Plant of the Month November 2024: Pink Ice Plant (Oscularia deltoides)
Our Plant of the Month this November is a variety of Aizoaceae called Oscularia deltoides, better known as Pink Ice Plant due to the magenta colored flowers that bloom across its trailing stems. This dwarf perennial plant is occasionally referred to as Sandstone Vygie because it often grows amongst the sandstone rocks in the mountains of southwest South Africa. Another name for this succulent is Pink Carpet due to the abundantly flowered pink ground cover it provides when grown outdoors. Regardless of what you choose to call it, the best thing about this succulent is that it has a long flowering season and can bloom from June all the way through October!
However, creating the optimal conditions for blooming these succulents indoors can be tricky. Providing adequate sun exposure, watering, and soil nutrition is key to stimulating plant growth. It’s recommended to provide 6 hours of direct sunlight daily in a south-facing window to encourage flowering. Just be careful to provide your plant baby with shade in the afternoon to avoid sunburn. It’s also very important to ensure good watering habits. Pink Ice Plants prefer hot and dry climates, so frequent watering is the quickest way to kill your plant. You should water them until the root ball of the succulent is wet, then let them *fully dry* before watering again. Less is more, especially in the winter months when the plant goes dormant. Finally, make sure your plant baby is getting the appropriate amount of nutrition in its soil. Pink Ice Plants are more likely to flower when the soil has enough phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen. Be careful to not add too much nitrogen to the soil, or you’ll end up with more leaves than flowers. A slow release fertilizer with a 10-10-10 ratio of each is your best bet to enrich your plant baby’s soil.
Even without flowers though, the Pink Ice Plant is one of the coolest succulents I’ve come across. Its unique leaves are thick, somewhat triangular in shape, and pointy along the edges. To me, they look like fleshy Holly leaves!
Pink Ice Plant (Oscularia deltoides) needs the following care:
Light ☀️ Full Sun to Partial Shade
Water 💧 Only when soil is completely dry. Do not overwater
Grow 🌱 Cold hardy and can tolerate temperatures as low as 15–20°F