Monday 4 July 2011

Do you notice anything about this plant?

One of my favourite echeverias is e. minima.  It is a very compact little plant which tends to flower well in the middle of summer.  A few of mine are in the flower at the moment,  including this one:


As the name suggests it is never a big plant, and you can keep it small by restricting the roots.  It is a really good plant to play with if you want something unusual in a very small planting space.  I have been playing with it for a while and have quite a few different ones that I have been bonsai-ing over the last years.  This is one of the best so far, I spent ages trying to get a photo in focus but just couldn't get it right.  Hopefully you will forgive me when you see it along side the normal sized plant:


The bonsai plants on the right are the same age as the large plant on the left.  The only difference is that I planted three plants in the small pot and only one in the larger pot (which has now offset). One of the things I like about bonsai succulents is that you don't need to do anything different to grow or care for them.  I never had any luck with other types of bonsai, where you needed to regularly prune the plant and roots to force it to stay small (which is probably lucky as that is something else I could serious obsess about). With succulents you just plant them and then treat them as normal. Plus it helps that it only takes a couple of years for the plants to mature, instead of the decades for other forms.  It is bonsai for the inept.

I don't think the pot does it justice so I have to go in search of something nicer to plant them in. No doubt I will continue to see how much smaller I can get the next generation, I wonder how small I can get the flowers!

1 comment:

  1. You know what...I never thought about making succulents bonzai! Maybe because I am always sticking them together in big pots. But yes you are right I have noticed that some of my plants that are alone in a tiny pot don't get offsets and stay smaller till put in larger pot. Hmmmmm gives me ideas!

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