Paleo, those are breath taking photos. 'Blue Clown' has white blooms. How lovely.

Gorgeous photos Paleo,
There are seemingly less pollinators interested in heuffelii here in my garden as well. I have only a few cultivars, I think I've seen the small black bees working them before, in my garden those same sort of bees go nuts over the hardy sedum. Seems like I recall Kevin saying bumble's go for them too, though I haven't observed that myself because I don't get lots of bumble's here. My biggest fans are digger bees, they not only are the most common type found amongst my bloomstalks but they also enjoy nesting in the loose soils I mix for my plants. I get lots of hoverfly's too, living so close to the swamps there are several different varieties of those and other pollinating insects which don't live in large colonies. I'll check them out tomorrow and see if I can catch a pollinator in the act, I've raised bee pollinated seed from heuffelii before with some success so something's got to be spreading their pollen around.
-Sol

Thanks valleylynn and GeologicalForms.

I would love to see some of the digger bees, I think I have only seen one on a sempervivum 3 years ago.

Well I staked out my heuffelii for five minutes or so today, no takers! I did see one of the smaller black bees land on it then push off again, a hoverfly examined a bloom briefly, but I'll admit I wasn't all that patient. Here's a couple of the pollinators I have around, posted up on a bloomstalk together for a short rest before returning to work.

-Sol

Really cool pollinators.

First time I notice a bee actually rubbing it's abdomen on pollen and carry on like that, I assumed bees only carry pollen on their hind legs.
In the last image it actually does that.
The blooms on 'Picasso' have a scent, hard to describe, like a bit of smoked salmon with some dissolved vitamin C and a light touch of grass scent.

EDIT: It is a leaf cutting bee, Megachile centuncularis.

Great photos Paleo.
Wish I could go out and see which semp blooms have scent. I lost my sense of smell in 2020 when I got Covid. I know there are many that have scent.
On my way out to take some semp flower photos.

They are actually cropped stills from a video, I was quite impressed seeing the bee belly rub the pollen.
Actually I have not paid attention if sempervivum have a scent in general, but I don't remember out of many cultivars I had any to have a scent, maybe they had and I thought it's something else smelling.
Sorry about that Lynn, do you still have your sense of taste?

I can sometimes smell certain foods cooking. I taste spicey, salty and sweet, but nuances of food flavors excape me.

From time to time I remember about your Persephone bloom stalk, for me it's a great photo of an impressive bloom stalk.
I'd say not the typical sempervivum bloom stalk, for better or for worse.

After some research online apparently the bees that keep coming back to the sempervivum blooms are the leaf cutter bees, Megachile centuncularis.
Photos that I have posted here https://garden.org/thread/view...

As far as the description goes this is present in North America and Eurasia.

So it seems based on description that the belly is indeed the way of carrying pollen, and it is not a coincidence that the pollen is not carried on their hind legs, however it seems even if does not carry any pollen the hairs on the abdomen are still yellow.
Info:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/...
https://bwars.com/sites/defaul...

Paleo, I remember that 'Persephone' bloom stalk. It was enormous. That rosette had many young offsets, every one of them bloomed with the parent rosette. In the above photo I had removed all of the offsets.

Here is a photo of a sweet medium size arach type seedling that made the move from Dallas to our new home in Oregon City. It has the sweetest pale pink blooms.

Very nice.

Paleo,
Good info on the Cutter bees, I probably aught to research my own pollinator species some too. Interestingly the honey and bumblebees have recently seemed more interested in my semp blooms than earlier in the season, I took a couple photos but they weren't nice enough to post.

Lynn,
Sorry to hear you're still suffering scent loss from covid. It's scary to think that a sickness can just permanently wipe out your ability to smell. Most of my bloom pictures on this website list whether I've noticed a smell or not, sometimes it's hard to tell with the grandiflorums because the plant itself has such a strong scent, but I'd say most semp flowers have a smell to some degree. My bloom-room where I keep all the semps I'm hybridizing always has an attractive smell, this year it's actually rivaled the less attractive aroma of my organic fertilizers which I store in the same sunroom.

What arachnoideum cultivar is it that you posted Lynn? In trying to track down a white flowering arach last year I wound up collecting a number of varieties with light pink flowers thinking they may have had recessives for the trait. 'Ashes of Roses' is one I crossed with because of that, for the most part I see the opposite out of arachnoideums, where their blooms are an exceptionally deep shade of pink, which is also beautiful in its own right.
Here's a deep pink arach seedling of 'spumanti' x self…


This was an odd deformation I found in a bloom of some other plant recently…


And while I'm at it, here's a selection from an (x grandiflorum x arachnoideum with some evidence of marmoreum) crossed back to an x christii type. The plant looks too be really heavy grandiflorum marmoreum and no longer shows much of the arachnoideum traits, some of its siblings had the longer cilia but this one has a gorgeous golden-brown color so it made the cut this year.

You can tell the hybridity with grandiflorum's yellow blooms has caused some shades of salmon to appear in these flowers. As I've continued to integrate as many subspecies as possible into my hybrids I've begun to see some really wide ranges in the traits of the siblings, it's certainly keeping things interesting. Just this summer I had a late bloom on one of my ciliosum x grandiflorum's which I managed to spread around on some of the tectorum/wulfenii types, I'm not doing a ton of crossing this year, but it's tough to ignore the opportunity of a bloom thats out of season. I'm five summers deep now into my semp crosses and stuff is getting weird out there, some of my labels are absolutely ridiculous, they'll have as many as six cultivars named with parentheses and x's scattered in between to try and sum up to a name. I've had way too much fun, trying to dial it back.

Nice photos Sol. This one really is odd. Are all the blooms like this?

GeologicalForms said:
This was an odd deformation I found in a bloom of some other plant recently…

No I think it was just the one, I took the photo a while back and can't remember which plant it was but I think it was a seedling. I notice the first flower on blooms is often mutated, the last flowers also seem to be prone to mutation. The pollen sacks don't open on many late flowers and the stamen aren't as well developed as earlier ones, like the bloom stalk is running out of steam as it begins to die from the base. The first flowers are mutated in the opposite way, as though there was an overload of energy moving into that one point, they can develop extra structures, or enlarged anthers. I have doubts about the fertility whenever I see major deformations. If you've ever looked closely at a bloom from "the green one" (tectorum var. everyone has), you'd have seen how bizarre flower mutations can get, extra stamen, crooked anthers, no pollen, you name it! and those blooms are never fertile.

-Sol