What's your least favorite sempervivum/s, or one that you feel could've done better?

Any that have rotting problems, the biggest problem where I grow them. I can't think of any names at this time.

"Commander Hay". This one loves to rot on me. It's one of those that if you look at it too long, it will just rot out of spite. There is nothing I can do to stop it from rotting.

Oh. It's one of the few sempervivum Merrifield carries right now.

I have a strong dislike for sempervivum with brief color phases, especially ones where the colors they do take on are common like burgundy-maroon or off-reds. At that point I'd just prefer them to be green all year round. Greens with maroon tips are usually pretty boring to, unless they are collected species or have some other redeeming feature.
Infertile sempervivum also frustrate me deeply as a hybridizer. Regardless of looks I tend to consider anything that can't produce viable seed as a waste of garden space.
I like all semps too much to name names, but there are definitely some subpar varieties that come to mind. And I'm slowly cycling them out of my garden.

Beware FAUX 'Commander Hey' out there. Most are NOT. The original is not a good plant either as it is one of the few cold-sensitive and highly moisture sensitive glabrous ones. I lost it 3 or 4 times as a kid in MA (and NO OTHER CULTIVAR!!) and it's not worth the trouble. So many things are better plants.

I have thrown away most of the not good semps. On Saturday I pitched 'Black Mini' as it had so much rot and I never really liked it. Certainly NOT black. A lot more will get the heave-ho.

My pet peeves are too long stolons, ones that don't make pretty clumps, and of course rotters. Now I'm adding to that list, lousy color retention. Dirty greens and dull reds or purples are mostly gone too.

Kevin

I think the same semp that's often sold as 'Ruby Hearts' is also sold as 'Commander Hay' and is in fact neither of the two, it has some sparse velvet with prominent fringe cilia and comes in shades of brown with hints of purple and green. It's an odd plant, a marmoreum x montanum possibly, wish I knew what it's real name is.

I was thinking of trying 'Black Mini' because it's supposed to be a parent of the great 'Space Dog', but if it's a rotter maybe I should take the hint and skip it. I finally have 'Space Dog' so I suppose there's not much point in going backwards.

I think this is off topic, but could it be that the Commander Hay fauxes could be large garden centers growiing it from seed, only having some of the seedlings be not-the-same but still labeling Commander Hay?

Or is it like the Elfin Thyme problem where the name sounded much nicer and it was really popular (as a fairy garden plant) at that time, so lots of sellers put similar thyme under the same name knowing it wasn't actually elfin thyme.

sedumzz said:I think this is off topic, but could it be that the Commander Hay fauxes could be large garden centers growiing it from seed, only having some of the seedlings be not-the-same but still labeling Commander Hay?

There are other plants sold under the wrong name, concentrating on Commander Hay is not important.
I also got something that not even remotely looks like Commander Hay.

These issues happen due to many reasons which are not as innocent as you are suggesting, " growing it from seed".
Growing from seed is a big waste of time with any plant that can be cloned.
Some sellers just send wrong plants to wrong people, unless the people that receive them aren't extra skilled into knowing if the plant is right will take that plant and accept as it is and perpetuate it that way.

For example in my case the seller told me he had no idea that his Commander Hay is wrong and he said that he sold it like that for the last decade at least and he bought the plant in a plant fair.
Not that he changed the plant name on his website or remove the plant, so certain things get perpetuated at the ignorance of sellers, then that trickles down to the buyer.

Look at this reputable website showing an Aeonium as being a Sempervivum.
Contacted them several months ago but they still keep it that way.
Even more ironic is how the location of the Aeonium is Tenerife, the land of Aeoniums.

http://plantsoftheworldonline....

I mean wrong info can be easily perpetuated.

ohhhh.

Alex,

There are a lot of unscrupulous dealers that sell the wrong thing and not caring. 'Commander Hey' was one that was popular in the early days of semp hybridizing. It can be pretty too as it is a big red/ green bicolor and being a bit tender probably did better in greenhouse cultivation. However, others under this name are nothing like it. Of course many legitimate dealers bought these plants and assumed they were true, perpetuating the original sin. I have yet to see a true 'Commander Hey' in any of the recent offerings.

There was an Ohio nursery that raised millions of plants from seed and then sold them to the big box stores as mixes. They didn't put names to them but of course it did make a mess of things. Lots of the NOIDs that people continue to grow are these plants. Most are poor offerings. Don't waste your $$ on these with so many good ones out there propagated by legitimate nurseries.

Going to get COLD in Oregon. I've covered a bunch of the pots already and some are going to the garage. That four letter word SNOW is in the forecast for Friday.

Kevin

Well said Paleo and Kevin.
We see it happen a lot in the U.S.

Alex,
I thought the seedling scenario might be possible with the 'Shirley's Joy' sold by little prince because it looks a lot like the actual plant, just bigger and with longer leaves. Little prince has a huge growing operation and I could easily see bloomstalks spilling seed into propagation pots and contaminating the stock with seedlings. However in the case of 'Commander Hay', the plant being sold is so different from the true cultivar that I really don't see them being related.
The pursuit of true names occasionally puts pressure on the big commercial nurseries to get rid of massive batches of plants. What they should do is sell them all as generic sempervivum, but for fear that might diminish the sales they keep the false names and plug their ears to try and protect profits. It's sad but I can see why they do it, I'm not happy when I discover plants in my collection are incorrectly named, imagine if you had spent years and large sums of money growing thousands of units just to have some enthusiasts tell you they aren't labeled correctly! Who wants to take a hit like that?
The whole thing is a shame, best I can do is keep the labels in my own collection right. If anyone really cares what the names of their semps are I have faith that they'd eventually come to websites like this and discover the truth.
-Sol

I think most of the legitimate growers/nurseries remove the bloom stalks very early in the game, before they actually set seed.

I know Cynda puts all the bloomers outside the greenhouse, but with an operation as big as Little Prince I wouldn't be surprised if things like that slip through the cracks.

I've been to Little Prince. Not a sign of blooming plants in their tunnels. Everything was organized and clean of bloomers.

Hmmm, I guess they're just using the wrong plants then. I wonder how they came to use them in the first place.

A lot of their stock comes from large whole sales outfit in places like Florida. From there many incorrect plants are mass produced and sent out.

That's interesting. It's a shame that the larger nurseries seem to have less concern for correct names than the smaller ones, you'd think it'd be the other way around.
-Sol

The bigger you are the more you cater to everyone and your inventory gets highly diverse and everyone doesn't care about the name, they care about the characteristics of a plant, how they look, what claims are made about the plant, etc.
Sempervivum get sold in supermarkets by huge corporations, you buy some olive oil, toilet paper, coca cola and some sempervivum on the go, usually I see around 3 types for sale, maybe 4.
While this is not a nursery those come from some nurseries somewhere and still have the nursery labels on, often with no name actually.