Transcript:
Today we’re looking at Echeveria Agavoides and in particular Echeveria agavoides Romeo and its relatives, which includes the Champagne series, which has Echeveria Romeo as one parent and Echeveria Llauii as another well look at a few other hybrids along the way, Here’s James Lucas from succulence, Australia to tell us all about it. Today I thought I’d show you Romeo And some of the hybrids that have come from it. Romeo’s, an unusual sort of mutation. But this this fellow here is probably five or six years old. It’s in a very porous pot, so it dries out really easily and it’s actually done. Well, there’s a bit of a funny story about it when I first came out. This one came from Kors in Germany and the Dutch were growing up and the Koreans used to go over there and buy them and taking the thousands back to Korea and unfortunately, they’re a bit humid in summer in Korea and it, this one earned the nickname and the reputation of Sudden Death. So you have to beware. It’s not the easiest one to grow. Are you growing this? This is what I consider a fussy plant and considering this is called sudden death. I’ll show you how to make it keep alive. This is bottom watering or whatever you know. I’ve got to here back in a water. The all our pot had big holes in the bottom and what we’ll do is we’ll add soaked through a minute or two and there’s no water on the foliage, and this is one of the things that will cause the fungal issues water sitting in the foliage causes the problem. If you don’t have enough wind, that’s why your plants need to be kept in a well-ventilated eerie position, and by now, water will have soaked up about a third or half the way up the root zone in here and you move much heavier. It’s much much heavier You can feel so can often judge how much waters in your plants by the weight of the pots, so you let them dry right out first and let them drying and he’s been well watered. He’ll be happy for a month or so. Our Romeo comes from corduroy, which is a natural variety or cultivar that occurs in Mexico, but it’s actually mutation of it that actually had bright red pigmentation in the leaves. So this is where this grouping came from originally. So Romeo is a natural one and what happens is because it’s a mutation you get a lot of variations. Now in Korea, they call the green version of Romeo Sirius and then you get like pale pink sort of ready, mid pink and a dark pink, But there is one really special one and Romeo Ruben now. This again is another selection, extra dark, brilliant red in summer, and this is suburban one, the final leaf, but this is now tea seeds, sometimes so what you’re seeing here is a very group. If you grow a batch of seed, you’ll get 20% green, 30% mid pink. And then you get a few red, but this particular specimen here we’ve chosen this one because it really has a short, fat, broad leaf. It is really tight and compact, and this is actually a really good mother form to get seed from now. What we’ve got here is we now are going to have a bit of a look at some of the hybrids of Romeo, and this is what you call the Champagne series and I first saw this in Korea, a man by the name of Hyun Sook Lee, These and other people have tried to copy them, but I think his selection of parents was particularly good because I’ve never seen any other champagnes as good as the quality that he has. These aren’t the colors. Yet they will achieve a much much better color later on with much more definition with the white markings in here. This is what determines this is a champagne and that’s. The white powder called. Farina, now I gave all these types, which this is is one of the first ones to flower in winter. They well, they start in winter and they come up and they actually flare in earlier spring. But you can already see. This is now winter here and the flower first flowers just starting. This is the first day of all these flower. I’ve seen this season. When you see these flowers, it’s often an indication that plan is actually wanting to grow and breed. So this is actually prime season, and this is probably when you need to increase the water a little bit, but do remember it’s winter. Not too much right now. Romeo is such a beautiful plant with amazing color. It’s actually spawned a lot of hybrids from growers all over the world, but I still think that Asia is possibly one of the best places to go and see some of the hybrids. This particular one. This is Romeo Laulindsa. I think there’s a Korean hybrid. So this is a third-generation cross. That’s another one of it showing a little bit more color. These are brothers, they’re clones these two, so you can sort of see. There’s a little bit of variation with the soil mix and things like that and and dryness or whatever they’ve both been grown in different locations, so there’s slightly different color. Yeah, another hybrid, which I think is really spectacular. This was done by Jesse