So this was labeled as a generic sedum [edit: yes, it was actually labeled a sedum] which I found amusing enough that I bought two.



I did a search in the database for green & purple semps, and it doesn't look like a Purple Dazzler or Astrid (only two hits I got) to me. Does anyone have any ideas?

It is a beauty for sure ofm. But when it doesn't have a name it will be forever called a NOID. I love the watermarks on the leaves. Lovely.
There are very few semps that can be easily identified because of having a distinctive trait that sets it apart from all other sempervivum. Such as this one.

Very Nice @OFM. even as a NOID it would be very desirable I think.

I saw a few at another local nursery today labeled "Bronco", and that's about as close as anything I've seen, although those seem to maybe have more purple. Now that I've started keeping track of things it's frustrating not to know :tongue_smilie:.

I saw a couple of oddities the other day as well and wast tempted to grab one but I didn't have a good place for one. YET.

If you have a smart phone you can look them up in the database by name, and do a comparison to see if they look accurate. Or just post here, and one of us can look at the plant/photo for you and help decide if it is a correctly named semp.

valleylynn said:If you have a smart phone you can look them up in the database by name, and do a comparison to see if they look accurate. Or just post here, and one of us can look at the plant/photo for you and help decide if it is a correctly named semp.

Good idea...one of those "why didn't I think of that?" moments.
Question (possibly a dumb one, maybe a doc I missed): How do you do a link to the database like you did in the 2nd post, where the image shows up? I tried just pasting the link, and it makes a link with text only.

Go to the database entry you want.
Click on the photo you want to post in a thread.
Copy the BB code just above the photo, from the first bracket on the left to the ending bracket.
Paste it in the thread you are posting into.

Give it a try here.

What an unusual looking 'sedum' I'd have added one to my collection too

Fixed it.
Thank you Kate, I missed that.

Ahh, thanks!

The purples seem to have faded quite a bit since planting...so I'm curious to see what its color progression will be like.

Err, I undid your edit - this WAS actually labeled as a sedum...I found that quite funny.

Opps, sorry, I totally missed all the humor in your first post. So now I can laugh for two reasons.
Your rare sedum and my missing the humor in the post.

So, I'm having trouble with one (?) of these semps:



The one on the right seems to be OK - at least the offsets appear healthy, but both of the hens have uhh...weird feeling (and yellowing) lower leaves? Especially the one on the left (its chicks also seem to be dying)? Are they dried out? I've heard that they don't need/want that much water compared to other plants, so I've tried to avoid overwatering them, but maybe it's still not enough? Too much?

They are in the hottest spot in my yard, and get probably 10 hours of open sun currently. From what they said at the nursery and what I've read, that should be OK?

I picked up a couple other semps today and I want to try and figure out what I'm doing wrong before I plant them - especially if its the positioning, as I was going to put the new ones near these.

Hi ofm, they do appear to be dehydrated. How often are they getting water?
What type of soil are they growing in?
With the weather we have been having lately in the Willamette Valley, I would water them maybe once a week, in the evening.
Mine started to look like that because I hadn't been water. Once I started watering they quickly improved in color and health.

Just don't water in the heat of the day. That will steam cook them.

I was sticking to a watering regimen of once a week for my semp bed last year and found that my semps didn't look
as good as I thought they should. So this year I started to water twice a week especially on those hot days of 90 degree temps which can affect my semp bed when the full sun hit it from 11am to 4pm. I also put a shade cloth or frost cloth (which ever is the biggest sheet available in the stack) over them during the full sun exposure. Both changes have helped. When it cools down from those high temps, I water only once a week.
Btw, Ofm, those hens sure are prolific. I thought my hen with 25 offsets was impressive. Your two hens each are forming a colony...

valleylynn said:Hi ofm, they do appear to be dehydrated. How often are they getting water?
What type of soil are they growing in?
With the weather we have been having lately in the Willamette Valley, I would water them maybe once a week, in the evening.
Mine started to look like that because I hadn't been water. Once I started watering they quickly improved in color and health.

Just don't water in the heat of the day. That will steam cook them.

So....yeah, in this heat I've been watering them almost every night.... It's so hot and the dirt there is so dry (I don't know the right words for the soil...it's dry and ... hard?). I generally just slowly trail the hose along that planter, letting everything soak a little - except the semps (and my Jovibarba heuffelii ), for them I've been letting it soak less, because I was/am so paranoid of over watering them.

I only water after the sun has gone down.

How much water should I use? I've been wary of letting it puddle up at all after reading so much about potential rot (and because I have some sedum in there and I've read that they don't do well when the water doesn't drain fast? But being new to all this I don't know what constitutes good and bad draining speeds....).

