Transcript:
I haven’t seen these plants around recently, and I just found this at a local garden center, so I thought why not talk about how to care for our thea black gem? Join me! Liquidy broke on me. It might have sounded like. I mispronounce the name of this plant. I wore Thea and the reason that it sounds like that is because this plant has the combination of two different genera names a low being one. And who were Thea being the other? That’s because this is a by generic cross, so the two parent plants too in our Thea, originally were a low speciosa and her were Thea Simba Formas. I did get this information from a website called world of Succulents, which, if you like succulent plants at all and are ever looking for information, I would definitely suggest it. It’s a great database to check in to for information about care and just identification of plants that you have already another thing about the Alwar Thea’s name. That may be confusing to you. Especially with this specimen is the cult of our name. Black gem. This plant has not had a whole lot of sunlight, at least not super bright light. It doesn’t seem to have been unhappy wherever it was. I just got this maybe two weeks ago at a local garden center and they had just gotten them in when I chose it from a local grower. So wherever it was, it didn’t have too much sunlight. The reason that these are called black gem is they can take on a really dark color. If they have a much brighter light that they are exposed to, it can be black purpley kind of reddish bronze. I guess brownish All those colors can come out in an individual plant, just depending on how much Sun it has. How much water it’s receiving. Those are all things that will affect the color. If you’re out war, Thea, so if you have one of these, how do you know? That’s what you have. If it’s not labeled because a lot of times I have seen these Ive. I’ve kept these a lot. Obviously I go through my plants kind of quickly because a lot of mine are being sold in arrangements. I saw lots of arrangements. Individual plants to people locally, so my collection tends to have a lot of turnover very quickly. So I’ve kept one of these. I don’t know in a year, maybe more because I haven’t been seeing him around, but it’s one easy way to know these is just kind of the feel of the leaf. It’s kind of different than just about anything else. I can’t think of any other succulent plant that that really has the same feel to its leaves. They’re pretty thick. When they’re well watered, they have kind of if you look at them. From the top of star shape, they have these. They’re like quasi teeth. They’re not definitely not harsh to touch there and you can just see them just very, very little bit here along the bottom of the leaf margin, but usually you’ll see them on the tips of the leaf margin like right up here and they pop very easily. They have tons and tons of offsets. Here’s a nice-sized. One here are some wee little babies. There’s another pretty good-sized one little baby. I think those are some babies tucked in, and then another nice sized one, and so they like to grow with crowded roots, usually when I get one of these unless someone is requesting it in a succulent arrangement, I don’t repot them because they’re used to growing this with us. How they would grow if they were out in nature, so lets. Talk some light requirements if you have an hour. Thea, they can tolerate quite low light. Of course, we know that because they’re cross between a Lowe’s and home or theists, which both plants don’t tolerate as much near as much light as a lot of other succulents, however, it can tolerate quite a bit of Sun as well, so it’s a it’s a really versatile plant and it all kind of just depends on. What do you want it to look like? If you want to have that really deep, dark color, then you need to allow your plants more stress with more direct. Sun and less frequent waterings. It’s just when they do get water. Then you have to make it a pretty significant watering. If you would like to grow this plant in your outdoor space, you will either have to have it in a pot and bring it in during as soon as the temperatures start dipping down into the 40s or if you live in a zone 9 through 12 you can actually plant it in your landscape, and then you’ll have quite a sizable plant that will just then continue to just clump. This whole thing will just turn into a fantastic clump of beautiful plants. I also wanted to talk to you about the toxicity of this plant, actually. I did research. There’s just not much out there about this plant, so I couldn’t find anything that said yes. This plant is poisonous or no. This plant is not so if you have a plant that looks like this, or if you know for sure that you do have an out war theá–. Then I would definitely keep it away from your pets and your children, young children. You know, you don’t want to risk it if it’s something that could be harmful to them, and I always say to, you know, if you have a child or a an animal, that’s even just chewing on because this is so rough, It would be hard to digest and it would even be even if it wasn’t poisonous to them, it could still be a choking hazard or even cause damage to the internal workings, the internal organs and things of your child or your pet, so just err on the side of safety and keep it up and out of reach on a final note. Don’t be discouraged if you have a plant that looks like this. But it’s been labeled as an aloe blacc gem or a hoe or Thea, because many of the big-box stores actually do label them as I’ve actually seen this labeled as a whole war. Thea and actually, if you’ve ever watched my one of my hoe or Thea videos, I don’t remember which one it is, but it’s one of them where I showed all the horthy as I had in my collection at the time. I I knew that this was called a hoe or Thea, but it didn’t ever give a call to Var and what I had had at the time was an hour war. Thea, black gem. Somebody one of my viewers did identify it much later on, and I’ve had them Come and go since then, but anyway, if you do have yours labeled like that, don’t feel you know like oh. I’ve got something else. No, this is what you have. For some reason, they just haven’t made that correction on their labels, and I don’t know why, but anyway, this is such a fantastic plant. I mean, it is so easy to grow my friends. You won’t regret owning one of these and it’s beautiful and the way that it just pops and turns into a fantastic clump of plants. You’ll really have something beautiful in your plant collection if you buy one of these and just really love it. I hope you’ll have a great week. I’ll see you in the next video.