I have little experience with "growing" opuntias, at least in more northern areas, but have seen in Italy their habit and observed them in my garden. I am not sure why the remains here are cupped, in my experience - which is of course seeing opuntias untouched no flower removal - the fruit...

Many thanks for the prompt response, Mike. That's close enough!

I sowed seed this plant I think about 12 or 15 years ago (maybe seed from Doug Rowland, amongst a batch of agaves and similar I ordered to grow outside in Italy). This plant did nothing for years, just developing a small hard body, and issuing a few leaves each year. In the last two years it has sud...

Now if only these guys could actually get their act together and ship out their goods without making you wait months after payment...

Thanks Iann I'll take your advice - never give up! Well at least not yet. I would be more confident, I admit though, if even just one seed had germinated out of those 40 packets. As I mentioned, the cactus seed from the same supplier had poor results, the worst I've had from commercial suppliers, so...

Just out of interest, I sowed another batch of 12 species Lithops seed on 25th July and 11 out of 12 germinated fine, still waiting on the 12th. Same conditions as near as dammit re temperature, etc, so whatever the factor (still zero germination from that original batch) involved in the original pr...

Thanks all for the comments. I guess the "too fresh" is the most optimistic answer, although the absence of even a single germination still makes me wonder about iann's thought if some disastrous treatment was at play. And as I said neither was I happy about germination rate for cactus see...

Thanks, Rod and Chris. I am a bit baffled. As I say I actually sowed this on two successive days together with a larger number of packets of seed from two other sources. And that germinated fine and consistently, when even mixed in the same trays and the soil mix was identical. I appreciate I may no...

I ordered and received about 40 packets of Lithops seed from one commercial supplier (I won't mention the name at this stage), and after three weeks had not a single seed germinate. It isn't my sowing technique, necessarily, I sowed at the same time and in some cases in same trays another maybe 60 p...