Hello guys
2 months I got my first Sedum telephium hybrids, like Yellow Xenox, Karfunkelstein.
They were shipping in boxes and while in the boxes where started growing about 5 inches (shipped from a distance of 1300Km), with some leaves that had no serration at all just completely round, some of the tips broke during transportation.
Now they are outside in a temperature climate in Europe, I guess would be like a zone 5 to 6, all the round leaves a falling fall and drying out, instead now some wrinkled and uneven leaves are forming, which at the based of each leaf new pair of leaves are coming out, which are also wrinkled and odd shaped.
A couple of the plants even got stunted and didn't' even grow further at all, just have some small leaves that are wrinkled.

Bought some Red Cauli and Rainbox Xenox from another place and the leaves seem to look rather fine so far.

I can't quite figure out why the leaves are so bad on the telephiums, they have too much fertilizer in the soil added by the seller? PH is bad? Too little light per day makes the leaves so strange?

Leaves problem with Yellow Xenox:









Stunted Yellow Xenox, it's like this probably for 2-3weeks:






Karfunkelstein:






Red Cauli and Rainbox Xenox from another seller seem to look fine, these I have for 2 weeks and where grown in the same city I live :

Hi PaleoTemp, and welcome to NGA. So glad you found your way here.

Great photos showing you new sedum.
The photo of your 'Yellow Xenox' looks like one does not have all the roots in the soil?
All of the photos of the ones you are worried about look to be a little stressed from shipping. They may not look very good this year but should do fine and hopefully produce blooms this year. Next year they will come out of dormancy and look much better.
Shipping the Hylotelephium types of sedum can be difficult once they come out of dormancy. The leaves get damaged, but they do recover.

Hope this was helpful?

Thanks for the welcoming!

As far I have checked none of the plants have the roots exposed on top.
Well, honestly I thought they are going to recover until i've seen the new produced leaves also have some irregular shaped
outlines (really odd), they are also bent and wrinkled, this kind of majorly concerns me.
At this point I do not quite know what to do to try to make them better, do not water at all? Add fertilizer? Move them where
they get like 8 hours of sun directly?

A couple of pots where they are stunted completely (no growth in 2-3weeks, compared to the others which do grow), I would think those will remain stunted for the entire year.

I agree with Lynn, the plants have experienced a lot of stress. They need to be planted and allowed to settle down. It's a lot to expect of a newly purchased plant in its first year IMO.

I wouldn't fertilize them after being stressed. Keep the separate from the other plants. I do think they will eventually recover. they do need water, but only when the soil dries out some.

Regardless of my experience with some of the ordered plants, do you believe it is alright for telephium and spectabile and to have full blasting coming from around 8:00 to 15:00? after that is shade, zero direct sun as the sun goes behind
the building.
Temperature during day is like from 23C (73F) to 33C (91F) from April to end of August, with certain days even hitting 36C (96F) in the height of the summer, feels like I would have to do a lot of watering considering these temps and 7 hours of unfiletered sun.
But still now sure if that combination is not dammaging for the hylolepephium and spectabilis, 7 hours of full sun basically in hot weather.

As long as they get enough water they should be fine. I have some in full, all day sun where we have summer drought conditions, with temperatures in the high 90's F to +100 F. They have always done well.

Well I believe I am starting to understand the issues with the telephiums from that seller.
Seems the stunted specimens have a very knotted root , the entire root is like 1.5 inches (4cm) in diameter and they have rotted, even the base of the stalks has rotted to mush.
Could the small knotted root be caused by a small initial pot in which they were grown? they are like a thread ball.

I had this issue with some sempervivum I bought from this seller, where out of 10pcs, 4pcs died quickly of rot in 24 hours (must have been damaged way before to die and be totally mush), but in that case I quickly then changed the soil of all the sempervivum, the soil was so rich and had leaves I could drain the soil with my hand and was dripping water.
The same soil is in other sedum pots which I see they don't do well at all, except for the spectabile pots which seem to have a more content of clay balls, but I am sure with the same full of leaves organic soil is present there too. I have to check on those too, even if they do well at this moment.
Beside this rich soil there are a lot of worms, granular fertilizer and even pulled out a larva, it didn't seem melolontha larva to me which would make more send to be at the root of a plant, it looked like a cetonidae larva.

Now this being the case I will change the soil of all plants from that seller, problem is the telephiums have such a tiny knotted root they just can't sustain the stalks which are now on the non-stunted plant 10 inches tall, and they are still with deformed leaves, some barely resemble telephium leaves. The roots are that small even if they were supplied in 4.5x4.5 inch square pots, i suspect all the telephiums will die or are already severely rotted. I did manage to get some leaves to stat to root.

