book3 600x120 7

by Heather
(Winnipeg, MB)

two-sad-succulents-21707257

All three succulents

thumb_two-sad-succulents-21707257
thumb_two-sad-succulents-21707258
thumb_two-sad-succulents-21707259

I bought 3 little succulents a year or so ago and two of them are having issues…

One of them is getting really long and lanky, and the bottom leaves are turning yellow.

On the other, I just noticed it has purplish-red rings on its stems, mostly close to the bottom and up to about halfway up.

I live in Manitoba, in a basement apartment with grates on the windows and have them in the brightest spot I can give them, but I’m still not sure if it’s enough light.

After reading the “why is my plant dying?” page, I realize I should probably repot all three of them.

My questions are:

  1. Can you identify what they are?
  2. What does the lanky one want?
  3. Are those rings a disease, an injury, or normal growth?

Thanks,
Heather

Hi Heather, in northern climates, even if the plants are in the brightest light you can give them, if they’re not getting additional light to give them 12 hours of good bright light, they will show this long lanky growth.

So, to try and answer your questions:

The lanky one, I don’t recognize. It doesn’t seem familiar to me, which may be just that it’s not showing characteristic growth. I would say that it’s showing real signs of stress, because of the lack of light.

You can take off any of those lower leaves, they won’t recover now.

When you see this, where the older leaves start to die off, it’s mostly due to lack of light, or possibly some other factor; not enough water, or too much water, or lack of nutrients.

Without knowing what it is, I can’t really say more than that.

The other one, with the paler green leaves looks like either one of the Sedeveria, which are actually a hybrid of Sedum and Echeveria – they typically show some of the characteristics of either of them in varying degrees.

The dark parts on the stem can be just a normal aging process, and in time, the stem becomes really woody and tree like.

In some cases, this can be the start of rot, which generally starts right at the soil level, and then works its way up.

This leads me to the next point:

You may want to continually cut the plant back and ‘re-make’ it by taking the parts you cut off and make them into cuttings, so that you have replacements eventually and can discard the original plant.

Hope that helps with your collection!
Jacki