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More than you ever wanted to know about Living stones!

> >I am so happy. My baby toes have started flowering this week.
> >Beautiful little tiny fushia flowers all over.
> 
> Are your living stones Lithops?  

Hi Cami and List,
Lithops have yellow or white daisy-like flowers and usually bloom near the
tail end of the season - they are semi-dormant in mid summer which maybe
why yours hasn't flowered yet.  They like good light and a rest over the
winter.

'Baby Toes' are either: 
Frithia Pulchra - my book has the following description (it puts it better
than me!) ... This genus forms a compact stemless rosette of fleshy leaves
with flat translucent tips.  When mature, the succulent is usually no more
than one inch tall and 5 inches across.  Masses of small, crimson
daisy-like flowers with white bases open in sun from late spring to early
autumn.  This succulent usually lives for only 5 years or so (mine is now 6
years old but very tatty now) and needs to be propagated from seed.
Or:
Fenestria aurantiaca -  superficially like Frithia but easier to keep, with
flowers of buff to pinkish yellow.  Propagation is by dividing clumps or
from seed.

Both Lithops, Fenestria and Frithia belong to the Mesembryanthemum (or ice
plant) family which mostly comes from South Africa - hence the semi
dormancy of Lithops in mid summer.  All three species have 'window' leaves
- in the wild, these plants are buried in the ground with just their leaf
tips showing;  sun light strikes the translucent tip and is channeled to
the tissue containing chlorophyll just below the leaf surface.  As so
little of the leaf is above ground, this method of growth prevents loss of
precious water by transpiration.

I guess you probably didn't need to know all this!  

Liz Bradbury in Scotland, where we have had a frost (-1*C) the past two
nights and snow forecast for the hills today!  (It must be nearly
mid-summer though, because it's never really dark, even at 2am!)
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