The flowers are a shocking pink, the plants offset freely and have good tight rosettes which don't get too leggy. It doesn't matter that it's a graptopetalum, they will hybridise with echeverias producing graptoverias. The other factor than finalised the selection were the heavily pollen covered anthers. These can be removed with tweezers and used directly to apply pollen to the stigmas on the other plant. No pots full of paint brushes this year.
The plants tried so far are: E. 'Crugs Ice'. A more vertical growing form, with strong orange flowers.
E. setosa deminuta, a nice small version of setosa. Good colour, good offsets, very bright yellow and red flowers.
Finally for the ones tried so far, sedeveria letizia. A great plant and already a hybrid between a sedum and echeveria. I have no idea what you would call any resulting plants "graptosedeveria".
There are lots of echeverias in flower outside the greenhouse, but these are being left to the bees, who have finally worked out how to get to the flowers. It was the same at the last house, it took a while for them to work out how to treat the various flowers they had never seen. Then once figured out, news spread and the flowers were always covered in bees. The following years, the they seemed to remember and visited flowers as soon as they came out.
That's the echeverias, I'll cover aloes and dudleyas in another post.
Whatever u are doing, keep doing it!.:-) I love the blue ones the most...the one w/the pink flower has an Asian/minimalist look to it...
ReplyDeleteIt is very different to the forms I usually use. So will be interesting to see if any of the form and colour translate.
DeleteGreat photos! I have that first succulent and mine bloomed for the first time about a month ago! Love it!
ReplyDeleteThey are lovely plants aren't they. I had to buy it having seen a big bowl full in flower at a friends house.
DeleteOh, that's too funny about the bees - I had never thought of that. I'll be so interested to see the fruits of your labors - in three or four years. I've never done much hybridizing with Echeveria, but I have a lot of fun with Sempervivum and Jovibarba.
ReplyDeleteI have never tried with semps, do let nature make the selections or use a paint brush to decide what goes where (so to speak).
DeleteIn the five years since you wrote this article - have you published results using Graptopetalum bellum with a variety of echeverias and hybrids? Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI never didn't try that year and then stopped doing crosses so never tried in the end. It would make interesting hybrid, I have noticed a few groptoverias coming ontot he market recently.
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