Any succulents fans out there??

[RosieMoonflower]

Hello all! Sorry I've been missing somewhat the last few weeks! I've discovered a new hobby that has quickly progressed into an obsession& is taking up all my spare time, growing succulents! I bought several succulents last summer for the first time. I remembered my mom keeping aloe Vera for our sun burns so I bought an extra one to grow alone for it's gel. I brought it in this summer, along with the two another pots with assorted succulents for the wonder and the aloe Vera plant that was alone I noticed had a growth coming off it. It looked like a baby aloe Vera plant. I looked it up and sure enough my aloe plant had a "pup". I started researching succulent propagation and now I'm hooked! Just curious if there are any other succulent lovers around here. What succulents do you have? What are you favorites? And, I would love to see some pics!! Have a wonderful day all!

Rosie

[Bychan Wulf]

Hey Rosie, missed you!

Glad to hear about you aloe pup. Plant pups are always so cute; pretty much like animal pups...only not so physically active lol.

I like succulents too. I had an aloe plant in my room last year, but forgot the window open for a few hours in the winter and it froze. Now, as succulents, I only have cactuses. Those are almost immortal and the fact that I forget to water the plants seems to work perfectly for them. My cat is also addicted to the spikes, even though she gets stung. Maybe she is a little bit masochist...

[moonraingirl]

Hi, that's great hobby! It's so so good and positive when a new life is born, same in plants as in animals. There's a special power in plants, but sadly, many people don't feel it.
What other succulents than Aloe have you got? I'd love to see your pics! Also, what is the best position to keep them? I mean how much light do they need and to they prefer certain direction (south, east etc)?
I made an album with few pics of my plants. There's what we call "Christmas rose" which is blooming second time this winter and the tall thing which we had for AGES and I have absolutely no idea what it is. It's taller than me I also included pics from my room which is a jungle as you can see There's a succulent on the top shelf but again, I don't know what it is.
https://goo.gl/photos/9sguuzj1o8XYm2pK7

[Bychan Wulf]

Moon, in the first pic...I don't know how it's called, we have one of those on the kitchen cabinet. It's poisonous for birds...it killed my two parrots

I don't know how people can remember pants' names. It doesen't matter how many times I hear the name of a fpower, I still go to the florist and say that I want a "insert color here" thing that looks like that, and I try do draw it in the air. I'm hopeless with plants, but I love them, so I keep trying and torturing poor beings.

[RosieMoonflower]

This is a pretty lengthy response, I told you already, I am obsessed! Feel free to scroll right to the pics!

@Moonraingirl, thanks so much for sharing your pics with me! I love your Christmas Rose! We call those a Christmas cactus, my mom keeps one as well. She's planning to bring me some cuttings this week so I can grow my own. I'm hoping to grow several and give them away as Christmas presents, lol!

@BWulf, I had no idea it was dangerous for birds! So sorry to hear that happened to your babies!

The second I recognize as well, it's also a cactus. It's called a euphorbia trigona, also known as the African milk cactus! I had no idea it could get so tall! I have a small "royal red" version. The sap inside of it is dangerous, it can irritate the skin and cause temporary blindness. It looks like on the bottom right yours is showing some sunburn. (The yellow miscoloring on the bottom). If it's been there a while it could be okay and the plant has already recovered internally.

The last two I'm not familiar with. But they all look pretty happy and healthy!

I have collected quite a few succulents over the last year! Most of mine I keep facing south, inside and out. I had one that I had facing north, which was on my front porch, and so it was partly shaded and it made the Aloe Vera stretch out rather than up to try and reach the sun, but otherwise the rest of the pants did fine. Here are the ones on the back porch facing south, last fall, before they had to move inside.

I have 3 kinds of aloe, aloe vera, lace aloe, and tiger tooth aloe. All 3 have had "pups"!



My lace Aloe is my favorite aloe for sure!



I also bought two different types of elephant bush witch grew in nicely, but I accidentally killed one in a cold snap. This is the one that has survived.

This beauty is called "Belladonna" supervivum. I bought it at a chain hardware store when it was mature and had already sprouted a stem and flower. It only does this at the end of its life when it's done producing "chicks" (aloe babies = pups and supervivum babies = chicks) so I cannot get any more from this plant, but I have enjoyed it's beauty regardless! The flower stem has died and I've cut it off, I except this ol' girl to die within the year.

These are the cactus I got last year from the same hardware store. They had glued fake little flowers on them, and I noticed that after sometime of having them planted, they were doing pretty poorly. Especially showing in areas around the little glued on fake flowers so I plucked them off and the cactus came back almost immediately! The tall fuzzy one is an "old man" cactus and I believe the smaller fuzzy white ones are as well, just much much younger. Where the tall "old man" is missing his hair is where the flower was glued on, I'm not sure if it will come back either.

This is my most recent creation, all recently purchased at a local gardening store and placed into a simple bowl. Each will grow and fill the bowl. Even the cactus, with enough sunlight and time, will make babies! This purchase is how I have discovered aoeniums, which look the most like flowers to me, and personally I find them gorgeous!!


