After watching for a while, I'm now 100% sure that my rubra is splitting. I was never able to find any progress images of lithops optica splitting; I could only ever find pictures of them in the later stages of growing in their new leaves, so I've decided to document mine. I'm aiming to take a progress picture every one to two weeks.
11th February 2018
At this point, I wasn't even sure if the lithops was splitting. L. optica has very pronounced fissures, so it's still difficult to tell, even in hindsight. The wrinkles could be a clue, but then again, the plant could have just been slightly thirsty.
17th February 2018
After a particularly sunny week, the outer leaves are starting to part just a tiny bit. The new leaf pair is very slightly visible, but it's not easy to see in the pictures. I think the warmer temperature and sunlight may have triggered the splitting.
25th February 2018
The outer leaves have drawn back a decent amount over the past week, and the new leaf pair is now clearly visible. It's still a bit difficult to make out in pictures due to my lack of skill and lighting. I've tried to make up for it by using flash for a couple of pictures. You can tell the flash-assisted pictures by the deeper shades of purple and the easily visible green of the new growth coming through.
4th March 2018
There was a deep freeze last week: temperatures were well below what they usually are at this time of year, and there was very little sunshine. It even snowed and stuck, which is very rare in my area. I'm not really sure how much the weather affects new growth, but the inner leaves seem to be doing OK. You can see them a little bit better than last week.
11th March 2018
I'm now 90% convinced that the deep freeze two weeks ago slowed down the splitting pace. It's been just a week and the inner leaves are very clearly visible now, even in pictures. I no longer have to take pictures in good lighting and from a specific angle to capture them.
You can now see the shape of the new leaves - the tops are rounded and are developing the pronounced fissure characteristic to lithops optica. I took a few shots of the inner parts of the old leaves, to show how wrinkly they're starting to get.
I suspected it before, but it's now obvious that the inner leaves are very green. I wonder how long it takes for them to change colour. I hope the plant isn't prematurely splitting!
19th March, 2018
I was quite busy the whole of last week, and only had time to check on my rubra on Monday evening rather than over the weekend, as I usually do. Well, sometime on the past 10 days, the new leaves turned purple! Gutted that I missed the transition, but at least I'm not worried about the leaves being green anymore. I got curious about how the outer leaves feel and gave them a gentle prod. They're still fairly firm.
Note that the below pictures were taken on Tuesday morning.
-v-
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