Hi all,

Have had a busy couple of years but the Semps are getting their deserved attention once again. We live in Canberra Australia and our climate seem to suit Semps quite well. Just coming out of winter so good number of our cultivars are nice and dark.

I keep a database on what's available in Australia (which is continuously evolving) and it currently have just over 220 species/cultivars. My initial aim was to collect all the available cultivars in Australia; I am around the 150 cultivar mark, but now I am thinking maybe I should do more.

Recently, a local Semp friend who I met online lent me Kevin Vaughn's book and I have read it cover to cover I have a background in biological sciences and work in a herbarium. I am definitely going to buy a copy of the book for myself.
But the down side of reading Kevin's book is, now I am interested in hybridising

Here is some photos from one of our beds a couple of winters ago.

Good to be here,
Serkan

Serkan,

Thanks for the kind words! Yuor plants look great. In fact, PERFECT.

Have a bunch of friends at ANU!

Kevin

JungleShadows said:Serkan,
Thanks for the kind words! Yuor plants look great. In fact, PERFECT.

It is a great book. Having the info in one place is great.

And thank you We seem to have one of the best climates in Australia for growing Sempervivums here in Canberra.

JungleShadows said:Have a bunch of friends at ANU!
Kevin

ANU is right across the road from the Herbarium I work in, just a few hundred meters away
I did my undergraduate degree over there.

Serkan

Serkan, it will be interesting to watch you venture into hybridizing. I hope you will keep us posted on your journey.
Beautiful colonies in your photos.

Hi Lynn, yes for sure. I have been rereading parts of this forum and Kevin's book fair bit so hopefully will figure it out along the way.

Thank you. Our local climate and how we are growing our Semps seem to give us more successes than failures

Love your avatar Serkan.

Thank you Lynn.

I was quite proud of the way I managed to grow that one. It was 25cm plus (10inches) in diameter. It is the only NOID I grow and keep in my collection.

It is lovely Serkan.

Serkan,

I started hybridizing Sempervivum in 2018 and it's been absolutely fascinating, I bet you'll really enjoy it and with 150 cultivars you'll have plenty of raw material to work with.

Very interested in your Australian sempervivum database. Do you keep it in a digital format? have a link you could post? Adding plants to the database here on garden.org is fairly simple they just need to be approved by our moderators and supported with a link to a nursery's webpage. I'm curious about the crossover between cultivars offered in the United States and those available in Australia.

-Sol

Hi Sol,

Thank you. Really looking forward to this years flowering season. Normally I don't like it when they flower

My Database is constantly evolving, I keep adding new coloumns for additional information I decide is important I use Google Sheets so that I have access to it on my mobile devices to edit and add to when I am walking around the garden or visiting people.

Currently my database have the following fields:
Genus - just because I like to see Sempervivum written everywhere
species
Cultivar Name -
Also known by Alternate name - here i type in alternate names or if I notice any spelling errors I put the correct spelling here
Presence - this is a tick column to indicate whether I have it or not
#plants - roughly how many I have growing
LIB Section - LIB stands for Library, where I have a approx 20 meter long bed in which I have planted every cultivar I have. This column have drop down menu to pick section and position within the section
Price - how much a cultivar cost to buy - majority of this field is blank but I have seen a few pricey ones sold so if I ever get them I want to remember how much I paid for them
Location - Another drop down menu with all the various growing locations and beds listed apart from the LIB
Year and Breeder/Hybridizer - Any info available on the origins of the cultivar
Country - The nationality of the hybridizer
Mother - seed mother plant if known
Father - pollen father plant if known
Notes - any additional information

So far it is interesting to find the obvious spelling errors that are on some of the nursery supplied plants. We have a number of hobby/boutique nurseries that cater for the collectors of popular succulents many of whom started as backyard businesses and some have become full fledged commercial entities. So it is common for these enterprises to start originally from private collections with plants sourced from various nurseries and other sellers. So same spelling mistake etc. can be seen across many plant sellers.
I hope to help serious Semp collectors here to know the correct spelling of cultivars.

Overtime as my database gets better I might be in a position to contribute but currently I feel it is still developing and a bit amateurish.

If I can manage it I want to chat directly with a couple of nurseries that I know grow a lot of Sempervivums. One I know regularly imports plants from overseas especially Asia and the other import and breed their own plants (almost every succulent you can think of) so I am interested if they have found a sport and named it and that's why I can't find any information on international databases on a handful of Cultivars in circulation in the Australia.
One example is cultivar 'Berwick Red': Almost every Australian Sempervivum seller do sell this cultivar but I can't find info on it on the overseas sites and databases. Berwick is a suburb of Melbourne in the State of Victoria and the big succulent grower is based in this state

Sounds like a valuable project Serkan,

We also have a lot of varieties in heavy circulation here in the states that have no information. 'Emerald Empress' is a great example, available nearly every where named cultivars are sold, but no one knows who hybridized it, where it came from or what year it was released. Many of these unidentified cultivars go way back, and the duration of their existence and widespread availability are the only legitimizing facts about them to be found. Collectors care about these details, but many nurseries just trying to make a buck do not. Because of that we have several misnamed or unidentified varieties floating around, honestly it seems the rarer a cultivar is the more accurate information on it tends to be because it is only grown by collectors and specialty nurseries.
Folks on this website do their best to clear up the fog surrounding names and pertinent information, but sometimes you just have to concede that not all the facts can be dredged up. I took a day once to try and identify a few of my favorite NoID varieties by calling nurseries and doing research, though it gave me some ideas it yielded no definitive results. Don't let me discourage you though, what your doing is absolutely worth it!
Goodluck,
-Sol