Wonderful pix, Para! I love to see these! I've been documenting 2 of mine from the time the inflorescence first appeared (a couple months, at least). I plan to post soon...but it may have to wait till after the holidays. The one inflor. I measured at 3 foot...put a yardstick in the pic to show. :D How DO you keep those lower leaves ON?! Mine get ugly & fall off or the snails attack them. :(

I enjoyed the show!
~Rosemarie

Nice pics - Love the colors. That first pic especially with the tan background.

ToddO

No offense to Mt Etna, but I find these much more attractive :)

Nice pics Para.Thanks for sharing.
The winter colours bring the best out in them.

Niel.

Thanks for the comments all. Rosemarie, the trick to keeping the lower leaves on is a mystery to me. I just try to keep the plants happy which means I practice benign neglect with religious zeal. It is important that they not get too much sun, too much water, too mcuh fertilizer, or too much handling. Also, I suspect that my cool climate here is just about ideal for growing echeverias outside. My main concern is the rare possibility of a hard freeze in which case I will be scrambling to move dozens of pots into the garage.

Snails do love to munch on them, and I fought a nightly battle with hordes of the voracious little French invaders last winter. The deep red ech in the second picture lost all of its newest leaves last Feb. I thought the growth center was consumed, but obviously not since that plant has recovered and now looks great.

So far this winter I have been unable to find more than a few small snails during nightly patrols, so I think repeated applications of Sluggo has wiped out most of the gastropod army that used to live in my garden. Sluggo is not poisonous to dogs, cats, squirrels, and birds. I highly recommend this product compared to any of the other snail baits which all contain varying amounts of the highly toxic chemical metaldehyde.

Para