Willem says: 'The Phyto-Philes are for plant lovers of every size and shape, colour and flavour. As with my Colours of Wildlife column, I'll be featuring one species per article, illustrated with sketches, paintings, and/or photos. Over time I hope to be showcasing the amazing diversity of weird and wonderful plants that occur in South Africa, while also from time to time looking at the flora of other countries. While featuring many spectacular species, I'll not be neglecting the smaller, more humble kinds that are nevertheless fascinating in their own right.'

Today I bring you some of my favourite plants in the world – Lithops! This particular species is Lithops lesliei which is a widespread and variable species, occurring in grassland and savannah in the northern parts of South Africa, and also in Botswana. My picture and photo portray plants from a colony in the Polokwane Game Reserve.

Dr. Living Stone, I Presume

These plants are very hard – and very rewarding – to find in the wild. They mimic stones! They always grow amidst stones and pebbles that are very similar in size, shape and colour to themselves. The colony in the local game reserve is very hard to discover: not only are the plants hidden between the stones, they are also concealed by the grass growing around them. These particular ones also grow in the midst of a kind of spikemoss that dries out completely in the winter and 'resurrects' in spring and summer; the dry bodies of these during their dormant period lie over the lithops, which at that time are shrunken, concealing them even more. So, to find the lithops, you must spend a lot of time stooped over, looking between the clumps of grass, inspecting the ground closely. After around the 500th pebble you'll discover, with delight, the first actual lithops! The name 'Lithops' means 'Stone Face'; this particular species was named after plant collector Thomas Nicholas Leslie.

The first time I saw these was when I was just a kid, going to the reserve with my parents. We discovered them by accident walking up a small hill, the highest point in the reserve, that offers a great view. They were amidst the stones and pebbles of the path itself. It was so amazing to find these round little living plants growing there! I briefly worried, because that meant of course that they get stepped on a lot! Touching the plants I discovered they have a quite resilient, rubbery texture. And growing flush with the ground, amidst the stones, they actually withstand being walked on quite well. They are camouflaged so that most herbivorous animals can't see them, and also they can't easily be browsed … animals wanting to eat them will have to dig them out.

Now … just what is a lithops, precisely? Many people who are lucky enough to see them in the wild are baffled … just what are they looking at? It's been strange to me how many people are unable to describe these plants because they don't conform to what people think of when they think 'plant' … typically they'll think of something with stems and leaves … which the lithops doesn't obviously have. So: what you see when you see a lithops, is just the tips of its leaves! The main body of the plant is underground. Lithops don't really have stems … the plant body itself is mostly just two leaves, that are fused together into a round body, leaving only a narrow slit at the top. So in my picture you see two lithops next to each other, each plant consisting of a pair of leaves with a straight slit or fissure separating them. The slit doesn't go down deep, only a couple of millimetres, below which the two leaves are completely joined together right down to the bottom where the roots grow, anchoring the plant body. Between the leaves there is a small bit of meristem … undifferentiated tissue from which various different organs can form. This forms the flowers as well as new leaves.

Windows for Leaves

Lithops leaves are very thick and are mostly used to store water. But this is still a plant that needs to produce its own food, so the leaves carry out photosynthesis as well. But if you look at them, they aren't really green. This species has leaves that appear mostly orange or brownish. Of course this is part of the stone camouflage. But if you look closely at the squiggly top surface you'll see that between the orange there are translucent bits. These are transparent regions, like windows set into the leaf surface! Through these, light enters the body of the plant. There is a layer of green photosynthetic tissue deep inside the leaf body – the windows conduct the sunlight to this and here the photosynthesis happens. They grow very slowly; in fact once adult they don't really grow at all. Instead, each season a new pair of leaves, the same size as the old pair, will form, replacing it. The old pair shrivels and the new pair absorbs just about all the moisture from it. Lithops plant bodies range from about 1 cm/0.4" to 5 cm/2" in diameter. In cultivation, and in favourable climates in the wild, plants may form more than one leaf pair at a time, resulting in small clumps.

Flowers from Stones

While it is already delightful to see these little plants with their stone-mimicking leaves in the wild, the best by far is to see them when they flower! For this you have to arrive at just the right time, because the flowers only open for a short while, usually in the afternoon. When closed, the flowers are merely inconspicuous tufts emerging from the leaf slit, but when open, the flower petals expand to cover the entire plant body. In this species the flowers can attain 5.5 cm/1.2" in diameter, and are bright yellow. The flowers are also very delicate and ethereal-looking … finding an entire field full of these flowering stones is one of the most magical experiences I've ever enjoyed!

