6.
Rosettes and babies

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
Had so many chickies she spread them all over her garden

Don't throw away broken pots. Partially bury them and plant a display around them.



Girls gone wild.
They don't usually go to seed in such a dramatic way.
Click on picture to enlarge

Hen and Chickens..

other names Live Forever-Houseleek-Old man and woman

Family: Crassulaceae..(crass-you-LAY-see-ah)

Genus: Sempervivum..(sem-per-VEE-vum)

Species: Tectorum...(tek-TOR-um)

evergreen perennials

When you see sempervivum tacked on a plant it is Latin for always living and means the plant is evergreen, perennial and hardy.

tectorum means roof

The story goes that hen and chicks were planted on roofs to

prevent lightning?

prevent thatched roofs from catching fire?

Probably the later, if any of it is true, because with moisture filled leaves they would be fireproof.

Hen and Chicks were my first plant to grow as a child. Gramma Lamb had them growing along side her little house in North Bonneville, Washington before the Bonneville Dam put the town underwater and they had to build a new one.
She was not my grandmother...everyone in the tiny town called her that, and I knew nothing of her family. Oddly, manymany years and miles later I found myself related to her by marriage...but she was long gone by then.

Hen and Chicks grow as a succulent rosette...the hen...surrounded by her little pea size chicks. Cut or break the chicks off and poke them dirt and they grow. Every few years a rosette will bloom...I've not seen a definite time line but once they bloom, they die. You can let the bloom go to seed and collect the seeds if you have nothing better to do....no blogs to maintain...no books to read...no cats to draw...

We have lived in many houses and one had whole beds of Hen and Chicks thickly matted. I loved them and when we moved I took a goodly strip of them and planted them alongside the new house. One day while I was gone we had a man with a bulldozer come to do some repair work and he ran his dingdong machine back and forth over my plants. Hen and Chicks are tough but even they have limits.