I’ve loved Echeveria sp. since I was about 10 years old. As with all plant obsessions, it started innocently enough, with a trip to see my Aunt Gloria and Uncle Cliff. They lived near in Ventura (near L.A.) at the time, and my family took a road trip to see them. At their house, in a dry section of ground near the road, was a planting of Echeveria. It was probably that most common of species, E. glauca, but I was fascinated with it. Perhaps it was the prolific off-setting of the plants, their toughness in poor soil, or the way that the plants survived even uprooted, waiting, it seemed to be settled into ground once more. But I think I was most attracted to the pearly blue color and the amazing geometry of the leaves. Even now, knowing of many Echeveria hybrids, E. glauca is still the one that I prefer. But now, living in Albuquerque, Echeveria is not hardy here. I suppose I could do like Thomas Hobbs does and dig them every year. But holding them indoors watching them become piteously light starved while waiting for the summer seems like plant torture, and I can’t bear to do it.
Strangely, I started out disliking Agave. My familiarity with Agave was only through the species A. americana. So my impression of Agave was that they were giant thugs which reproduced with aggressive underground shoots and gave painful scratches. And why couldn’t the leaves get over their childhoods? They maintained the imprint of the leaf that was above them in utero (so to speak) forever. Since then, I’ve made an about face, and now crave the Agave with prominent bud imprints, long spines and happy pups. So I was quite dismayed to find that the one Agave that I own was severely winter-damaged by the snow which broke leaves and the cold, which froze said leaves. The top half of the plant was mush. (See my Death Harvest post).
So I went shopping. First stop was Squaw Mountain Gardens, an on-line resource, since the nurseries around here are woefully short on hardy offsetting rosettes. The Orostachys given to me by Ted was ravaged by the rabbits and never recovered, so I searched for Sempervivum, another offsetting rosette, which I hope, has enough similarity to Echeveria to satisfy me. I sorted through the hundreds of varieties to find an assortment of varieties that would mimic Echeveria yet be winter hardy. What I discovered was that Sempervivum come in more varieties than Echeveria, with many different colors and forms. Although the largest varieties aren’t even as big as a single leaf of the larger Echeveria, they do maintain a nice radial symmetry of form. I chose the burgundy ‘Cupream’, the multicolored ‘Pink Pearl’,
silver ‘Silverene’, 
‘Jolly Green Giant’ and a spiderweb (S. arachnoideum) Semp ‘Gorges DeDaluis’. I happened upon the Jovibara heuffelii varieties they offer, and some of the larger forms looked like a good stand-in for Aeonium, so into the basket went ‘Douce’ and ‘Ostara.’
Jovibara 'Ostara'
The next web stop was YuccaDo nursery in Texas. I have been jonesing to buy something from them for some time now. I had been hesitant to purchase Agave parrasana ‘Meat Claw’ even though I loved its form and long spines (and with a name like that, how can you resist? Ah the power of a name). David’s Agave parrasana in Four Hills always gets winter burn, and I didn’t want to torture a plant in my colder area. They hadn’t carried ‘Meat Claw’ for quite a long time anyway, having to propagate it slowly from pups. On this trip on-line, however, it was in the listing. It jumped into the shopping cart, along with Agave parryi var. truncata (“silver meatballs” to 18 inches and hardy to zone 6! how can I resist?) and Aloe aristata (an aloe – read: offsetting rosette - hardy to zone 7b? perhaps this will survive when my Aloe striatula croaked). Unfortunately, ‘Meat Claw’ and Aloe aristata will have to suffer the indignity of pot culture, coming under the eaves during the winter, for minimal protection. Maybe I’ll trial their pups in the ground sometime.
Aloe aristata
Both nurseries gave me the cutest plants ever to arrive in the mail. Amazingly, the semps came bare root in brown paper bags. YuccaDo even gave me a free plant, a very charming Agave parrasana (species). I highly recommend both nurseries. The plants are already in the ground. I’m hoping for a summer growth spurt. Until then I’m going to break my offsetting rosette obsession by investigating Euphorbias.
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