Aeoniums Featured
Horticulture Week Magazine has featured Aeonium “Atropurpureum”. I suppose that makes it their Plant of the Week.
Whenever I talk to gardening groups or friends people never fail to mention how much they admire the ornamental value of Aeoniums. They belong to the family Crassulaceae, the genus contains about thirty species. These plants are a succulent with woody stems from the Canary Islands, Madeira, and North Africa.
Over the last three years I have really enjoyed propagating these plants from stem cuttings. I have tried propagating from leaf cuttings by nipping off the succulent leaves and simply inserting them into a John Innes number 1 compost, waiting for the leaves to take root. My brief trial at this stage has not yet been successful , but I will return to that method trying various techniques, temperatures, and growing mediums. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has had success using this method.
I can assure you that we never grow these from leaf cuttings. It’s never worked for us even when a leaf has some aerial roots started. Stem-cuttings rule.
Here’s a sad picture of the Aeonium parent plant in question from Hort Week.
It’s a beautiful plant, just a sad picture.
