This photo represents an adhoc aggregation of recently purchased Sempervivum cultivars, all of which are going to flower. I put them together to facilitate manually crossing some of these cultivars. The flowering plant dies, so might as well put their exit to good use and try some crosses. In most cases the departed hens leave behind chicks, in a few cases where only mature rosettes were sent without chicks, I might lose them and have to buy them again.

Update: I did remove 'Kip' (the big one in the center) and performed surgery on it to force chicks, proud to replace the spot with 'Proud Zelda', and even better one for hybridization.

Mine are spread throughout the yard but I have too many too move. I do have a bunch that are going to bloom in the selected seedling bed and many of those are candidates for crossing. Some of these will the third generation of my lines too. I'm getting all the things into place now. Am also combining the best of the lines descended from selfing Killer and Jungle Shadows or crossing the (Lilac Time X Jungle Shadows) group with the (Killer X Jungle Shadows) group. Have lots of the latter from the last season that are growing nicely in the seedling garden. They look VERY happy right now.

Kevin

Kevin, in time I'd love to see your results for (Lilac Time X Jungle Shadows), you're light years ahead of what I'm doing, basically it's great being retired and having the time to quickly rebuild a collection of semps (they're still in pots until I build a proper semp landscape garden, but easily portable right now). I don't have enough semps to have a definitive hybridization game plan, but now with some good cultivars in my recent possession and they're about to flower, I can informally improvise and have fun trying my hand at some crosses with cultivars like Seminole, Niphetos, Pruhonice, and others.

Top view of 'Proud Zelda', that vantage point hides the fact it's going to bloom, she will make a fine seed parent. Isn't she simply gorgeous?