The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Lithops francisci, commonly known as one of the living stones or pebble plants, is in the family Aizoaceae. It is endemic to the arid desert environments of Namibia. It is a succulent with a natural habitat in rocky areas. L. francisci was assessed by Nicholas Edward Brown in 1925. It is one of the Lithops plants and shares the characteristic bi-leaf head pattern separated by a deep fissure, the bottom of which houses and protects the stunted stem.
L. francisci is a desert perennial. It thrives in climates that are dry and have moderately low annual temperatures. It requires coarse, well-drained sandy soils and is therefore usually found on rocky hillsides. Its habitat tends to have a lot of metamorphic rock such as schist and gneiss, which also matches the natural coloration of the plant. This adaptation acts as a camouflage, preventing easy predation of the plant's succulent, nutrient rich tissue. The annual rainfall in the population range of L. francisci varies from 0 to 99 millimetres (0.0 to 3.9 in) per year, and temperatures fluctuate in the range 9–20 °C (48–68 °F).
Lithops amicorum · Aucamps Living Stone · Langberg Stonefig · Lithops coleorum · Lithops comptonii · Lithops dinteri · Lithops divergens · Lithops dorotheae · Lithops fulviceps · Lithops gesineae · Lithops geyeri · Lithops gracilidelineata
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Lithops francisci by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
