Echeveria elegans


Echeveria elegans, the Mexican snow ball, Mexican gem or white Mexican rose is a species of flowering plant in the family Crassulaceae, native to semi-desert habitats in Mexico.

Description

Echeveria elegans is a succulent evergreen perennial growing to tall by wide, with tight rosettes of pale green-blue fleshy leaves, bearing long slender pink stalks of pink flowers with yellow tips in winter and spring.

Cultivation

Echeveria elegans is cultivated as an ornamental plant for rock gardens planting, or as a potted plant. It thrives in subtropical climates, such as Southern California
It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Like others of its kind, it produces multiple offsets which can be separated from the parents in spring, and grown separately - hence the common name "hen and chicks", applied to several species within the genus Echeveria.

Etymology

Echeveria is named for Atanasio Echeverría y Godoy, a botanical illustrator who contributed to Flora Mexicana.
Elegans means 'elegant' or 'graceful'.