. The ambient temperature had been fairly low with mainly overcast skies and just a few bursts of direct Sunlight. They live in a propagation tray which I leave uncovered during the Summer. I put the cover back and the temperature quickly rose and the flowers opened.

New Plants for Old and an Unexpected Repair Job

Now is about the time of year when my Living Stones (Lithops) start showing next year's growth:



As can be seen with the plant on the left the annual new growth appears between the two fused fleshy leaves. This is the time to back right off with watering. The new growth takes its nourishment from the old which will gradually wither away as the new ones increase in size. Normally there are just two new 'leaves' but this one has four which can happen sometimes.

Two nights ago the night temperature in the UK was a record high for November and daytime here yesterday reached 17.7C (about 64F). With the high temperature and a moderate breeze I thought it was time to cut the grass on my frontage. It just hasn't stopped growing this year so I wanted to get it done before it got too long and before the next rainy period arrived.

All went well until I had finished and plugged the mower battery in the charger - nothing. No fan, no lights, no voltage. Dead as the proverbial Dodo. Checked the fuses - both working OK.

Had a quick Google with the item reference number and as luck would have it found the probable fault, and an easy repair, on the first place I looked. (howtomendit.com) I didn't have an exact match for the faulty part, a 180K resistor which I read is in the habit of going open circuit. I had a 150K so soldered that in as a trial and everything sprang back in to life so I have now ordered the correct value for a permanent repair.

Instead of having to fork out about £35 for a replacement Bosch charger it is costing me £1.75 for two high quality replacement resistors. One for now and a spare, just in case....

A White One

A couple of weeks or so ago I bought four new Lithops (Living Stones). They are all mature plants and one has flowered for me. Of the first batch all those which flowered were yellow so I was really pleased to see at least one of the new ones has a white flower:







The flower first showed, closed, several days ago and with such dull weather conditions I began to wonder whether it would ever open. Then on Friday we had a glorious Sunny afternoon and, like the others, it opened after being in Sunlight for a few hours and soon after the Sun had moved past.

To give an idea of size, they are all in 2 inch (50mm) pots.

Lithops Flower

This is only the second of my Living Stones (Lithops) to produce a flower so far.
By way of an experiment I took photos at 1, 3 and 5 days as the flower appeared.
This is an experiment using the Mac app MorphX (free when I downloaded it) to blend the progress over the 5 days. A bit rough as the shots were hand held and I didn't managed to get the same point of view each time. In fact these photos were taken before I installed MorphX. The video was an afterthought.





Not the best looking of flowers but the ability of the app to morph between photos worked reasonably well and is something I will try again in the future, taking more care with the positioning of the camera.

To give an idea of how MorphX works here is a screen shot:


 
Two photos are loaded. Draw lines on the left hand photo for morphing reference points. These are automatically repeated on the right hand photo and need adjusting to the correct places. Then tell the app to make a .mov file. I had three photos so I made two morphed movies. This time it produced 30 frame (1 second) movie files. They were slowed down and cropped in iMovie for the finished video. I also extended some stills to give time to see each stage.

That and This

That is the first of my Living Stones (Lithops) to flower ....



... and this is a Speckled Wood butterfly which spent a while landing on various plants around the garden. It didn't land on any flowers so maybe it was seeking places to lay eggs...