I showed this photo of Semp. 'Vlado' before, it grew with 3 embedded chicks without any apparent stolons, and the enlarging chick rosettes slammed up against the hen, it's recently been looking so hideous that I decided surgery was necessary.


Still no real stolon length, I cut off the rosettes with a needle-nosed pair of snips, then peeled off the lowermost leaves of the chicks to give a fraction of an inch stem to hopefully root. I brought them inside the house to callous over first, do you think this is the right approach to attempt rooting the stolonless chicks.

LEFT: View of hen, and backside of three stolonless chicks with lowermost leaves removed.
RIGHT: View of hen, and front side of 3 stolonless chicks.

The mother hen looks relieved. Good work Mark.
I just did that with one of mine, now I need to do it with 'Artist'.

valleylynn said:The mother hen looks relieved. Good work Mark.
I just did that with one of mine, now I need to do it with 'Artist'.

Yes, she's definitely relieved, and the hefty chicks are resting in my air conditioned room for a week to callus over before potting up in an attempt to root them.

The ones I did I just pulled off the bottom leaves and planted the rosette. I checked on them today and they are looking good.

valleylynn said:The ones I did I just pulled off the bottom leaves and planted the rosette. I checked on them today and they are looking good.

Okay Lynn, I will do the same in a few days, and hope for the best. It's so useful to compare notes here on this forum!

You should remember that I am in a drought state here, we haven't had rain in two months. So not sure if it would be as successful for you Mark.

valleylynn said:You should remember that I am in a drought state here, we haven't had rain in two months. So not sure if it would be as successful for you Mark.

It has dried out considerably in the last week and a half, mostly sun, maybe the Calcutta monsoon weather is finally gone. Will give it a try and see what happens.

Glad to hear the monsoon as moved on.

AntMan01 said:I showed this photo of Semp. 'Vlado' before, it grew with 3 embedded chicks without any apparent stolons, and the enlarging chick rosettes slammed up against the hen, it's recently been looking so hideous that I decided surgery was necessary.


Still no real stolon length, I cut off the rosettes with a needle-nosed pair of snips, then peeled off the lowermost leaves of the chicks to give a fraction of an inch stem to hopefully root. I brought them inside the house to callous over first, do you think this is the right approach to attempt rooting the stolonless chicks.

LEFT: View of hen, and backside of three stolonless chicks with lowermost leaves removed.
RIGHT: View of hen, and front side of 3 stolonless chicks.

I saw a video on YouTube where they did just that and the chicks rooted just fine - looks to me that you did exactly the correct thing.

I've seen a few growing like this, its almost like a pseudo Heuffelii thing. I wonder what causes it.

AntMan01 said:

Yes, she's definitely relieved, and the hefty chicks are resting in my air conditioned room for a week to callus over before potting up in an attempt to root them.

I've cut off before the entire root structure of some sempervivum and they have rooted. I've done this only to two different cultivars.

GeologicalForms said:I've seen a few growing like this, its almost like a pseudo Heuffelii thing. I wonder what causes it.

Definitely I have some like that too.

Seems like there have been a lot of cultivars doing that this year. I did have a couple last year, but this year there are many.

I've been wondering if it is a virus or something because I have a couple from the same source and they are the only ones I have doing this at this time, it is odd!

Mine are all from different sources.

It's really just short stolons. Some cultivars do it more than others. Injured or recently transplanted ones seem to do more of this.

My clump of Emerson's Giant is just one big ball of rosettes because of this division habit.

Kevin

It probably is due to transplanting then...it funny I totally don't mind it, and in fact it gives the plants some interest (in my opinion) but wondered if it was something contagious, glad to know it is probably not and that in the future they'll revert back to normal