Location Taken: Garfield Park Conservatory
Time Taken: April 2008
I love succulents. If you don’t know, those are the plants with the thick fleshy water-filled leaves, like aloes and the plants above. They have those thick leaves to store water, since they tend to live in dry or arid climates. Many of them are desert plants, while others live in the canopies of trees, where there is nothing else to keep the water in place.
This means they tend to be pretty hardy plants. If you forget to water them one day, or one week, they’ll do just fine. This also makes them great for window boxes and potted plants, both of which don’t have much soil around them to hold in the moisture.
I’ve had some succulents decorating my place before, in college. I really like how they look, and I’m not the best about remembering to water plants anyway. I’ve mostly had aloes, including one with the white speckles like you see on this plant (which isn’t an aloe, by the way). I don’t have any of them any more, alas. While they can manage one week without water, two is pushing it, and my college had two week long winter and spring breaks. The plants could usually manage one or two of such breaks, they’d eventually fade and die.
Though it probably didn’t help that I keep my room dark, so they weren’t even getting as much sunlight as they would like… Ah well, that’s why I only buy highly resilient plants, and why my current pair are outside, getting some sunlight…
