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Painting with Chromosomes: The Art of Echeveria Breeding

Work begins by dipping my fine-tipped artist’s brush into a mild solution of Elmer’s Glue (back-toschool special) and di-hydrogen monoxide, not just any old water. Next, I roll the red sable bristles into a fine point, after which the brush end is allowed to cure in the Mediterranean sun until firm. With a few flicks of a thumbnail, I fray the brush’s tip enough to prime the bristles for the medium of choice. I then conjure up my palette: some Shaviana blue, Lutea # 5, a bit of Agavoides de Verde, a dollop of Purple on purposorum, accompanied by Laui white, Colorata pink, and finally, a dab of ‘Ebony’. With a blank canvas staring back at me, I straighten my French Beret, take a sip of my espresso and proceed to paint with the chroma of chromosomes! I approach plant breeding with the same creative entrepreneurial spirit that I apply to life. Likewise, my perspective fits hand-in-glove with the long term vision for my existing succulent business. As a landscape designer promoting a unique signature, I don’t just design with succulents, I design the succulents. Why the emphasis on breeding echeverias? Primarily, echeverias satisfy both my creative appetite and the artistic demands of the market, offering many colors, forms, and textures. Secondly, echeverias’ beauty, diversity, and relatively compact growth habit make them highly collectible. Sometimes, a single balcony or a set of patio container gardens are all that is necessary to display a substantial collection. Fortunately, most echeverias adapt well to the coastal Mediterranean climate where I play. Novelty, beauty and performance are features selected for my overlapping landscape and collector markets. Novelty and attractiveness are especially subjective attributes; therefore, one challenge as both a breeder and businessman is creating what the market desires, not just what appeals to me. All three highlights can be assigned to the points of an equilateral triangle, and where the values intersect in the center you have my definition of the perfect cultivar (Fig. 1). These key features, as well as challenges specific to Echeveria breeding, will be touched upon in due course. Novelty Transcending echeverias for a moment, what constitutes a novel cultivar is neither a new name, nor a new genotype. The plant should in fact look or perform differently than what came before. If the plant is redundant, then assign the cultivar name “Green Waste” or none at all. There isn’t much room for mediocrity in my nursery or collection. That is the plant snob side of me. In contrast, my practical businessman rationale says that inventory turnover is what pays the bills. Furthermore, time and resources for thorough evaluations are scarce. Some unnamed or outdated material must be sold and my strategy is to relegate these plants to the landscape market, where they will be more insulated from dissemination and where perception of novelty is most important. A friend of mine recently shared a poignant observation, that today’s collectors’ plants often become tomorrow’s landscape plants. Fortunately for me, what is passé to some savvy collectors is still unknown to many others. Novelty in echeverias could be aesthetic: the most grotesque carunculations to date, selected crimped leaf margins on a species that heretofore had been offered with smooth, a new color painted onto a familiar form i.e. black and purple with carunculations, or combining white echeverias with green to obtain seldom seen bronze coloration. Surprise could mean new hair transplants from E. setosa. Or, it could mean breeding for new flower color and form, using the pink from monotypic Tacitus bellus or the exceptionally long corolla tube of E. longisimma. Novelty could also be 1. The ‘Bred-muda’ triangle Beauty Novelty Performance