Lithops flowers cannot self-pollinate but need pollen from different adjoining plants. For this reason lithops plants in the wild occur in small colonies, never alone. The pollen can be carried by insects like bees or butterflies. After pollination the fruit forms … in this, as in other members of the mesemb family, the fruit is a round, wooden capsule. When 'ripe' it dries out; but when it gets wet, it expands and valves open, exposing the seeds. This means that in nature, rain will cause the capsules to open, and the raindrops then falling on the exposed seeds will knock them out of the capsule. So, the seeds will only be released when there is moisture to help them germinate. Since they are not knocked very far, the new baby lithops will grow close to the adults, in the same patch of pebbly soil.

Decimated for Medicine

Above I mentioned the colony of Lithops plants in the Polokwane Game Reserve. A very sad thing is that this colony has been almost completely wiped out. For many years I've seen literally hundreds of plants there. Then one year when I returned to the reserve I saw that almost all the plants had been dug out! Only pitiful little hollows remained where they used to be. I later learnt that Lithops are sought for medicinal purposes (this seems to be a recent trend … I don't know what medicinal use they're put to, but I'm sure there's legitimate medicine that can cover it), so whoever took the plants probably sold them on some market. The person who did that perhaps got a few hundred or a few thousand rands, but now what? How many centuries did the colony take to establish itself? Now it's gone! In subsequent years I only found a couple of plants … I don't know if there are enough left to enable to colony to reproduce and re-establish itself. And nothing prevents unscrupulous people from coming and collecting them again. So the colony might soon be gone completely. So … not only no more 'medicine' from Dr. Living Stone, but also no more magic … no more will people be charmed and delighted to find these round, rubbery plants and their exquisite flowers. There is no way to calculate the cost of such a loss.

Dream Stones

Lithops plants feature in my dreams perhaps more than any others. I often dream I find them in my own yard. This always astonishes me since you would suppose I know my yard and the plants growing there very well. But this of course also refers to how well they disguise themselves. In a dream I will be amazed to find lithops growing in the gravel of my driveway, and once I spot one, I will then inevitably spot dozens, soon hundreds. This is of course for me in the dream a most joyous occasion because it means they are safe, I can protect and nurture and propagate them.

But also I dream of finding lithops in the wild. Indeed, in my dream explorations finding lithops is a typical priority, so whatever dream region I'm in, I will keep an eye out for stony and gravelly areas. There, if the dream is a good one, I will then indeed find these little plants, and in my dreams there are many different kinds with different textures and colours to match the different kinds of pebbles and gravel they're growing amidst. But that is true of reality also! In South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, which are the only countries where they're known to grow, they do inhabit a rich variety of geologies and consequently they are very diverse in appearance, but all of them being most charming!

Restoring the Magic

These plants should be considered national treasures of South Africa, and in my view we should do all in our power to restore and boost all natural populations of them, so that more people could experience the wonder and joy of finding and appreciating them in their natural habitat. Today there are many people who are growing them and indeed they are not very hard to grow. Seed can be collected from wild populations at the right time of year by wetting the dry fruit capsules; this way no adult plants are harmed. The seeds germinate well and the young plants need a bit of care but fatten up reasonably fast, and can reproduce themselves in a couple of years. Lithops should be grown in very well-draining soil … in between gravel and pebbles not only works best, but shows off the plants' mimicking abilities as well. They must not be kept wet … they should be watered only lightly through spring, summer and autumn, and left dry for the entire winter, until the old leaves have completely shriveled. Also this species should be kept in light shade, since in nature it grows between grasses and bushes. In colder climates it can tolerate a few hours of daily full sun, especially in winter. They must be protected from cold but also from excessive heat, since buried as they are with minimal exposed leaf surface, the plants can't easily cool themselves down.

There are many lithops growers all over the world today. I sincerely hope that we can soon manage to grow enough to replenish the natural populations, and also change people's attitudes and properly protect those populations, so that the wonder and magic of them can continue.

Colours of Wildlife Archive

Willem

14.10.13 Front Page

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