Success!

I grew H. crassicaulis in my bedroom for a couple years.  It seemed happy for awhile, then it started a very slow decline, eventually becoming dehydrated.  I moved it to the greenhouse last spring in hopes of saving it, but it just continued its slow decline.  Finally, several months ago, I gave up and whacked it.  I was afraid I'd waited too long so I thought it was a long shot.  I put the cuttings in perlite (which seems to be a great way to root a lot of them) and put it in my rooting aquarium.  I waited a long time to see the leaves start to fatten back up, but all but one stem did.  At the point that I could tell there were roots, I uprooted it, whacked off the stem that hadn't rehydrated and planted the rest of it in soil.  The still dehydrated portion went back into the perlite and into the rooting aquarium.  It was a challenge because it was a cluster of leaves at the base and what I had to do was set the cluster on top of the perlite and rest rocks on top of it to make sure the stem staying in contact with the perlite.  It took about 2 more months in the rooting aquarium, but today I pulled it from the perlite and - sure enough! - there were roots!  And the leaves are nice and fat again.   Here are the two plants now...

The one on the left was the piece that didn't rehydrate the first time.  Now, let's see if I can keep them growing nicely this time!  Maybe I'll put a post on GW to see if there is some special need this species has that I'm not aware of...

One that's doing very well for me is dasyantha.  I really like the carnosa-like leaves.  The leaves are either very flat or slightly cupped and spear-like...

The veins are more pronounced than carnosa, which is what makes it most attractive.  This has grown quite a lot since I got it from Kelly in 2010.  It's in my sunroom, on the shelf in the east window - seems very happy there.

I also pulled cuttings of carnosa ssp. carnosa from the rooting aquarium today.  They had rooted nicely and are looking much better than when I put it in there a month or so ago.  My mother plant had several stems that just didn't look good.  Not exactly dehydrated, but pale, small leaves.  Granted, the leaves of this one are quite light to begin with, but because the leaves were getting smaller and smaller and paler, I figured something was up.  It may just be that it was growing in the GH, under bright conditions, I don't know...  I put the mother plant in the sunroom where it's only getting bright indirect light for the most part and took these cuttings.  The mother plant IS looking better, but no signs of new growth yet.  But I have a feeling it will start growing in the next few weeks.  I'm going to keep a close eye on it.

Well, for some reason, Blogger won't let me post photos from my computer today, so I'm going to end here.  (The two I posted were from my photo site...)