Greenhouse tales: focus on Conophytums

I've posted about my Conophytums before so I want to show some new ones and some progress. Conophytum are quite particular in their growing needs but if you get the basics right, they are pretty tolerant. They like morning sun, a fast draining mineral soil mix, to which I add Zeolite, cat litter and finely ground eggshells. They can be misted in summer but should not be watered, as that disrupts their resting period during the hottest months of the year

Conophytum fredrichiae looks a lot like a Lithops but the flowers are different. Lithops also grow mostly in summer, while Conophytum are dormant during the hotter months, they go and hide in their shells that are formed when the leaf pair dries up, protecting the new leaves from the harsh sun and heat, and re-emerge in autumn, often after doubling themselves until they start to form little mounds over years

Lithops aucampiae for comparison Lithops flowers are usually white or yellow and occasionally red and orange but Conophytums have purple, white or yellow flowers and some flower at night.

Conophytum marginatum was just 6 little heads back in 2021

Conophytum ceresianum
If they are grown in strong light, they develop beautiful markings but they dislike strong sun all day long so you have to keep them cool and shaded in the afternoon, water infrequently but mist often. In their native habitat, they grow in areas that get very little rain but a lot of dew and fog that comes from the sea.

I got these Conophytum pellucidum seedlings recently an they still have to fill up their bowl but that won't take long. I love how each plant is slightly different.

Conophytum ricardianum is a good example of why they are sometimes called button plants. This is all part of a bartch of cuttings that I got. They are actually quite easy to grow from cuttings, provided you make the cuttings at the start of the growing season.

Conophytum bilobum is one of the larger types, as you can see, there is a great variety of forms. Usually the defining characteristic of these plants is their summer dormancy. I sowed some seed from pods of this plant but they are very slow and need regular misting, these are now around 10 weeks old!

Conophytums are very slow growing and highly desirable for overseas succulent collectors and they are being poached from nature at an unsustainable rate and smuggled overseas. At the rate that it's happening, many species are going extinct in nature. It's sad, because they are easy to grow from seed and have been grown locally here for years but international collectors would rather pay poor local people to go and remove adult specimens in the wild.