Water them and they die. Don't water them and they die. Look at them cross-eyed and they go belly up. This is the fate of those like me who have been spellbound by these oddball succulents that want to get lost in the rocks. In their African homeland of ravenous herbivores, these plants have gone to great lengths to camoflage themselves in a sand and gravel landscape. Living stones are a miracle of adaptation.
This group is headlined by genus Lithops, featuring plants with just two leaf surfaces that resemble the cloven hoof of an ox. Each season they get all soft and wrinkley just before a new set of leaves rises out of the crack in the center.
Fortunately there are experts out there who can keep these tough and tempermental fellows alive. The skilled folks at the Huntington Botanical Gardens manage to do this incredibly well in their greenhouse open to the public most days after 2:00 PM. Even the mild climate of Los Angeles won't make the living stones happy unless conditions are strictly controlled. There is no other display in North America that comes close to the Huntington's collection, some of which I've posted in the Living Stones section of our photo gallery.
