🐾 Maybe the reason I love animals so much, is because the only time they have broken my heart is when theirs has stopped beating.
Showing posts with label echeveria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label echeveria. Show all posts

Friday 15 June 2012

Echeverias - Nature's wonders

 

My Echeverias are really enjoying the winter sunshine and less watering and have produced some gorgeous little flowers. 

Echeveria is a large genus of succulents in the Crassulaceae family, native from Mexico to North-western South America. Many of the species produce numerous offsets, and are commonly known as 'Hen and chicks', which can also refer to other genera such as Sempervivum that are significantly different from Echeveria. Sempervivums cannot tolerate the heat that Echeverias can, so mine grow primarily in pots on my patio or in the house.

  
Some Echeveria elegans in a pot 

Some Echeverias can mimic Sempervivums very closely so I understand the confusion this causes.  But when in doubt about what genus one has in one's collection, all doubts will vanish as soon as the plant flowers since the two genera have very different flowers. Echeveria flowers are not fuzzy, are often arching and the flowers themselves are quite succulent and bell-shaped. Sempervivum flowers are non-succulent and usually pink with thin, narrow, aster-like petals often on oversized inflorescences.  And if still not convinced, one only need wait for flowering to end, as most Echeverias flower yearly while Sempervivums are monocarpic (die after flowering).



 
Part of my Echeveria collection 

Many Echeveria species are popular as garden plants. They are drought-resistant, although they do better with regular deep watering and fertilizing. Although they tolerate winter quite well, the winter frost here in Tarlton is quite severe and often I take them out of the garden, putting them into pots and bringing them into the house, especially those that have got long stems and are not compact and dense any more.

  
Another section of the garden with a couple of Echeverias 

Echeverias need bright light, heavy soil and excellent drainage. When grown in soil-less mixes, they grow large and lush and lose their colour and character. Many of the plants have a waxy sheen on their leaves. When they are watered over the top, the water collects in drops and spots the leaves when it dries. These spots are especially noticeable when the water is high in minerals. Drench and let dry. Water from below.

  
My Echeverias in full flower 

These lovely plants are moderately fast growers. If your plant begins to show more and more space between the leaves, it is stretching and needs more light to help it keep a compact rosette shape.

 
The lovely pink edges on Echeveria glauca - this one is growing in the shade and the space between the leaves shows it is reaching for more light. 

In general these are inexpensive easy plants, popular mostly because of their ornamental flower-shaped, thick-leaved succulent rosettes and wonderful colours and textures... but their low cost certainly helps, too. Most Echeverias are suckering plants, eventually forming small (or large) colonies of closely growing plants. My original collection started with a few Echeverias given to me by my father in the late 80's. This suckering/offsetting behaviour makes them particularly ornamental pot plants as, in time, most will offset enough to completely fill a pot, often spilling over the edges and making living bouquets of succulent rosettes.

  
Echeverias hanging over pot 

 
 Echeveria glauca in flower

  
Two Echeverias in a pot in the garden 

Camera : Kodak EasyShare C195 
Location : My garden, Tarlton, South Africa. 

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Friday 16 March 2012

Practicing cactus

(A warning: If you have any propensity towards cactus love to begin with, moving to the desert will increase it exponentially!)

A long-standing passion - a passion most people find utterly boring and something only a cactus-lover will understand - THE LOVE OF CACTUS. So maybe this post is not for you, but if it is, read on!

It all started in the 1980's, when my (well-meaning) father gave me three Echeverias in a pot. I couldn't turn them down and hurt his feelings, but I had NO interest in those three succulents! When I got home, I hastily stuck them in the ground in some far-away corner in the garden, hoping they would disappear.

Echeveria glauca

A few months later I was working in the garden and decided to do something about that 'little lost corner' of my garden. Upon investigating, to my surprise, the three Echeverias had multiplied and there were dozens of them, all displaying the most gorgeous little pink bell-shaped flowers on long stalks. I was hooked! I mean, forgotten and neglected, NO attention whatsoever, yet they blossomed forth with the most gorgeous gifts. I felt so guilty I almost cried!


Now those spiky flat coins and furry ground knobs make me go nuts. Finding a new specie not in my collection is like striking gold - my stomach churns, my heart starts pounding and I just HAVE to have it!

I can spend hours fiddling with my cacti and succulents, removing seedlings and siblings from the garden and potting them in terracotta pots, I have displays all over the house, on various patios and in my garden shed. You'll find them on window sills, tree stumps, on little tables, in terracotta pots, jam tins, glass jars, buckets, cracked coffee mugs, on wooden palettes, on my desk, next to my computer, in fact, anywhere there is a flat surface! And heaven forbid I come across someone selling them at a market stand, I could buy up all their stock!

'They' say "It takes real guts to love a cactus!", but I have found it the easiest thing in the world!

I need to get some more!

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Prickly... (Cactus Echinopsis oxygona) - a Dung Beetle brooch hand-crafted with black glass jewels, silver wire and silver solder, sitting on a little piece of driftwood . bird's nest in Abelone shell (Perlemoen)

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and smooth.... (Echeveria elegans)

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prickly... (Aloe ciliaris)

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and smooth... (Haworthia Cymbiformis)

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prickly... (Aloe ferox)

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and smooth... (Gasteria)

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prickly and smooth... a collection on a wooden palette on my Patio. Rat-tail cactus far left and front right - Old Man's beard behind that, Aloes and Echeverias in metal tub.

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mostly smooth... Gasterias, Echeverias and some cacti on a Vintage Pine table in my Flower Room

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prickly... My latest acquisition - A cactus in an enamel bowl surrounded by four Haworthias and a tiny succulent peeping through the pebbles

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smooth - Echeveria glauca in an old concrete cast

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Thursday 1 March 2012

March gifts

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."
- Charles Dickens

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Echeverias taking in the early-morning sun
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A metal Lizard on a rock

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A feather resting on an air-plant

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