As I’ve mentioned in my past posts with Lithops, these follow a very limited growth cycle. You get one shot a year at encouraging nice, healthy new leaves, and need to time their watering and light exposure to ensure they grow well. But…how do you know they’re ready? How do you know they’re not dead?
Well…a little bit of practice. I won’t claim that I’m an expert in these plants, but I will share my experience growing them successfully through at least one growth cycle. When you see anyone recommending care for Conophytum, check how long they’ve had their plants! If it hasn’t been through a cycle of active growth and through a dormant period in summer, look at the recommendations with some skepticism.
What do dormant Conophytums look like?
Dormant or dead?
Time of year is a big indicator. Starting around late summer (May or June), some plants or species will start to shrink back and cover themselves with their papery coating. Most of my plants are fully covered and dormant by the end of June, with all of them covered up and sleeping by the first week of July.
Conophytum jucundum
At left is my little Conophytum jucundum, just picked up at the SDCSS winter show & sale this year (early February).
The photo at left is from June 5th, showing the plant fully covered in the papery covering indicating that it’s set up to sleep for summer.
This is about the time that I put the plants below my benches, in a sheltered corner of the greenhouse where they’ll get little to no water apart from what I offer them intentionally.
Same plant almost two months later, on July 29th 2024.
You can see it’s a bit smaller or more shrunken, but is otherwise still filling the papery covering.
This is the height of it being dormant: you can still see some plant body in there.
But… it’s also the height of summer. Temperatures in the greenhouse are regularly above 100F, and the daylight hours are long.
The extreme temperatures these plants experience are part of what they’re adapted to thrive in, and what they need to appropriately “know” what time of year it is. It’s also what makes them very hard to grow indoors or on a windowsill – without exposure to the outdoors, they won’t see longer full daylight hours or experience true summer high temperatures.
Some growers do succeed in spite of this, but it is a step up in difficulty.
Near the end of August, this Conophytum woke up.
I moved the conos from under the bench, in their sheltered/dry spot, to on top of the bench where I could watch and water them, in the first couple weeks of August.
At that point, I let them receive water only as overspray from me watering my Lithops or the cacti that were nearby. That overspray was enough to encourage them to wake up, if they were ready, but not enough to cause them to rot if they weren’t ready (and some weren’t).
This first peek through the papery covering is the sign that the Conophytum is ready to start getting water.
And at right is the Conophytum jucundum this week, 9/18/24, plumped up and actively growing.
You can also see a bit of scarring on the plant body at the bottom right; I’ve had a mouse problem in the greenhouse for the first time this year and it’s tasting all my favorites.
At this stage, I give the plants water when they have been dry for at least a week, usually more like 2 weeks. Early on, the water is helping them grow and fill up the older plant bodies so they can prepare to bloom. Compared to my Lithops, they need much less water to stay plump and happy looking. I am very much playing it by ear, watering them when they are just starting to wrinkle, and leaving them dry otherwise.
Another flavor of dormant:
I’ll go through a couple other species of Conophytum in my greenhouse – I won’t claim they’re a representative sample, but they do show the typical summer dormancy appearance.
My beloved Conophytum stevens-jonesianum when I first got it at the SDCSS holiday party last year – recently bloomed and happy as can be.
Middle of winter in the Northern Hemisphere is the peak growing season for Conophytum, and I’d recently repotted several of the other plants in my collection. Once I got this one home, I figured I’d do the same.
If you look at the tag, though, you’ll notice – it says “SH 1990”. The label is one of Steve Hammer’s (SH), and 1990 sure seems to indicate a 1990 sowing. In hindsight, I probably didn’t need to repot it into the size of pot I did. We’ll see this year how it does in the new pot and fresh soil, and see if it creates more heads.
Same plant, March 9th 2024.
Conophytum bloom first when they wake up, and take their time creating seed pods and storing up energy during the mild winter months.
They divide after, but unlike Lithops, you don’t see the new growth right away.
Instead, Conophytum divide, but stay hidden under the old outer leaves.
This particular plant was as plump and big as it could ever be in early March, looking very happy.
Here it is a few months later – June 4th, 2024.
You can see the sheath of the older leaves covering the conophytum bodies, and this is early in the summer season. The older leaves are absored, but still pale and haven’t dried out completely, which you can see by the pale green of them.
If your Conophytum is starting to look like this, where it’s getting the outer leaves on it and starting to shrink back – that’s great! This is exactly how they should be looking as they head into summer.
