A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Delosperma cooperi
Blue succulent with pink stalks and elongated leaf tips. Upright growth but spreads allowing it to be a good ground cover for landscaping. The flowers are bright magenta with a yellow center.
Growing on hillside as a ground cover with full sun and infrequent watering.
Aka Cooper's Ice Plant
Spotted on Aug 30, 2011
Submitted on Aug 30, 2011
12 Comments
Cindy BinghamKeiser - What a follow up! A month later...
I LOVE ice plants as ground cover...they grow well here in Georgia. The ground here is clay - similar to orange clay pots you see in stores. About has hard as those pots too. But, leaves and organic matter fall and breakdown on top and if iceplants take root, they will hold the organic material down pretty well. They are evergreen here - at least some of the color flowers are. They are all light green leaves here. I have many pictures of ice plants on my Project Noah spottings. Mine look a little different, but they are an awesome plant. You can take a piece of one, and rip it off and as long as you have a node or two, and it touches soil and stays moist, it will start to grow in the new location. I learned this by accident when my dog ran through it and kicked some pieces further down the little hill. Next year, I had the original and the new plants. It was an awesome discovery.
It flowered!!!! Based on the great information I received when I initially posted this spotting, it appears to be Ice Plant.
Wow, great information Heather. Thank you! No flowers yet :) I'll keep checking.
This is why I asked if there was a flower or not. Ice plants tend to flower all year with stick-like flowers. Purslanes seem to flower larger flowers and have flatter leaves. Portulaca seem to have more iceplant-like leaves and can have double or single flowers with the single flowers looking like Purselane. Colors are wide for all plants.
Compare some of these:
Purslane/Portulaca SIngle and double flowers = http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/645...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/638...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/638...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/640...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/641...
Purslane (flatter leaf) = http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/638...
Ice plant Peach color (the purple looks like it, just purple) = http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/641...
Purple Ice Plant in full noon bloom (the camera made the first one look pink - they are the same plant at different times of the year.)
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/644...
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/640...
it reminds me of purple ice plant
@cindyBK -- Yes, it's nice to see our county through another's eyes!
Thank you so much for the help! I'll keep my eyes open when we finally get some rain :) @avatb, it's nice to see more So-Cal people on here!
if it's without flowers most of the year, then it's not a Portulaca. I have some on my spottings and the foliage is similar to what you have here, but Portulacas have flowers most of the year.
Cindy, I ask because if there are flowers then you would look more in the Portulaca type of succulent. There are many varieties of succulent that look like that but the flowers make the difference in the ID. You could try a search for succulent buying, and get a ton of info online. The sellers are interested in selling, so they put good pics and decent descriptions. Use your USDA zone and you'll get even better information when searching.
This will flower in the spring after we've had some rain here in SoCal.
Thank you Heather. There weren't any flowers at the time but I see them a lot and will keep checking every once in a while.
Very pretty. Did you see any flowers on it?