Echeveria runyonii

This garden's Echeveria runyonii started out as a perfectly symmetrical four-inch diameter rosette with incurving leaves.  It has pupped itself silly, quickly creating a fourteen-inch unruly clump of many rosettes,  a few symmetrical,  most unruly themselves, with leaves like long  skinny lizard's tongues, going this way and that, some incurved, some straight, some going in new imaginative directions.    In addition, the leaves are "V" shaped, adding extra directions and dimension. 




It's often labeled  as  Echeveria runyonii 'Topsy Turvy', which may be a marketer's name, but is entirely apt.    





Though it is a champion pupper, it doesn't quite keep up with Echeveria imbricata, which started, but has also remained, perfectly neat and symmetrical.  Our E. imbricata also began as a single rosette.   Last I counted it was a clump of fifty, all managing to be perfectly neat and symmetrical.   E. runyonii doesn't bother. 

Echeveria imbricata:


These two are among the easiest Echeverias, and  if you have space to fill, they will help you fill it.   They also remind the California gardener of the wonders of our climate.  Not everyone can grow these so easily.  I remarked recently to an English succulent afficianado that one of my Austin roses was underplanted with Echeveria imbricata.  First he was taken aback at the thought, then he rather wondered at the tastefullness of the combination, but in the end he sighed with envy at the range of possibilities we have here.  Let us not forget it.