The Whitest White
My favorite today: Echeveria laui
This plant holds a special place in the category of soft succulents ('soft' refers to being less resistant to extreme environments ❄️☀️). This unique echeveria has the whitest 🤍and thickest farina 🤍 out there.🤩 Many hybridizers cross it with other echeverias, sedums, graptopetalums, etc. to produce new varieties that express laui's genes of round-shaped leaves covered in thick farina. 🤓
Echeveria laui is not an easy plant to grow. 🙃 It doesn't like staying in moist soil for too long and without any signs of declining, it can die 😵 rather unexpectedly. It needs much less water than any echeverias I know. No leaf color changes are visible through the farina and no problems could be identified by looking at it. 🧐 So, if anything is wrong with it, you will not know until it's too late. 😭
How much water 💦 is enough? It's hard to say. My first laui refused to root for 4 months 😲 and I did not water it until a few roots started to show up. No roots did not prevent it from growing 😍, but its leaves were extremely soft. The picture above shows my first laui - old leaves without farina are all wrinkled (on a 4” pot). The new perfectly white leaves grew up while it was rootless. 😲
This beauty that I am in love with today is a big and healthy 6" specimen. 😍 It has gorgeous flowers also covered in white farina. But if I rub the farina off, the gorgeous orange color 🧡is exposed. I do like removing farina sometimes, but not too much (it is leaf protection after all), just to give the plant some contrast. 😆
I have never seen a single-head specimen making babies 👶, but I was able to grow two and three-headed specimens from leaves, which took forever. Laui's success rate for leaf babies is low. 😔
This laui is sheltered and does not receive any top watering 😍. I avoid touching 👉 it in any way to preserve its extraordinary appearance 😘. The only things that affect it are unavoidable components of the outdoor environment - dust, dirt, and insects 🕷🐞🦋.
There is one more interesting fact about this specimen. 😜 When it arrived about 3 years ago, it had damaged new leaves. 🥺The time went by and now these damaged leaves are at the bottom. 😲 You can see their weird shapes there. Tearing a leaf from laui when it is not totally dry is impossible - you can tear a half-leaf but not the entire leaf to the stem. Additionally, you cannot hold onto the plant without smudging the farina so no leverage when pulling. That is why those damaged leaves are still there making the specimen unique. 🤣
The pot is 4.5" in diameter.