Hi all, I had an interesting conversation and thought that it might be of interest to you.

I was talking to someone from Bulgaria about the sempervivum that grew in his country, and he said that the summers in his village regularly hit 95 F but that sempervivum grew there no problem. He said they didn't even water them, they just planted them in partial shade and let them be.

A bit heartening to learn that even in their natural environment, sempervivum experience very hot temperatures during the summer but survive nonetheless so long as they are shaded.

Very interesting Paul. I wish you could find out if what they are growing are species or cultivars and some names would be really great. Thanks for this posting

The two I mentioned that he googled and recognized were S. ciliosum and S. leucanthum. Even though they are Bulgarian natives, he said that even there they needed partial shade in summer to survive, but beyond that they did perfectly fine and people just let them grow as they pleased and never even watered them.

That is interesting! I wonder how much it rains there. I think my semps here in NM would die for sure if I didn't give them supplemental water. It just doesn't rain enough. We've had 5mm for the month so far.

That is interesting Paul. We have plenty of areas here in the U.S. that can grow semps that way, but here in this part of the Pacific Northwest summer is very dry, no rain, and hot. Most of my semps would have perished by now. I do agree that even here they can go with almost no water during summer if given enough shade and soil that will hold moisture.

I'm liking Summer.

Looks like the plants are liking it too...

If I run into him again, I'll remember to ask what the rainfall is like there. Our rain here is either cold winter rain or warm monsoon rain, neither of which are semps' favorite