€10,60

📍 A rarity of nature worthy of admiration. Small and distinguished bronze-toned flowers.

🔍 Morphology: A small, tuberous, perennial, and cespitose succulent that forms compact mats of numerous rosettes. It features a highly reduced stem and a thick, fusiform taproot that acts as a storage organ. The leaves are fleshy, short, and club-shaped, dark bluish-green in color, with a finely rugose surface and small dark spots corresponding to tannin-filled idioblasts. The plant can reach about 5 cm in height and form dense clusters over the years.

📍 Distribution, habitat, and family: It is endemic to South Africa, restricted to the Eastern Cape province, from Willowmore to Steytlerville, where it grows at approximately 900 to 1200 m altitude. It inhabits gravel plains, shales, and silty sediments of the Karoo, within a dry climate region. It belongs to the Aizoaceae family. Nananthus schooneesii is a botanical synonym.

🌡️ USDA ZONE 8b. Tolerates minimum temperatures down to −9 ºC when fully dry and well-acclimated. Some horticultural sources attribute a hardiness close to −12 ºC, but for a rigorous data sheet, it is more prudent not to directly extrapolate isolated experiences with adult plants to young specimens or those grown in pots. During frosts, the substrate must be kept dry.

☀️ Lighting: It requires plenty of light to keep the rosettes compact and flower correctly. It tolerates direct sun during cool periods, but in summer, it must be protected from excessive radiation combined with high temperatures. During active growth, a PAR radiation of more than 20 moles of photons per day is recommended.

🌸 Flowering: It produces solitary flowers, relatively large compared to the size of the leaves, with an appearance similar to a daisy. The petals feature a yellow to orange or yellowish-bronze coloration, with a dark red central line on each petal. Flowering occurs mainly from late winter to spring, although SANBI records a flowering period from June to September in the Southern Hemisphere. The flowers need good lighting to open fully.

💧 Growth cycle and watering: Summer dormancy. It is a species whose growth is mainly linked to cool temperatures. Watering is concentrated during autumn, winter, and spring, providing abundant water and allowing the substrate to dry out completely before the next watering. As temperatures rise in late spring and during the summer, it reduces its activity and may enter dormancy, so watering should be significantly reduced or suspended during periods of intense heat. As temperatures drop, it gradually recovers its activity.

🚀 Nutrition: During the period of active growth, a fertilizer with high content in assimilable calcium and potassium, such as Desert CHOICE® Aizoáceas, is recommended, applied during watering and avoiding excessive nitrogen intake.

📏 This is an inimitable Xerophyte grown in Madrid in a high-tech square pot with the substrate activated with mycorrhizal fungi and biofungicides.

7 × 7 cm gourmet black pot.

* As this is an online purchase, the appearance of the sent specimen may vary slightly from the product image. The plant's measurements are specified in the photo description, but this may also vary slightly, because it is a living being! Each of the plants at Desert CITY has unique characteristics.

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