You guys… this is so sad. And so funny.
Caelie Wilkes had a beautiful succulent that she took pride in keeping healthy. In fact, she miraculously kept it alive for two years!
The problem? It was a fake plant. Boy, did she have a story to tell about that .
Meet Caelie Wilkes.
She’s a mom and (fake) plant lover residing in California. And recently, she had the shock of her life when she discovered her beloved succulent wasn’t, well, real at all.
Meet her succulent.
“I’ve had this beautiful succulent for about 2 years now. I was so proud of this plant,” she wrote in a now-viral Facebook post.
Hey, that’s a pretty cute succulent, let’s not lie.
Everything about it was perfect.
“It was full, beautiful coloring, just an over all perfect plant,” she said.
She also took caring for it very seriously. If she wasn’t doing it on her own, it couldn’t be her accomplishment!
That plant was her pride and joy.
“I had a watering plan for it, if someone else tried to water my succulent I would get so defensive because I just wanted to keep good care of it.”
And then she got an idea.

This is where things started to go downhill.
“Today I decided it was time to transplant, I found the cutest vase, that suited it perfectly.”
She is a good plant owner, okay?
Alright, here we go:

“I go to pull it from the original plastic container it was purchased with to learn this plant was FAKE.”
That picture is the single saddest picture I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how a hand can look defeated, but it just does .
She was devastated, to say the least.
“I put so much love into this plant! I washed it’s leaves. Tried my hardest to keep it looking it’s best, and it’s completely plastic!”
She even washed the leaves! Y’all, when I say I cried laughing, I am 100% telling the truth.
Her whole plant life flashed before her eyes.

“How did I not know this. I pull it from the container it’s sitting on Styrofoam with sand glued to the top! I feel like these last two years have been a lie.”
Pictured above: real succulents.
And no, she didn’t really question the water thing.

I also wondered how she watered it. Caelie told Buzzfeed that she just didn’t see it.
“Succulents don’t require a ton of water, so I never noticed water puddling up,” she said.
Pictured above: another real succulent. Just for the record.
The story blew up so much that Home Depot heard about it.
They loved it so much that they decided to hook her up with some real succulents.
“They found the closest Home Depot and had them on my doorstep the same day,” she told ABC13 .
And now she has a whole Instagram dedicated to her plant family.
Caelie decided to make an Instagram (@caelies_succulents) to document her journey through taking care of real plants for the first time.
Not to worry, though. She still has her little fake succulent. It is a star, after all.
Last Updated on March 10, 2020 by Brittany Rae