Hi Joe!
Good luck finding succulent books!
Out of the several hundred plant books I've collected I only have three. One is a cheesy DK Houseplant succulent book full of plant-killing information, another is "Growing the Mesembryaceae" from a UK plant book club printed in 1940 and the last one is the latest revision of the genus Andromischus. Proper works on succulents seem notoriously hard to find and wildly expensive when you do!
However, Google and the web is the best thing going for free up to date knowledge on succulents!
I always get ID'd plants whenever possible but sometimes the seller doesn't know or has the wrong name. That Conophytum was sold as "
Conophytum minutum" but C. minutum is an all green Cono with no pattern, mine most definitely has a pattern.
Conophytums are mesembs but they do have a pretty different life-cycle than Lithops. These guys are all easy as long as you use rapidly draining mineral soils so they dry up very fast. Most mesembs live off dew and costal fog and no actual rain but a few mm in winter so just mist 'em every day or two IF you wanna feel invoved with them, otherwise leave them alone altogether. You can pour a wee bit of water on them if they look a little shriveled now and then but otherwise hide that water can. I use 50/50 Napa Floor Dry (Shultz APS is a fine substitute but pricier) and turkey grit or pea gravel for weight with a very tiny, tiny bit of peat or coir (less than 10%) blended in just enough to bind the mineral particles and not let it fall out the pots drainage holes. I have no visible peat or coir in the "soil" mixes even on undressed pots but it does the trick to keep the soil up in the pot, they still dry out in 2-3 days if they ever should get doused with water.
As an example of misnaming, the next 5 plants were all sold labeled as "
Titanopsis calcarea" at various locations and on ebay. Not one of these are
T. calcarea: I still do not have this plant in my collection and I've bought it a number of times!
Titanopsis hugo-schlecterii
Titanopsis primosii
Aloinopsis malherbei amazingly it's putting on new growth and is as happy as can be. I have NEVER watered this plant in almost a year, only misted the leaves wet and its doing awesome. I have watered every other specimen of Aloinopsis and they melted into slime. It's being hugged by a
Ceropegia armandii, maybe it just needed the hug?
This I call "Dino tails #1" I have no idea what the genus this or the next plant are in but they look related to me.
Here is Dino Tails #2 I hope it starts to do better this one is looking saggy lately. I may have accientally gotten water on it!
Here we have some real fave weirdos of mine called Pseudolithos who aren't related to Lithops at all. These are actually Asclepiads related to the Stapelias (corpse flower succulents):
Pseudolithos cubiformis becoming squarer with age.
Pseudolithos dodsoniana
Pseudolithos migiurtinus
White-sloanea crassa formerly
Pseudolithos crassa
Duvalia elegans I think the shape of this plant looks as if one of my cats made an inelegant gesture in my pot...
Edithicola grandis AKA "Magic Carpet Flower" supposedly the big star-shaped bloom is patterned like a persian rug. I haven't seen one yet. This is one of the few/ (only?) branch forming vertical Stapeliads:
Here's a few Euphorbs:
Euphorbia albopollinifera, a member of the medusoid group
Euphorbia bupleurifolia this tongue-twister looks cool when the trunk gets taller, in like a decade or two...
Euphorbia platyclada the pink stick grows! A year ago it was just pink twig!
Next to the euphorbs is this weird, highly poisonous little thing
Tylecodon buchholtziana
Neohenricia sibbettii Where's Waldo?
a different waldo upclose
And we'll need to see some succulent flytrap looking things:
Faucarina tigrina this is the plain form I hate the mutant forms that seem to be popular.
Is this an
Agave? whatever it is I like the teeth and the pattern it's ungodly slow to do anything. the latest leaf has taken 6 months to get that far!