Last week, I chanced upon a posting on GCS for the sale of lithops.
Curious as to what this was, I clicked on the posting and saw some curious photos of some rather curiously cute plants. But - are these plants or not? There are no leaves on them. And as my colleague puts it - they look more like biscuits than plants.
After doing some research, I found out that lithops (yes, used with the letter 's') is a succulent that is sometimes referred to as a "living stone".
Based on wikipedia, "Lithos" means "stone" and "-ops" means "like" in Ancient Greek; therefore "Lithops" means "stone-like". These plants are commonly referred to as living stones. The formation of the name from the greek "-ops" means that even a single plant is called a Lithops.
It seems the lithops do not take kindly to too much watering and are better suited to a drier climate. Whilst the odds seemed to be stacked against the lithops in humid Singapore, I have decided to try my hand at lithops-growing. It's been a couple of days now since I got the lithops (managed to get some from a fellow curio-plant grower as well as - surprise, surprise - from a local nursery which I am given to understand brings in lithops from time to time) and it has been a bit of a struggle trying to figure out how little / how much water to give to some of the lithops which have a slightly wrinkled appearance probably due to dehydration. I am still keeping my fingers crossed that the lithops will survive for some time. As a friend puts it, these cute little succulents are "for rent" in Singapore. In the meantime, I continue to count my blessings for everyday that the lithops remain alive.
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