Chinese lady. I know in Melbourne and what she did. Is she crossed Romeo with agavoide’s Ebony, a good form of it and you can sort of see that it has slightly darker tips, red, a good red blush and a long needle, which a lot of the champagnes actually miss out on another good hybrid. This is called. Palpitation, this is a Korean hybrid by Park Kwan-jae. I believe this is Tolimanensi’s parent and Romeo parent. It can sort of see similarities in but differences and this is what breeding and crossbreeding actually does and bringing out certain qualities in certain plants. And, yeah, you just get really nice differences and plants that are really worth while collecting and growing, and this makes the agavoides is family really diverse as one other one here. This is from a friend of mine in Korea. He calls this wWhite Knight and this is another form of champagne. This is his version of it, and it really is a spectacular plant. When it gets growing, the leaves are a little, fatter and shorter than the champagne series. This is the champagne series, almost complete that we got from hyun-seok. Lee and this is the other parent. This is it, give your allow. I and this is the perfect white. One, it’s a difficult plan to grow, and that’s actually its parentage is what makes Champagne series not quite so easy to grow, but its whiteness is the one that brings out the beautiful white powder marks in here added to the color of Romeo. Now, remember before when we said that when use so Romeo seed, you get a percentage turn our green, you get a percentage turn out pink, dark, pink and red. That’s what you’re really looking at. Here’s a group of Reds here, greens. Then you’ve got Pinks and we even have a purple one here. That’s we haven’t grown this one very much, but this one goes quite purple and believe it or not elsewhere in the nursery. We have one super purple. It’s almost like a black purple, absolutely superb. This is a production nursery. You’ll see all the residue. On these plants. It’s a fungicide or powder, and this helps reduce the risks of fungicidal issues over the winter months, but this will wash off after two or three waterings. You’ll see and it’s a standard practice for this sort of plant, or you know, this sort of nursery and plants. There is also a white version which we don’t have here. There are only very small plants here at the moment, but there’s also white, so it varies from white well. This is close to the white. Yeah, that’s like a white version of that young flower this time of year very early, and by the way these do pollinate, and you can’t get seed from these, but don’t forget, they’ll be very mixed up because you’ve got two crosses, and I’ll be very variable. We’re talking before about the Super Purple. That’s the extra dark purple, and you can sort of see the beautiful white lines on it when it becomes more mature, that will be an exceptional plant, and this is was just a one-off plant that I found in Korea that we bought back here, But there’s some really other lovely hybrids. Actually, one you didn’t see before. Is the green with the red edge here. This is a really lovely one. I believe that’s one of the most striking months, which we haven’t grown a lot of yet. Another one that you didn’t see before very well or very clearly. That’s white champagne you can see in the leaves there that markings into green white, beautiful red needles really lovely plant, but this is going to be. I’m going to make this a champagne garden. Now you’ll see here. I’ve used my normal saw mix, but I’ve added a lot of pumice. I want the drainage in these to be exceptionally good, and I don’t want to water it too often because this will keep the champagnes happy and another thing that’s really important is will plant all of these plants quite high so that you can clean around the edges and keep them clean underneath. It’s quite important. This good air flow helps to stop any fungal issues having underneath and so. I’ll plant them up high, and we put size gravel underneath these. Check them out quite high, and you don’t get water gathering around the base and if when the old leaves die? I’ll dry out well with good airflow And they won’t create fungal problems. So always when you’re planting. Clean your plants up around underneath, take off all dead leaves, and you see, he’s already been planted with gravel on there and a little bit of fertilizer in here, not much. We do want them to grow, but we don’t want a lot, but this is. This will be a beautiful bowl of champagnes. Hechavarria are gave or dies are one of James Lucas’s favorite group of plants and he’s done a lot of work with them over the years in a future video. We’ll take a closer look at Echeveria. I gave Ortiz and some of the wonderful varieties that are available, subscribe to the Youtube channel for a regular updates on a whole range of succulents. And as always. Good luck with your gardening.