Here is my last and favorite, a "black rose" aoenium. It's so simple and pretty, I just adore it! I have planted this one with a few others in what I'm calling a nursery. I'm hoping to get many more from this one!

Also, here is the nursery with some other newly purchased additions I'm hoping to grow for the offspring. It stays inside facing north during the week and on the weekends I set it outside for direct sun. The small one that looks like little green tongues is called gasteria. The purple/greenish rosettes are a species of supervivum, and the last sort of teal green bubbly one, I'm pretty sure is known as Pachyphytum hookeri.. I just call it hookeri.. lol!



Thanks for indulging me and my new hobby!

Rosie

[Bychan Wulf]

Yep, lesson learned. No more parrots; too many windows, plants and hunting pets that can harm them.

I love your new hobby, actually! It also helps me finally learn the names of these things....hopefully.

PS: pics can't be seen. I tried to edit them from your quote, but apparently they are too large. Lol, tapatalk messed up with me like that, untill i gave up. Long live the browser!

[RosieMoonflower]

Yep, lesson learned. No more parrots; too many windows, plants and hunting pets that can harm them.

I love your new hobby, actually! It also helps me finally learn the names of these things....hopefully.

PS: pics can't be seen. I tried to edit them from your quote, but apparently they are too large. Lol, tapatalk messed up with me like that, untill i gave up. Long live the browser!

This darn Tapatalk! It is a pain! Yes, lesson learned here too. I actually already learned this lesson and simply forgot today, but Tapatalk gives 3 options for loading pictures as far as resolution goes. They are small, medium, and best. Best is what I chose this time and it clearly doesn't show up in the browser version. I tried to fix them and chose medium this time. Can you see them now? Are they too small? Too big? I can try to load them as "small" if these "medium" ones are too big on a browser.

Rosie

[Bychan Wulf]

These are good! Thank you! No.5...is that the Belladonna? I have in of those in my room but wasn't sure if it was a succulent or not.
And I love the pot with baby plants in No.1....and the flower of the cactus. You know what? I think I love all of them haha

[moonraingirl]

ooooh such beautiful plants! I really love all that look like flowers, especially aeoniums. I will definitely add them to my shopping list and buy them when I see them somewhere. and the "old man" is so cute )) I find it fascinating how these creatures adapted to life in arid conditions and how they learned to store water. Isn't it a sign of intelligence? I definitely think so. Also what is cool about them is they are not demanding at all, so good for people like me :p .
Is there any succulent you would like to get in the future? maybe something exotic?
Giving people puppies for Christmas sounds so sweet! You can really insert your love and positive energy in them and I'm sure that people would feel it in those plants.
I really didn't know that my plants were that toxic! Sorry about your birds, BW! What a terrible death, to die of poisoning :/ You must have been devastated.
African milk cactus sounds dangerous, too. Good to know that. I don't think that the yellow spot is a sunburn because it's inside in the living room, quite away from window. It's been there for years I think. It has a hard texture like bark. Maybe it's some kind of disease or plant tumour?
All your plants look very healthy and well cared for.

[RosieMoonflower]

@moonraingirl, I'm not sure of exotic choices yet because even though I have learned so much already, honestly, I am still a beginner so any new plant I learn about is an exotic new one to me! But, ask me next year, I'll probably have some "wishlist" succulents by then.

Yes, giving away the pups and chicks as gifts is an awesome idea! I say that because I am a really bad gift giver.. it's never been my niche to find or make the perfect gifts for my friends and family. So these plants as gifts are really great. I ended up taking one of the chicks from my new supervivum and making a small terrarium for it and gave it to my friend who was really down, she absolutely loved it and it made her day! So that was a nice feeling to know I had brightened her day with a succulent. Here is the terrarium.

Rosie

[TwilightDancer]

I love these. My house has so many plants you'd think it was a forest. I love these because they're so easy to care for.

We just got the two little fellas, they will be put in bigger pots soon.

[RosieMoonflower]

@twilight dancer, I have the same moon cactus you have in the second picture. It got really big but I have no idea how big they can get because mine got killed by a cold snap.

@Bwulf, sorry, I meant to reply to you as well. The 5th picture is actually the elephant bush. The 6th is he Belladonna.

Rosie

[moonraingirl]

The terrarium is so cute, omg I will have to do something like that! You're a good friend for brightening your friend's day in this simple yet powerful way. I believe a gift like this can say more than diamonds because it came in the right time and said to your friend: I care about you.

Nice plants, Twilight:)

[Bychan Wulf]

The 5th picture is actually the elephant bush. The 6th is he Belladonna.

Thanks for clearing this. The elephant bush is simmilar to something I have, and is called traditionally the "little tree of life"-it is believed that if he dies, somebody from the family will also die. Ours has almost 15 years and this year, a "flower disease" got him and we had to spray him with the white thing that can be seen on the leaves

Crassula aka the little tree of life

TwilightDancer, I so love the red one. It looks so pretty!

[RosieMoonflower]

@BWulf, that's what I was calling a "Christmas cactus" and what Moonraingirl was calling a "Christmas rose". Isn't it interesting how we assign different names to plants based on where we live??

Rosie