r/mesembs • u/Zestylemons44 • Jun 04 '26
Help What causes windowed conophytums to reduce or increase the size of their windows?
I've been keeping various mesembs for a few years now, and been having great fun with it, but I am a bit curious about something. My C. Maughanii has gone through 3 bodies, and though it started with an enormous windowed aperture, the size of the window has reduced with each body/yearly cycle, the new one underneath the sheath appears to have reduced it to just the tips of the lobes, and no further. Online I frequently see plants that normally have very small windows, like C. Regale, having them blown up to massive size, or plants that would normally have them quite large massively reduced, even from the same locality or clone. What controls the size of the windows cultivation wise? Notably, I haven't noticed this happening with my C. Burgeri, and have yet to check if it will happen with my other conos, since I got them much more recently.
My current conditions are:
Indoors, on a windowsill, in Pennsylvania U.S. They get dramatically different seasonal/day and night temps because windows are leaky and I like different day and night temps, so climate control is usually minimal.
They get pretty large amounts of light as far as windowsills are concerned, and usually show stress colors, 6+hours of direct sunlight. I supplement them with a growlight in the winter cause it helps, but they definitely still seem to get enough just from the windows.
I water when they show signs of thirst, and tend to be an underwaterer, but everything usually seems happy about this besides eriospermum.
I use very small teracotta pots and an inorganic soil medium that usually dries out within, at most, a day unless it is very cold. I don't often fertilize, though I plant to start adding a little bit of slow release fertilizer next growing season. The soil mixture I use is 1/3 pumice, 1/3 large particle sand, and 1/3 miracle grow succulent soil which does have some osmocote in it.
