I once had a shipment held at customs for nearly six weeks, a small group of Conophytum I’d bought from an overseas seller who’d assured me everything was properly documented. It wasn’t, not fully, and what should have been a straightforward import turned into an anxious, drawn-out process involving paperwork I didn’t understand and a … Read more
A seller once tried to convince me that a plain Graptopetalum paraguayense, the common ghost plant found in nearly every garden center succulent section, was actually a rare hybrid variety worth triple the normal price, based entirely on it having a slightly bluer tone than usual. I nearly bought it, mostly because I genuinely wasn’t … Read more
I bought what I thought was a species, paid a species-adjacent price for it, and only realized months later, after actually digging into the plant’s naming, that I’d purchased a specific named cultivar with its own breeding history and market value entirely distinct from the wild species it resembled. The seller hadn’t been dishonest exactly, … Read more
3’I remember the first time I saw a variegated Haworthia listed for more than my monthly rent, and my initial reaction was disbelief bordering on offense. It was a small plant, genuinely striking, but small nonetheless, sitting in a modest nursery pot, priced at a figure that seemed to belong to a different category of … Read more
I sold a Conophytum as a Lithops once, or rather, I nearly did. A local plant swap, a table of mixed mesembs from a grower who’d clearly labeled things in a hurry, and a buyer asking me directly what a small, split, button-like plant actually was. I answered confidently, and I was wrong, only realizing … Read more
I once bought what was advertised as a variegated Haworthia cooperi from an online marketplace, paid a genuinely uncomfortable amount for it, and received a plant that, once it arrived and I could examine it in decent light, turned out to be an ordinary green Haworthia with a slightly pale, possibly stressed leaf that had … Read more
Every collector eventually runs into this experience: you stumble across a photo of some impossibly perfect specimen, fall down a research hole trying to learn everything about it, and then discover that actually finding one for sale is an entirely different challenge from wanting one. Some succulents just aren’t a matter of budget — they’re … Read more
The first crested succulent I ever saw in person stopped me mid-sentence at a plant show. It was a small cactus, or at least it had started as one, except instead of the usual single growing point pushing straight up, it had fanned out into this wavy, folded ridge that looked almost like coral or … Read more
A friend once asked me why I’d pay more for a small, slightly awkward-looking Haworthia than I would for a huge, perfectly symmetrical Echeveria three times its size. It’s a fair question, and one that doesn’t really have a satisfying answer if you’re thinking about succulents purely in terms of size or visual polish. Rarity … Read more
If you’ve spent any time browsing succulent shops or plant groups online, you’ve probably seen these two trailing succulents mentioned in the same breath, often with someone in the comments insisting they’re basically the same plant. They’re not, and the differences matter more than they might seem at first glance, both in terms of how … Read more