The Saga of the Unidentified Echeveria: Three Months On

One of my first succulents was an echeveria I got from a local garden centre in mid November last year.  It was labelled an echeveria imbricata, but I was dubious of this ID. It, and others of its kind, had been left outside in the rain, in unsuitable potting mix and was pretty sad. I was brand new to succulents then (I had only just bought two other succulents a few hours beforehand) and so I viewed it as a challenge. I wanted to see if I could nurse it back to health.

When I got home and started to repot it, I realised it was rotting. The roots were mush and the rot had started to creep up the stem, so I performed an emergency operation on it: pulled off the lower leaves and cut off the lower part of the plant, just above the rot creep. I left it for a few days to dry out and stuck it in a pot to start sprouting roots.

Just after beheading. Poor guy.

In a pot, after a few days

I definitely haven't treated this guy as well as I intended. When I first beheaded him, I stuck him in some soil after leaving him out to dry for only one day. That in itself isn't that bad, but I actually watered it right after! Big mistake. Luckily someone corrected me and I took him out of the wet dirt and left him (and the soil) to dry for about 4 more days.

About two weeks after his pot relocation, I noticed that one of his bottom leaves was wrinkling up even more than before, and was starting to turn this weird brown-yellow colour. I wasn't sure whether it was just using up the water in its leaves to grow roots, or if it was still rotting, so I took him out of his pot so I could see the leaf properly. And that's when I noticed this weird white growth on the bottom of its stem.

See the milky white thing growing out of the top left corner of the dirt clump? That's a root!

At that point I freaked out. It was either a root or some disease or fungus. I wanted to check by brushing off the dirt on the stem, but I was terrified of accidentally damaging it if it was actually a root. It's obvious now that it was a root, given that the bottom leaves were wrinkling up. You can see how wrinkly the top right leaf in the picture is, with the leaves turning red from drought stress.

Anyway, I was given advice to let it be, which I did, and after accidentally knocking over the pot a few weeks later, I was able to see that it had grown quite a few roots. So I finally watered it and thought it would be fine from then on. Oh how wrong I was.

So since the plant was recovering from over-watering then being beheaded then being thirsty and growing out roots, I figured shade would be best for it. After it started growing roots, though, I noticed it was starting to etiolate.

'It's fine,' I thought. 'It's recovered now and needs light for energy for its new root system. I guess light shade would be better for it.' So I put it in a spot in light shade. A week and a bit later, there was no improvement – it was actually getting worse. So I put it in my window. I had an echeveria agavoides and an echeveria 'Topsy Turvy' in the same spot. They were doing really well so I figured that would be enough light for any echeveria.

Nope!

This guy carried on stretching out, and he was now starting to lean to one side. This carried on for a few weeks until I finally bought a grow light, which he's been under for just over a week now. The difference is amazing. I unfortunately don't have any pictures of him in his worst state, but here is what he looks like now.

Happier guy

It looks completely different to the first picture! The leaves aren't curling and red at the tips anymore – I'm pretty sure that was a stress reaction either from the beheading or from the initial over-watering. It looks so much healthier. But you can also see how the lower leaves are narrow and turned down from lack of light.

Grow light fun

It looks a bit unstable in this picture, but that's partially because I accidentally knocked him over again a couple of days ago. I'm not the most graceful person.

I know the old growth won't return to being compact, but I'm hoping the lower leaves continue to perk up and completely turn up with time. Otherwise I'll probably have to behead it. Again.