Wow, that is really of great concern.
I agree that it is a good idea to remove all of the original soil, make sure you clean it down to bare healthy roots. You can cut the foliage back some so that they are not top heavy.
I would not buy from that seller again. Was this on Ebay?

Yes it was on eBay, but I as far as I can see there are other issues with other sempervivum, some of the worst quality I have seen, I don't even know how to reach those bad results, with leaves of different size in a row, some fused leaves, weird surface blotches on some leaves.
One of the sempervivums which I do not even believe is the cultivar I have ordered was growing only on one half, the other half had tiny leaves while on the other half were 3 times as big, and this is not cause by the light exposure as it was uniform light exposure. Weird characterizes my purchase from this seller.

Now some other issue appeared on the plants that are doing good from the local seller, aphids dwell right where the sedums produce new tiny leaves on top. Pure rubbing alcohol did nothing to them in a single spray session, the next day there were more of them.
I am afraid that using Isopropyl alcohol might damage the new forming leaves on top. Top new leaves are not doing so good now, not sure if it is the pure rubbing alcohol i used or the fact that there more aphids now.

Paleo, here is an excellent source for sempervivum. You would not be disappointed in them.
https://www.semper-vivum.de/

Plants can have aphid issues when they become stressed. You might try a liquid systemic that you would water into the soil. When the aphids feed on the plant they would be killed by the systemic when it is taken up into the plant tissues.

Now after some time, it seems the aphids enjoy Xenox more (probably more nitrogen fertilizer in the soil?) and seems to greatly affect that tiny new growth at the tip of the stems, to the point where there is no more new leaf development.
Even noticed how ants seem to enjoy the aphids, constantly taking care of them, and for some reason the ants are majorly attracted to substrate mix in the pots. Unfortunately, it is time for some insecticide, initially I will try a non-systemic and I am already using ant deterrent.

I have noticed that many succulents that are heavily fertilized seem to be susceptible to aphid infestations. I do not fertilize any of my sedum or semps. Except for semp seedlings.

I've used some insecticide spray from a store, well that burned the leaves and destroyed the tops of several of my Xenox, no new growth for one month.

On the other plants I've used a different substance from and ampule mixed with major amounts of water (as instructed), lambda-cyhalothrin is the substance.
Seems all the aphids, tiny flies and mealybugs died without any damage to new tiny leaves on any of the sedum cultivars.

On other pots I see tons of ants just dwelling in the substrate, and before of course they were literally at the aphid butts up top at the new tiny leaf growth, I am concerned they will bring more aphids on the plants in an attempt to colonize the hylotelephium again. I've used some imidacloprid granules bait for the ants to carry in their nest, some ants started carrying these granules quickly, others simply ignored them for days.


But now I see a skinny quick wasp that constantly digs around the roots of a Red cauli, tried adding tons of water to make it get out but it just stay there when I pour the water, then somehow gets out and I see it back digging. The wasp is mostly black with yellow rings on it's abdomen.

The wasp could be feeding on the ant/aphids and larvae.

I am growing new telephiums from leaves now from the affected plants which I had before , they look good, as they normally should, except one which quickly developed extreme weird shapes as that was the only one that got some aphids on certain leaves (quite strange but that is what I have seen), the other leaves with no aphids look fine.

Now there is some weird set of leaves which are placed in the substrate for 6+weeks (a lot of time), they get 3-4 hours of direct sun and they just don't do anything, there is not the slightest root growing from them.
It is quite impressive how these leaves just stay like new in the substrate, have some direct sun and they don't dry yet they don't produce anything.

What could stop these leaves from producing roots and the others produced roots and have developed into actual plants.
The leaves are not missing any part whatsoever.

Can you show us some photos Paleo?

Yes, here they are.

These are plants that have come to life from only leaves.
You can see the difference from the plants I received in the original post and how their clones look in different growing conditions.








And for example some leaves just stay there and do nothing for like maybe now 7 weeks, this for example even grew a bit, but has no roots.

Wow!
Just look at all those new plants. Great work Paleo.
And they look happy and healthy.

That leaf continues to grow.
I have looked at some Sedum cauticola leaves that I have placed into substrate for propagation at the same time, they are 3 times as big now, out of 10 only 1 has produced a new plant.
It is quite interesting how these leaves grow so big yet don't have any roots grown.