This thread will be devoted to experimenting with bolting (flowering) sempervivum. We hope to find a reliable way to save cultivars that are new to our collection, or that we only have one or two rosettes.

Here are my experiment plants:

S. arach 'Ali' 6/9/2011 coning, S. arach 'Ali' 6/9/2011 cone removed and the cone top planted to see if it will grow.

S. 'Duke of Windsor' 6/9/2011 coning, Duke of Windsor 6/9/2011 coning removed and cone top planted to see if it will grow.

S 'Hookerii' 6/9/2011 plant A coning, and with cones cut off. S. 'Hookerii' plant B coning and with cones are cut off. I did not plant any of the flower tops of this one.

So far the only ones I am having a problem with blooming are the arach type or fuzzy ones.

Ok here is a NOID that I caught bolting about 2 weeks ago and lopped it's head off. And then my treasured Red Rum, for whom I have been waiting to bolt a little higher whose head I just lopped off. Red Rum who I love.. I have two tiny offsets from it.




I also went around lopping off everyone else's head who had not bloomed yet. I have one plant in bloom, I'll lop it off too and mark it as having bloomed before lopping.

Well here I go with my pruners. run plants run. Going to take off that bloom.

Be sure you take photos, dates and log what ever it is you observe after that. Whether or not it starts to produce offsets/chicks, when it started showing offset growth. Anything helpful that you observe.

This will be very interesting to see if we can save our special plants in our collections.

Twit has been trying to get us to log this information for a year now. Okay, hopefully this will be a year of great documented findings.

Should we start a thread for our particular plant. will that help???

Ok, heads lopped, photos taken. Now we wait.

Just got home so will go out and take photos, then do surgery. Where is the doctor when I need him.

I got a picture too, but waiting to see how to do it(record it)

Well, I didn't do anything special. I didn't even use clean hands! I just broke off the top.

Wait a minute....... so the flowering isn't a part of it's cycle, its more like when it's too hot in the spring and your veggies bolt????

It's part of it's cycle, usually sempervivums flower on their third year. However, on occasion one has reason to try to save a particular plant. As in: my favorite sempervivum Red Rum which I just bought this year and don't have a lot of, for some reason decided to bolt and flower. The mother plant dies after setting seed, so I would lose my favorite, that I just bought! So we are doing a bit of experimenting to see if we can somehow save those plants that flower prematurely.

Lynn, on your Ali, are you going to behead the offsets? They appear to be bolting too.

I didn't plant the flower heads, I just threw mine in the yard.

Duhhhh, I didn't even thing about cutting the offset heads off. Back to the O R.
Okay, I went back out and performed the second surgery. Posted the photos in the first post.

The babies are bolting?? How wierd is that???

S. arach 'Red Cobweb' did that last year. Even the new chicks were bolting. Sure wish I could figure out why they do that?

Something is triggering them to bolt. Wonder what it is. Could it be your location???

None of the other several hundred varieties are bolting.

Maybe it is just in their breeding. However that is kind of a breeding of self destruction, woulsn't you say??? Poor things...

I think some of them resent moving. They were doing fine until I moved them into the new bed. But again all of them were put into the new bed within about 2 weeks.

I think it's seasonal - as you say, the ones that are starting to do it seem to be the fuzzy or cobweb types and I've observed that they all start chicking first too. Just a genetic trait, I think. This will be interesting. One of the rosettes I just got in my trade from Nova Scotia was coning, big time even in transit. It's supposed to be Aymon Correvon, but it's totally different from what I have under that name. This is going to be a pain if they're all mislabeled. That's two now.

Last year I saved all the seed I could from Sempervivum, and Jovibarba that flowered, and they are growing like gangbusters - well, not like gangbusters as they're so tiny, but I sure got lots.

I believe I addressed this topic in the Dr. Houseleeks forum. You need to divide the rosette by cutting vertically down through the rosette through the root into halves or quarters (the more pieces the better)

1) dig the rostte and remove offsets.
2) divide it vertically into multiple pieces - use a knife for this because each piece needs a section of root. Judge the number of pieces based on how large the offset
3) dry the pieces a few days
4) plant the pieces
5) observe

The pieces will grow into new rosettes and some of them may still bloom. However, some of the pieces will just be normal plants. You will have better success by catching the crowning early.

Remember that some of the pieces may die and some of the bloom spikes will also develop offsets connected to the flower stalk.