An oddity amoung oddities

When it comes to cristate plants there is no sitting on the fence. I have a few now and have my eye on a few more, so no prizes for guessing which side I sit on. One of my favourites is aeonium sunburst,  here is the plant when I first got it in 2008.

As you can see it was growing normally when I bought it. Here is is earlier in the year,  it has formed a really wide trunk that is getting better every day.

The only question is how long can it go before the narrow part to the trunk snaps?

What makes this one of my favourites is that it has a really strange habit that I will never truly understand. Normally if a cristate plant grows a normal head and you remove it at some point it will revert to being cristate (there is something in the genes) but with aeonium sunburst if you take a normal head off that is how it stays and it does not revert.  As if that is not strange enough, you may be wondering where all the cristate versions come from, well plants like mine that are seed grown will almost always turn cristate!

So to get a cristate plant you start with a normal one, and to get a normal plant you start with a cristate one. Isn't nature great!