They Are Just Different That Way

Who doesn't find plant and animal life, in all it diversity, completely captivating. I do. I always have. Growing up in the hills of West Virginia my mother and daddy told me all about the trees and edible wild plants and wildflowers growing along the hollows and hill sides of our home. I learned & knew them all. They all intrigued me. When I moved to Florida many years ago I inherited a completely new and different classroom of living things. The plants and animals living at latitude 29 degrees N. An example is the Live Oak. The live oak is an ever green tree here. At a undisclosed time somewhere around late February and early March brand new live oak leaves are born and begin to grow
And at the same time they seemingly shove last year's leaves off the branches. This happens so inconspicuously that only the most astute observer notices it. This same tree is  unique as well for it is home to a myriad of other plants. It's branches are litteraly a Florida Condominium Complex for various odd plant species. To name a few: the resurrection plant and resurrection fern both live on its branches. Both go completely dormant and unnoticed by passerbys until...until the rainy season. They revive and every branch of the Live Oak tree is lush and green with plants that need no soil. Which reminds me of another inhabitant of Live Oak City. Air Plants.. various species of air plants live there. Also the ball moss and the tallandsia their distinctive silver pendoulous forms many feet in length hang happily from the Live Oak branches.
But I meant to tell you about a family of plants that live here called succulents. Probably the most well known of these is the Aloe. Several species of Aloe grow wild here. I collected some a couple years back and that was the beginning of what has become a fairly large collection of succulents. Succulents have adapted the ability to retain liquid in the leaves & stems and so they can withstand long periods without any care whatsoever. Hence the perfect plant. They live happily here on our porch at our house on a hot, sandy, mostly sunny all the time, island in the Gulf of Mexico. I'll tell you how hot and sandy it is here. I do not mow grass. There just isn't grass to mow. Just sand and a few tenacious weeds that I periodically beat to death with the weed eater. So the succulents are at home here. They have mostly originated in Central & South Africa. Think Sahara. So there is very little I can do to kill them ...except perhaps care for them too much.
They are all, at best, unusual. And many are down right strange. The Pliosphylos Neelei also called split rock is one of them. See the photo below. It is a mimicry plant. It mimics a rock and has no more than 4 "leaves" at a time. These leaves  actually look like round smooth stones with a split down the center.
Another strange one is the Kalanchoe Laetiverins, the mother of Thousands. It reproduces by growing thousands of new plants along the perimeter of its leaves. The new plants of this succulent are fully formed, complete with tiny roots. These new baby plantlets eventually began to drop off the parent plant and grow wherever they find sand.