Argyroderma CRATERIFORME

Excellent plants for indoor culture - they take up little space, are unpretentious in care, and winter under apartment conditions without issues. It requires a loose mineral substrate, good drainage. It does not tolerate overwatering. In summer, the plant should receive plenty of direct sunlight and limited watering. In winter, it is kept dry at a temperature of 12-15 °C (54-59 °F).

Seedlings require sufficient light, but during the first months they must be shaded from direct sunlight. It is best to water from below, as with sowings, ensuring that the soil remains only moist, not wet. They are watered occasionally, but more abundantly than adult plants - over-drying is harmful to seedlings. Daily misting is very beneficial. It is best to repot young argyrodermas after a year, unless, of course, the substrate becomes covered with algae and mold. When grown in a small group, the plants feel better than alone. They also get along wonderfully together with lithops, conophytums, and aloinopsis. Roots in argyrodermas (unlike, for example, lithops) are thread-like, so shallower containers suit them. After repotting, plants should not be watered for a week so that root wounds have time to heal.

The soil required is slightly acidic, consisting, for example, of leaf soil and sand (2:3) or a mixture of leaf soil, turf soil, and coarse sand (1:0.5:1). Adult plants are repotted once every 2-3 years. Argyrodermas are watered very carefully, beginning in April and until late autumn. Excess moisture leads to unsightly cracking on the leaves that can destroy the "living stones". During flowering, plants can be fed with a weak solution of cactus fertilizer. In summer they feel comfortable in light partial shade at temperatures above 30 °C (86 °F). In winter and early spring, argyrodermas are kept dry at a minimum temperature of 8 °C (46 °F) (preferably 12-15 °C (54-59 °F)). At this time light is not essential for them, and plants can overwinter somewhere in a dark spot on a wardrobe or on a shelf far from a window.

With proper care, argyrodermas in collections live for a very long time and bloom regularly. Seedlings usually begin blooming after 3-4 years, but cases are known where plants opened their first flowers in the second year after sowing. Solitary buds appear between the leaves on a short pedicel. Yellow, pink, purple-red, or more rarely white, flowers with a diameter from 1.25 to 3.2 cm (0.5 to 1.3 in) open in the middle of the day or closer to evening, and close at night. Flowers last up to 10 days. Unpollinated ones - even longer. In their homeland, argyrodermas bloom in autumn and early winter (from April to June). In the Northern Hemisphere, the flowering period also falls in autumn and early winter (usually from October to December).

The flowers are bisexual; cross-pollination is required to obtain seeds. In nature, "living stones" are pollinated by various insects. In culture, accidental hybridization is not excluded, so if you are certain of the "purity" of your plants, during flowering they should be screened in some way from other species and pollinated "manually".