And here we see the peak of dormancy, July 29th.
Darkened leaf sheaths, with more speckling (didn’t expect that, but nifty to see).
You can see the plant bodies that are visible through cracks, and they’re shriveled and pruning.
This is…totally normal, and healthy! Given that this is an older plant, it needs that summer stress to properly dry out, to shrink back, and to fully absorb the moisture and nutrients from the older leaves.
Even at this point, I can’t tell if the plant bodies more covered in the papery covering are going to divide or not. We had several more weeks of hot weather ahead, so they stayed under my plant benches and dry.
Mid August, just a couple weeks later.
I noticed some of my other Conophytum looking ready to wake up after being splashed with water when watering my other Lithops, and moved all of them to the top of my benches.
This was the trickiest time. If you look closely, you’ll see the face that’s peeking out at the top right is more plump than it looks in the July photo. A little bit of that overspray from watering other plants gives enough moisture to start to suss out if they’re ready for more water.
If they’re plumping up and responding to the water that’s available as you enter fall, great – it’s time to start watering (within reason).
And here we see the plant on September 18th, 2024!
Plump, breaking through the leaf husks, and happy as can be.
Still just 7 heads – so no new division even with the repotting. I’ll give it another year in this pot, and then likely repot it into a show pot. If it’s been decades to get to the size it is, then it’s unlikely to truly get much larger, making it a great candidate for the beautiful little show pots I have waiting for candidates.
Why wait to repot it?
An older plant is far less forgiving of change, and frequent repotting (as in, every growing season) puts the Conophytum at risk of rot or failing to re-establish, and dying. If you also have an older plant you’ve purchased from someone, be cautious with your repotting frequency!
Seed-grown Conophytum
I have seen such success with seed-growing my Lithops, I decided to try with Conophytum as well.
They are considerably harder than Lithops, and there’s a steeper learning curve. My first year sowing conophytum (2022) saw nearly a 100% germination rate (out of about 15 species sown), but only one specimen of one species has made it through to the second winter.
But…now that it’s established, it seems to be pretty solid. These are photos from the most recent growing season.
At left are my Conophytum meyeri seedlings, August 2023.
I started with 3 seedlings, and you can see one waking up in the pot. As seedlings, they’re far more sensitive to drying out fully in summer, and only one seemed to be waking up on schedule last year.
That one was the one I ended up repotting – I watered the entire pot too well, too soon, and the other seedlings that hadn’t woken up yet just rotted away.
November, 2023 – showing the little Conophytum fully woken up and growing in.
You can also see a little yellow ball. This is around when I started using Osmocote with my seedlings to give them a consistent boost while they were growing.
This little thing had been in the seedling pot and seedling mix since first being sown in the early fall of 2022. Last fall, I decided to repot it so it could grow in to a pot and be undisturbed. The original seedling mix was a touch too chunky, with not enough small particles, and I felt it was at risk of the roots dessicating the following summer.
The Conophytum meyeri in March of 2024.
It responded well to be repotted, and I used the same mix as ever. I also used decomposed granite as a top dressing; my theory was that it would allow for water to penetrate, but prevent the soil from just washing out of the bottom of the pot as I saw happening with the seedling pots.
March is prime spring time, so this was the plumpest and biggest the meyeri looked as it headed into getting ready for summer dormancy.
And here – the little Conophytum meyeri in September of this year!
I didn’t get photos of it covering up with the sheath, but you can see the newest growth has more of the distinctive mature shape, with the chiseled top and red edges.
I’m not sure it will bloom this year, but it’s definitely established in the pot, and I’m optimistic it will keep growing and dividing.
Hard to Get Right, But Worth It
I can’t speak to what it’s like to grow Conophytum indoors, under grow lights, or in more northern climates. I’ve admittedly had enough of a challenge growing them here, in San Diego, where our conditions are arguably some of the best for growing them.
If you’re learning how to grow them, the best I can recommend is getting some inexpensive species and experimenting.
Wait ’em out. Let them be dry and crispy. Time your watering to the seasons: late summer and early fall is the time to start splashing them and see if they’re willing to wake up.
Late spring and early summer are when they start to go sleep. That’s when you cut back the water, and keep them somewhere sheltered but still exposed to the extremes of temperature and long daylight hours.
Are your conophytum dead? Probably not, at least not at first.
But if you water them too soon, or too much, they will definitely rot and die.
So… on that happy note: It’s September! It’s time to try and water your Conophytum. Good luck 😉
