Lithops: Sometimes They Get Stuck

Gardener Rika of Lithops Stories had an interesting post this week about Lithops that get...stuck.  They start to regenerate, then just sit there, sometimes for months, while their brothers and sisters are already fully releafed and living energetic, purposeful lives. Frustrating!

Collectively, the commenters on Rika's blog came up with three options for helping a comatose Lithops:
1. Leave it alone. It's just doin' what it's doin' and it's none of your business.
2. Water it. This can jolt it awake, so it gets moving with regeneration. It's the Cold Shower Treatment!
3. Surgery. Cut away the old leaves so the young ones can grow, and the Lithops won't be "stacked". Or alternately, cut the old leaves open to release the new leaves.

I've tried all three methods. The safest is to simply leave it alone. Eventually, they usually wake up and get moving. That happened with this Lithops:

It sat like this forever (OK, months), and long past when the other Lithops had finished releafing, it suddenly woke from its torpor and POP! big new leaves, and the old ones were absorbed in less than a week. For a Lithops, that is seriously fast and furious.

Option 2 has worked for me...sometimes. But one set of stuck Lithops just turned to goo when I watered it. If I use this option again, I'll give the Lithops only a few drops of water from a pipette, not a full watering.

Option 3 has worked well, with one caveat. Leaves that are cut to be more fully open, as with the Lithops below, will certainly survive, but the new leaves seem to grow very slowly.

I cut the old leaves along the sides to separate them and let the new leaves come through, as it was stacked and stuck. You can see the scars from the cuts where the old leaves divide. They healed quickly and the new leaves are doing fine. They are just slow-growing, and haven't fully absorbed the old leaves. I speculate that the new leaves can't drain the old leaves as efficiently if the old leaves are cut. But the plant survives, so surgery can be worth a try.

I would add another option if you live where Lithops can live outdoors. A couple of very stuck Lithops were replanted outside. Sure enough, the extra light (but not extra heat) gave them a boost, and they regenerated quickly. On the other hand, re-planting or re-potting a stuck Lithops might kill it; I may have just been lucky.

Hopefully other Lithops bloggers can post on this topic, too, as it seems to be very common, and very perplexing!