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 used to keep this argument going in my head every time I bought a new specimen, standing in front of a shelf of empty pots trying to decide which material was “correct” for a plant I’d just spent an uncomfortable amount of money on. For years I assumed there had to be one right … Read more
I put off repotting a rare Ariocarpus for almost two years longer than I should have, entirely out of fear. I’d read enough horror stories in collector forums, plants that seemed perfectly healthy going into a repot and then collapsed within weeks afterward, that I convinced myself the safest option was simply not to touch … Read more
For a long time, I treated every stall in growth as a problem to be solved. A plant that stopped putting out new leaves, stopped plumping up, stopped doing anything visible at all, felt like a plant that needed intervention, more water, more light, maybe a feed to nudge it back into motion. It took … Read more
For the first few years I spent collecting succulents seriously, I thought I had the fundamentals figured out. I understood light, I understood watering, I’d read enough to know that soil composition mattered more than most beginners assume. What I didn’t think about at all, not once, was air movement. It genuinely never occurred to … Read more
I killed my first genuinely rare succulent not with neglect, but with kindness. A Conophytum I’d been babying for months finally looked strong enough to “reward,” so I hit it with a full-strength houseplant fertilizer meant for tropical foliage, the kind of product that promises lush, rapid growth. Within a week the tight little body … Read more