Gasteria Ellaphiae

I got this Gasteria Ellaphiae from a friend last spring as a thumb-sized baby with a couple of leaves and no roots, stuck it in a pot and ignored it for six months. It seems to be very happy.

As you can see from the photo, there’s five or six new clusters of leaves growing on all sides and the original plant even flowered. (The clipped stem from the flower is that whitish-yellow thing that looks like a tongue sticking out of the leaf cluster facing you in the photo.)

Unlike some succulents, these guys actually like light-to-medium shade and do quite well in it as long as the soil is warm and generally dry. I rarely water them, maybe once every couple of weeks in mid-summer when it’s really hot and there hasn’t been rain for several months. The rest of the year I don’t bother.

Each of the leaf clusters on the Gasteria can be divided and make a new plant, but I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m moving it into the succulent garden and letting it grow wild. I’m curious to see how it look in a natural environment instead of a pot.