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Lynn & Co: I received the plant I photographed and uploaded today from Sequim Rare Plants, titled only Sempervivum 'Atroviolaceum.' Let me know if it's in the wrong category... Thanks! MR

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Clone 1: light green leaves with brown tips, beautiful lashes

Erwin Geiger
Clone 1: An American culture from the 70s and yet hardly known: fresh green rosettes with strong dark brown tips which form a compact tuff. The leaf margins have strikingly white cilia. For some time, a plant called "White eyelash" has surfaced that seems very identical to the plant.


Volkmar Schara
Clone 2: makes large pink to red rosettes, showing striking colors, especially in summer. A unique plant that I have in the collection for a long time.

There are no photos or other reference made to this second version on Beautiful.

Lynn Smith
The above description for clone 1 is a perfect match for this wonderful sempervivum. Every part of the description is present in this sempervivum, from the fresh green color, dark brown tips, and the very noticeable white cilia/lashes lining the leaves. An easy one to fit in almost anywhere because of its smaller size of 2 to 3 inches diameter for a mature rosette.

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Description of S. 'Nightwood' as given in The Sempervivum Society Journal Volume 7 (1976), No. 2:

"Growing to quite a size this hybrid has a tight central bud of incurved leaves, the tips of which are reflexed and have a minute tuft of hairs. Colour is greyed purple."

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In zone 9b, semp was planted in stone container. Easily retained shape and form in uncovered container last winter. Fuzzy texture colored a frosty pale rose in spring. What a robust little sempervivum!

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This semp has nice watermarks and displays beautiful color year-round. It propagates at a medium rate, but the chicks grow at a rather slow pace. One of my favorites!

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S. 'Carmen' leaves are long and moderately wide. In hot weather the rosettes have faint to moderate watermarks that are lovely against its summer green color. It is a heavy producer of offsets and has good uniformity of form to the rosettes.
I find that it handles both heavy winter/spring rain, and hot summer drought season in my Pacific Northwest raised beds.
It is green year round, but does change the shade of green depending on the season. From fall to early summer it has lovely reddish/brown accents to the tips and sides of the leaves that make a pretty contrast to the green leaves.

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This is a newly arrived (summer of 2012) sempervivum from Europe. As you can see from the photos above, it has unusual color, and something of a water lily form. The leaves are covered in very short cilia, giving a velvet texture to the leaves, which are also a bit thicker than those of the average sempervivum. It seems to be slow to produce, and it produces only a few offsets in a growing season.
It seems to tolerate the Pacific Northwest's heavy winter/spring rain season.

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Chromaphyto said:Here are some pictures of Sempervivum calcareum that I photographed on the Rocher du Caire (altitude 777 m/2500 feet) above Remuzat, Drôme, France, July 14, 2014.
Rocher du Caire is known to be a popular area for watching Griffon vultures, they were successfully reintroduced a few years ago. This is a very accessible unique perspective by a small road. Just 15 minutes walk to get there
Tourists therefore look to the sky to see the vultures and I look at my feet to photograph what no one is looking at: beautiful groups of Sempervivum calcareum !
Panorama at the Rocher du Caire summit

We continue on a ridge to the mountain Le Devès (altitude 1048 m). The walk is very easy and rises gradually.
After 10 minutes, you begin to encounter groups of Sempervivum calcareum more dense along the ridge.
After a moment, there are thousands of Sempervivum, 10,000 .... 20,000 ... 30,000, I don't know !
Some groups of plants are green, others red. It depends on the food and water they have at their disposal.

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Here is a very interesting quote from Kevin Vaughn, talking about a new seedling from S. 'St. Cloud'. I hope this lovely seedling will be named and placed on the market.

JungleShadows said:Lynn,

Well I certainly enjoyed the visit! It's always good to have another set of eyes look over the seedlings. Hope the little class in crossing was a help too. I think you know about pollen now and where it should go and how you have to wait until the flower is at the right stage.