I'm wondering if maybe I should get some kind of misting attachment for the hose and soak things a little that way?

webesemps said:I was sticking to a watering regimen of once a week for my semp bed last year and found that my semps didn't look
as good as I thought they should. So this year I started to water twice a week especially on those hot days of 90 degree temps which can affect my semp bed when the full sun hit it from 11am to 4pm. I also put a shade cloth or frost cloth (which ever is the biggest sheet available in the stack) over them during the full sun exposure. Both changes have helped. When it cools down from those high temps, I water only once a week.
Btw, Ofm, those hens sure are prolific. I thought my hen with 25 offsets was impressive. Your two hens each are forming a colony...

This section has full sun from like... 10-8? Maybe? It's a lot of sun. I didn't even realize how much until I started this yardening odyssey. I figured this, being the sunniest spot in the yard, would be the best spot for semps... but since then I've read that "full sun" might only mean 6 hours, so 10+ might be overkill.

I'll have to look into the cloth, thanks!

I can't take any credit for the chicks...wish I could but they had all those chicks when I bought them

One more question while I'm in here - is it normal for jovi rollers to close back up?? I've been so happy with the first three that I planted that when I finally found some more I had to get some. Those have been in the ground a week or two and I could swear most of them have closed up. I don't recall my other ones doing that at all.

Yes, Ofm, they do close up. Other semps can also do the same thing. I've observed this on calcareums too.
I have photos of a couple of jovis on a really sunny (maybe bordering on scorching) kind of day. Both photos taken on the same day and you can see the difference of their reaction to where they were situated.

The first photo's jovi is sitting in morning sun location where the sun has passed while the second jovi is sitting in afternoon sun. Both photos (taken in April) were taken one right after the other and both jovi's were in same kind of soil mix.



Note the amount of rocks in soil to help improve drainage. I buy cactus soil and add large grain sand (not playground sand which is too fine) and small rocks to form my semp planting mixture. Some specialty semp nurseries offer their own mixture for sale. Sometimes I buy theirs so that I don't have to mix but there's always cactus mix available to start with to add some sort of grit or rock to help drainage.

It looks like the soil is a clay mixture? Native soil?
If so Bev's suggestions of adding amendments would be beneficial. For clay soil some of our Pacific Northwest compost, grit and course sand added would work. Also top dressing them with chicken grit will help to cool their roots on hot days and keep the moisture away from the leaves. You will need to place the grit under the leaves, that should keep them from rotting. I don't water every day. Once a week deep watering would be more helpful to the plants.

Dumb question: what counts as native soil? It is the soil that was out there, with some potting soil mixed in...but mostly the clay-ish stuff, yes. I could see how it could be claylike. Maybe chalky and claylike?

OK! Finally had/made some time this evening to take a swing at this tonight. I moved some plants around and made an area just for these semps, found some cactus soil and mixed that into the area with my remaining potting soil/fertilizer (sorry I'm not good with all the dirt product names/types yet). I also picked up some stuff that was labeled large grain sand as Bev suggested, but the stuff I found was really pricey (the same price for a 2 fist sized bag as for a child-sized bag of cactus soil) and kind of...seemed a bit too colorful? After I got home I looked around the yard and I think I have some gravel that's only a little big than those sand chunks, so I'm thinking I'll collect more of that tomorrow and maybe do a thin layer of that over the top, mixed with the rest of the large grained sand?

Here's what it looks like currently, does this seem better?



The sand is a bit too bright for me, so I'm hoping that once I mix it all in with the grey/black gravel it will be less eye catching.



Closer shots of the semps, including my three new finds (poor arachnoideum does not seem to be doing well):



The jovi heuf 'Gold Bug' in the far right corner is also not doing well - too much sun, I suspect, as the other two from the same batch planted elsewhere in the strip seem fine. So I need to look into that shadecloth next, hopefully next weekend.



I haven't found chicken grit yet - will the pebbles work for that, or is there something special about chicken grit?
[Edit: OK, so I didn't know what chicken grit was...dumb me I was just thinking it was some kind of soil/rock. Thank you google! So, do I want soluble or insoluble?]

Oh, and my new rollers still haven't re-opened. They seem healthy, so I'm not worried but yeah it was jarring to go out there the next morning and see them all pretty much closed up. I'm thinking they were in a much more shaded location at the nursery. Thanks for that bit of reassurance.

Yes, looks good so far. What soil I can see in the rest of the bed does look kind of heavy. But if you mixed the cactus soil and the sand and whatever rock you found into the soil right where the semps are planted into, they should be good to go. Looks like you took Lynn's suggestion of tucking some rock/grit under the heads which should help with keeping the leaves from rotting. If you are worried about whether the health of the semps in this location, you can always reassure yourself with a few offsets from here planted elsewhere in case this location doesn't work for some of them. Your strip of bed looks ideal for dropping a shade cloth right over bed on really sunny days (...are there sunny days in Portland?)
In my experience, the few arachnoids I have didn't do well in my afternoon sun semp bed. I had to pull them out and put them in a less sunny spot.