Succulent: A plant that stores water in its stems and leaves.

Succulents are a great way to have color all year long. I found this planter walking around San Francisco and realized how easy it is to have a vibrant and colorful garden without tending to blooms. Read more on how to step up your succulent game!

Succulents offer TONS of color and texture in one planter.

 

Labeling Succulents in Your Collection
Seeing plants as a collection can develop into an addicting hobby. Keep your labels to remember the species and customize your own tags. Labeling your succulents will help you remember the species and be able to distinguish succulents from one another. This photo was taken at the Berkeley Botanical Garden.


Learning Names

Once you start learning and recognizing succulent names, shopping becomes a new level of overwhelming awareness about how much you don’t know about plants. But don’t take this as a deterrent; challenge yourself to find the ones you own when walking around nurseries and neighborhoods. Test yourself and become the succulent naming know-it-all you know you’ve always wanted to be.

Propagating Succulents

Succulent leaf propagation is not for the impatient. Twist leaves off your plants at home and lay on flat, moist soil. Water once a week gently and slowly by using a low-intensity nozzle size on your hose or a watering can with many holes. Watering gently allows the leaves to stay on top of the soil; you don’t want to bury them (causing them to rot) accidentally. Keep in indirect light and take progress photos to ensure it’s working slowly but surely!

Once your leaves develop into new plants, you can start to plant them in containers. Here’s a collection of succulents all propagated by leaf or stem cuttings and are only 1″ big! In my opinion, this is the most entertaining stage… you can fit them anywhere.
Plant succulents in wooden shapes for a mini garden that you can hang. My favorite shape is California! Fill in with sphagnum moss for a finished look.

Cacti vs. Succulents

So all cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti. What does this even mean..? We have to first go back to high school Biology class. Remember Kingdom, Division, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, and Cultivar? (King David Came Over From Germany Soon Clumsily).

Taxonomy, or the classification of organisms (in this case, plants), is taken very seriously in the botany world, and rightfully so. If we did not classify plants, we would not easily be able to identify species and recognize common characteristics of plants that are related.

Cacti have their own family–Cactaceae. This family defines cacti as perennials that are fleshy or “succulent” with spines. The word succulent is a vague term implying a plant with thick and juicy stems and leaves. We place succulents in other families, such as Agavaceae, Crassulaceae, and Euphorbiaceae, because they don’t have the same spines and other morphological parts cacti do.

A vibrant succulent mosaic garden at Sherman Gardens in Corona del Mar.

Farina- Succulent Sunscreen

Many succulents have a waxy, white coating that protects the leaves, called farina. When handling succulents with thick farina, be sure not to touch the leaves as much as possible. Once your fingerprints are on the leaves, they never go away (and we know who did it)! Touching the farina doesn’t harm the plant, but can leave unsightly marks.

The powdery, white coating on succulents is called farina.

I hope you’ve learned something new about my favorite plants! We always have an assortment of colorful, quality succulents in stock at the nursery. Swing by to see which species you don’t have.

-Allana of The Greenery