The seedling that you couldn't read is a new baby from 'St. Cloud' X self. It has both tufts of hairs and lots of very prominent cilia. As you may remember from your visit, 'St. Cloud' has pale pink flowers, not the bright rosy pink flowers you see in most arachnoideum hybrids, indicating a yellow or pale flowered other parent. When you self pollinate 'St. Cloud' you begin to see some of the segregation of the traits from the other parent. Obviously 'St. Cloud' has a parent with some genes for prominent cilia as 3 of the seedlings in that group do. The one you photographed is the champ for this, however. It also has exceptional wide leaves and an unusual shade of green. Of course this seedling is only 3 months old so it will not show its true colors until next spring. Based upon the size of this plant after just 3 months I assume it;s going to be BIG.

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Not very colorfast.

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Here is a quote from Kevin Vaughn about Sempervivum 'Silver Thaw':

JungleShadows said:I can tell you the story of this one.
Mina Colvin loved arachnoideum 'Tomentosum' and wanted to see what variations it might produce from seed. She grew a large number and sent a slide of the group of seedlings in our round robin that eventually became SFAN. I saw two that looked distinctive in the slide and said "pull these two out and grow them on". Those two turned out to be 'Raspberry Ice' and 'Silver Thaw', both great plants although frustrating as parents because they produce few seeds. Both grow great for me although my colony of 'Silver Thaw' looks a bit chimeric, as some of the rosettes are differently colored than the rest. Generally I would blame seedlings, but not in this case.

Kevin

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Here is a quote from Kevin Vaughn on Sempervivum 'Raspberry Ice':

JungleShadows said:I can tell you the story of this one.
Mina Colvin loved arachnoideum 'Tomentosum' and wanted to see what variations it might produce from seed. She grew a large number and sent a slide of the group of seedlings in our round robin that eventually became SFAN. I saw two that looked distinctive in the slide and said "pull these two out and grow them on". Those two turned out to be 'Raspberry Ice' and 'Silver Thaw', both great plants although frustrating as parents because they produce few seeds. Both grow great for me although my colony of 'Silver Thaw' looks a bit chimeric, as some of the rosettes are differently colored than the rest. Generally I would blame seedlings, but not in this case.

Kevin

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Patty's plant does not look right to me. It should never show more than a blush of pink. It is similar to 'Lilac Time' but more silver-colored.

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Some interesting information from Kevin Vaughn about S. 'Lipstick', showing the relationship between S. 'Ohio Burgundy' and his hybrid S. 'Lipstick'.

JungleShadows said:'Ohio Burgundy' is a nice one. Ed thought it might have come from 'Cleveland Morgan' even though he grew just mixed bee seed. You don't see 'Cleveland Morgan' offered much any more because it has been superseded by others. I'm sure my 'Lipstick' has 'Cleveland Morgan' as a pollen parent as it was blooming next to the plant of 'Silverine' that was harvested for that seedling crop.

Kevin

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Very prolific.

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"There is no information about P. Hepsport being a sport of 'Hep' although it does have a strong tendency to produce red streaks. As for tracing it back to Gary Gossett, there were several named Pacifics that came from seedlings selected by Gary, but were not necessarily named by him, so the origin of the name is not certain." --Thank you to Don at SMG for sharing this information with us.

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Kevin Vaughn gave us an interesting bit of history on the naming of this lovely sempervivum. Here is a quote from him.

JungleShadows said:Lynn,
Did you know that the "HEP" actually stands for "Helen E. Payne"?? Gary didn't dare name one for her so he sort of cheated and used her initials instead.
Kevin

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Extremely heavy webbing on this plant! Rather small but a good producer.

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How to distinguish S. 'Crispyn' and S. 'Crispyn / Typ Wills'

such a long time Howard J. Wills distributed a wrong plant under the name S. 'Crispyn'; it has been wide spread in the collections all over europe;

after clearing this mistake we gave this plant the addition "/Typ Wills" because it is such a beauty;

if you want to distinguish the two varieties look at the edge of the leaves;

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How to distinguish S. 'Crispyn' and S. 'Crispyn / Typ Wills'

such a long time Howard J. Wills distributed a wrong plant under the name S. 'Crispyn'; it has been wide spread in the collections all over europe;

after clearing this mistake we gave this plant the addition "/Typ Wills" because it is such a beauty;

if you want to distinguish the two varieties look at the edge of the leaves;

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