Alenka -

we have a lady in our club who loves them and grows them to the size of a dinnerplate. She keeps them in a shallow trays,has her stands covered with plastic to increase humidity, lets them grow and spread in the pot - doesn't repot too often - and says that if you keep them cold and humid - they grow perfect and fast.

The thing is - if you stress them up - and 83F can be a stress - they go into blooming - and after blooming they send suckers all over the place - and it is an end to this mama plant - it will look like crazy mop. But the bloom is a treat. :-))

Irina

PS I got mine dry for a couple of times - they all blooming now - except P. parryorum - never bloomed for me yet.

Thanks, Irina! That's good to know about humidity. I too want to grow one like a dinner plate! :) I guess I'll try one in a colder spot, 50-60F, and one in a 60-70F spot, and I'll cover both for humidity, and I'll see what happens. Sounds like a plan.

And thanks for the tip on stress and flowering -- I guess I'll put down a few more leaves so that I have back up baby plants ready if/when summer heat drives the big plants into crazy blooming things.

Looked up P. parryorum, that's neat how different it is from the tightly growing ones. It's a cool genus.

This is kind of neat, so I figured I'd post about it :) After Irina's reply I looked up Petrocosmea parryorum, and I really liked it, so I got a small plant. A couple of leaves were slightly bruised, so I took them off and put them down for propagation. That was about a month ago, and now each leaf has 3 plantlets, but both leaves have no roots! Not a single root! Both the leaves and the plantlets look really healthy, so evidently they aren't missing the roots at all! Anyway, just thought this was neat, that's all :)

Oh, and Irina's suggestion to keep petrocosmeas cold and humid is doing wonders to my P. forrestiis -- they are growing faster than I expected, and very symmetrical, and the new leaves have a much healthier color than the ones the plants came with when I bought them. Thanks, Irina!

You are welcome.

There are a couple interesting petrocosmeas you can grow - P. rosettifolia - the name is not official - but it is very pretty - and P. kerrii - this one is the fuzziest of them all.
Actually all of them are lovely...

Irina

Here is a link that might be useful: Petrocosmeas on a GesneriadWeb