Question: Why do some offsets bloom during their first year?
Answer: Well, it is to be expected that the first question I am asked also is one of the more difficult ones I expect to see in this forum.
The truth is that at this point in time, no one really understands why this happens, at least as far as I have been able to find out. There are, in fact, other written references to offsets blooming in their first season. These have speculated and been associated with unusual weather conditions. I don't know what Lynn's weather has been like offhand, but here where I live (and I've had first year chicks bloom this year) we had an unusually early start to the growing season, with 80 degree temps hitting while there was still snow on the ground. As a result, I had plants still buried in snow while plants beside them were growing and already putting on spring colors. Weather has cycled between really hot spells and really cold spells, considering the general climate for the area. The growing season this year will end up being a lot longer than typical.
Taken all together, the unusual weather may be confusing the plants regarding what point in their growing cycle they should be in. Keep in mind that Sempervivum and Jovibarba are generally alpine type plants, growing at elevation, and definitely not from the United States.
One of the nice aspects of the weather this year is that water marking on new leaves seems to be much more prominent than other years. This makes the plants more interesting visually.
Related to this question is some experimentation I am doing and would hope that some of you would try as well. I'd like you to help me collect data to some day do a graph showing a relationship, if it exists, between blooming and population density of plants. Here's what needs to be done. Each time you have a plant bloom in a pot, write down the name of the plant, the size of the pot and the number of plants (adults, first year and second year chicks). I'll collect the data and when there is enough of it, plot a graph to see if that relationship exists. I think that the higher the density of plants in the pot, the fewer flowering plants you will see, so we'll plot number of plants per square inch v.s. number of flowering plants/season.
This is part of a bigger picture in that I think our Sempervivum talk to each other, probably via chemical signals. The biggest plant effectively says "I'm the biggest so I am going to bloom - the rest of you mind you place until I'm gone". When no single plant is dominant, the plants all refrain from blooming until one gets dominant for some reason. No particular reason to set seed if you are surrounded by hundreds of your self-clones. On the other hand, if a plant has no neighbors, then there is the possiblity that there is something wrong with the local environment that may kill the colony of few plants or one plant. Therefoe it makes reproductive sense to flower and grow seed, so that 1) there is the chance of adaptability to the condition 2) seed is spread beyond the local situation. This is just speculation on my part (about communications), but I'd like to find out one of these days if it is likely true.
