Hi, all. A week or two back on the "unusal" thread, some questions were raised about stability of the crested or unusual forms. I've been taking some pics of mine and getting ready to do some posts about them, probably in another week or so.
In any case, I call the form that the crested Legolas is showing as a "wheel". Loosely, I've been thinking about names for some of the other forms I have seen, trying to keep them descriptive. I have examples of "wheel", "saddle", "snake" and "unstructured" for the various forms of crested semps I've seen and hope to post some pics of examples of these in that thread.
The most important thing about all these unusual forms is that some of the physical shapes make it hard for the plant to maintain established roots. If the growth form is pushing the plant in such a ways as to make it harder to root or pull the roots out of the ground, then the only alternative is to do surgery on it so that it can root. Its necessary for them to root properly to thrive and maybe reach stability later on.
Faye, you want to gently tug on the plant to see if it is rooted. My "Mauna Kea Crested" is in the wheel form and is well rooted, so I'm hoping it will do well thru the winter. The "wheel" has now grown almost 360 degrees, so it will be interesting to see what it does when it completes the wheel. I think that it may transform into the "snake" form or perhaps even spiral.
Lynn, if these plants do not do offsets, then the only way to keep them alive or propagate them will be thru division.
Just some thoughts on the subject I've been kicking around.
BTW, my parent Deep Fire that produces my crested's just disintegrated last week, so the offspring will need to carry on. No sign of ever flowering on the departed rosette, but it just fell apart.
I'll try to pick this theme up with pics on the "unusual" thread later on.
-t
