Lithops
Lithops spp.
Two swollen leaves sitting flush with the soil, easily mistaken for a pebble — more are lost to the watering can than to neglect.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray
- Sunlight
- Part shade
- Feeding
- All-purpose balanced
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Flowering
- September
- Mar–Sep Spring Growth
- Sep–Dec Flowering
- Jan–Mar Flowering
- Plant spacing
- 3.1 in
- In-row spacing
- 3.1 in
- Between rows
- 3.9 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A slender taproot with fine side roots
- Working depth
- 18 in–3 ft
- Can reach
- 4 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 2–3 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 16 in of soil
The taproot goes down before the plant does much above ground, and it never forgives being broken. Sow it where it is to grow, or start it in a deep cell and plant it out before the root reaches the bottom.
Almost all of the plant is underground: a taproot several times the length of the two leaves showing at the surface. That is why it needs a deep pot rather than a shallow one, despite looking like a pebble.
The habit is Lithops’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Fungus gnats
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Centipedes ChilopodaHunts Fungus gnats
Flat, fast, one pair of legs to a segment — and a predator, unlike the slow round millipede it is constantly confused with. It hunts slugs, cutworms, springtails and woodlice by night under mulch and stones. Learn the difference and leave this one alone.
- Dragonflies & damselflies OdonataHunts Fungus gnats
Aerial hunters that take mosquitoes, midges and small flies on the wing all day, and whose larvae spend a year or more clearing the same insects from the water. A pond with planted margins and no fish is the way to have them.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Mealybugs
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Mealybugs
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Mealybugs
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Fungus gnats
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Fungus gnats
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com