With the growing season upon most of us, I wanted to ask everybody to keep a lookout for unusual forms among your semp collections. I started a project a year or two back to look for and study cresting and other unusual growth patterns among the semps. Its a longer term project, as I'm trying to find more stable forms of the ones I have and just to learn more.

While it is definitely too early here to do any trading, I wanted to let members know that I am willing to trade a small box of named semps for a crested or other unusual semp I do not have, later this year.

I've also learned that some named varieties have a reputation for doing some unusual things, like cresting, fasciating (hope that's spelled right). I'm putting together a list of those that I hope to share later.


S. 'Boromir' crested

Does this fall into anything?
http://garden.org/thread/view_...

Yes, Bev, that is what I call crested, although there are a number of different forms that this occurs with. That is an interesting one. Is it a lost label or a genuine No-id? So far, none of my crested ones have ever put out offsets, so it will be interesting to see if yours does. Its structure looks to be one of the more stable ones.

I think it is one of the lost label ones. How does the 'stable' ones differ in structure? What's the longest you've had of the crested ones? I will keep an eye on it to see what happens.

Twit, I had two 'Purple Passion' semps and they both produced chicks, then started to crest.

This is from August of last year:


October of last year:


One of the hens died over the winter, the other one looks pretty bad, but it's still alive. None of the chicks have crested yet, but I'll keep an eye on them.

Wow, Chris, you say you had two. Are the photos of each of them? or of one that has evolved in form? Very interesting and beautiful in color.

Those two pictures are the same plant, but there was a second one that did the same thing. I only had those 2 hens in my collection.

glad that you still have the chicks.

It'll be interesting to see if the chicks crest too. Or if it produces any more normal chicks.

It will, I'm keeping an eye on them.

Very cool!

Most of the crested ones I have survived over the winter. I did lose one Deep Fire Crested, but have several of those. I have another named one that died, but I have to track down its name (the tag blew away over the winter).

As I see it, there are several forms for the cresting. One form, the plant grows so that the crest part forms basically a circle that gradually forces the rooted part out of the ground. A second form grows along the surface of the soil, but zig-zags so that the plant doesn't form a circle. A third looks like Chris's picture above, where the crested part does not grow without limits and the rosette more or less resembles a rosette. The forms are relatively stable within the particular form, but there cn be some switching about.

Most of my crested ones physically lost size over the dry winter we had, but then so did a lot of the normal plants.

I'll keep an eye out in my beds twit.

thank you Lynn. I hope to have some crested forms for you one of these days (and some O munutum as well!)

I am moving some of my NOIDs around and found this one... Two chicks, the larger one looks normal,,the smaller one looks like it's going to be like this one.

Hi, Patty. What are the chances that your no-id is actually Red Lion Variegated? Did you have Red Lion in the past and lost the tag? I had a variegated Red Lion last year that produced a number of offsets then died, but one of the offsets is showing variegation.

Wow Patty that's pretty!!

Hi Patty, thanks for sharing the unusual...

OOoo Patty, that is really pretty!