Seen on the street in Palo Alto recently — in planters outside Pacific Art League Palo Alto, just up the street from my house, and in recent xeriscape plantings in front of City Hall — an otherworldly succulent, one that looks more like a sea creature (specifically, some sort of curly coral) than a plant. Searching on “succulent looks like coral” brought me many astonishing succulents, among them the one in my neighborhood, an Echeveria hybrid named ‘Blue Curls’:
(#1)
The neighborhood plants were in bloom. A flower stalk:
(#2)
From the World of Succulents site on the plant:
Echeveria ‘Blue Curls’ is a mostly solitary succulent [in thefamily Crassulaceae] with rosettes to 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter, with frilly-edged aqua blue-green leaves that take on showy pink hues in spring and fall. The flowers are reddish-pink in color, well spaced along long stalks in summer.
… It is presumed to be an Echeveria gibbiflora hybrid attributed to possibly either Harry Butterfield or Frank Reinelt. This hybrid is noted as the sister seedling to another well known cultivar, Echeveria ‘Blue Waves’.
… Echeveria ‘Blue Waves’ is a low growing succulent up to 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter and up to 18 inches (45 cm) tall, known to be evergreen displaying a blue-green color in the center of the rosette. It is a little less blue than it’s sister Echeveria ‘Blue Curls’ and without as much red on the margins.
(#3) ‘Blue Waves’
Earlier on this blog: a 3/1/17 posting “Two notable plants”, on extraordinary plants in the genera Opuntia and Echeveria (but not ‘Blue Curls’ and ‘Blue Waves’).
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