As I was tidying up my plants yesterday, I noticed that one of the new mesembs I bought on Sunday had turned a little yellow on the bottom leaves and I wondered what it was up to. This morning, the sorry state of affairs is plain to see - the shark's teeth has succumbed to rot. The yellow bottom leaves and the slight wrinkling at the lower part of the uppermost leaf tell me that the plant is busy turning to mush inside.
The sad thing about mesembs is that when that happens, there's no saving them. Some plants can be salvaged by taking a sharp knife and removing all rot and allowing it to re-root but with these, it's automatically a goner and the recriminations and post mortem analysis can begin: "was it too hot? too cold? Should I have refrained from watering it?"
These are normally very easy-going plants so it's a surprise when one decides that the shock of moving is too much for it, although it's actually inevitable that you will lose one occasionally. I also see, on closer inspection that the plant had a few scale insects on it so perhaps it was just in a weakened state.
On the bright side, the babytoes hasn't died yet and we are on to day four so I live in hope. One day at a time...