One of My New Favorites: Delosperma sp.

Delosperma sp. are a group of perennial ice plants from southern Africa. These plants are very easily grown and are an excellent ground cover. They have a nice fleshy leave structure with a solid, tough root base.

I was gifted Delosperma bosseranum seeds last winter and planted a handful before giving away the rest last spring. The photo above is one plant about 2 months old taken in June. The seeds were easily sown, in fact this was one of the easiest plants I have propagated. The seeds were placed on regular cactus soil bought at a Home Depot or Loews. They were then sprayed to keep moist with a lid on top to keep humidity high. After just days, many seeds had propagated. Within weeks they were losing their initial leaves and starting to mature. At that point I placed the trays outside and continued spraying, but started removing the humidity dome. At that point the more powerful plants took over and the smaller ones were lost. Within another week the plants were transferred to a terra cota pots in my backyard. They were absolutely neglected at that point. They do not mind water or lack thereof. I basically allowed the rainwater to take care of them. No fertilizers were used.



By mid summer they had produced small white flowers and started showing evidence for seeds. The above photo, although a bit blurry shows two D. bosseranum. At this point, one can see the tan to brown colored pods throughout. These appeared about two weeks after the tiny gentle white flowers. The pods contain a decent amount of seeds, on mine, an average of about 20 per pod.

At the end of the season these two were brought inside for the winter. Hopefully they can make it through the winter, otherwise I'm going to be looking for another source of seed as I have already given away all of the seed from these two. I am told these can be easily propagated by cutting as well.