Succulent season

Though succulents are usually thought of as tough, water-hardy plants which are built to survive hot, dry summers, the other side of their nature is that they don't really like summer all that much. Like most garden plants (and people), they much prefer autumn and spring. Right now they're growing and flowering, and looking lovely.

Faucarias, with their python-like jaws of spiny teeth, look quite savage at other times of year, but now, in autumn, they're home to dainty, yellow daisies.

Sempervivums are simply growing well now. I repotted these last spring and am hoping that by next spring they'll have filled the bowl with maroon-tipped, pale green rosettes.

It's the same story with the graptoverias. Repotted last spring, growing well now, hopefully looking a grey-blue picture of abundance by next spring.

Sometimes, when I look at my haworthia, I think of these as being like some kind of crowded futuristic city designed by Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. They're showing more complex colours now and are growing so fast they'll start climbing up and over each other. I'd like to see that!

Gasteria bicolor has never looked particularly bicoloured to me, at least until this year. Hopefully this is how it's meant to look. It's producing babies now, so I presume all is well, but as my knowledge of succulents is pretty limited, I often look at some of them and wonder 'is that normal, are you OK?'.

And so low are my expectations for this lithops, the living stone plant, that all I want for it is survival. When I repotted it into its nice little blue pot, I discovered that it was planted straight into gravel. OK. And then after a very wet month one of the two original lithops people shrivelled and died (that's when my low expectations really kicked in). Since then, this rather cute little survivor-person hasn't grown, hasn't died, hasn't done anything, and I'm delighted!

Several other succulents in my little potted conclave known as Succulent City are sending up flower spikes now, and there's never a dull flower in Succulent City. While these plants do store water to survive summer, the fact is they just go into survival mode over the hot months, then shout 'hooray' when autumn comes and then go into growing and flowering and baby-making mode during the cooler, wetter months. Around here, autumn is the real succulent season.