Cute stonecrops form a dense tapestry with their lush purple flowers, as if embroidered with greens of spectacularly colored fleshy leaves. Bumblebees, bees, butterflies always curl over the tapestry, because stonecrop is a honey plant. As soon as he is not called: sedum, rabbit cabbage, creak ...
The purification genus purpurea from the family Crassulaceae has a huge number of species (up to 500). Among them there are perennial and annual herbs, and shrubs - all of them are very different from each other in size and appearance.
Stonecrop purple, erect flowering abundantly flowering plant, is widespread throughout the expanses of Eurasia: open places, edges and clearings, roadsides, forest fires - his favorite habitats. However, the tramp stonecrop has long moved to gardens and front gardens, and even adopted by gardeners as a companion to tall plants, in which the lower leafless part of the flowerbed looks unpresentable. The growth of the purple patch is 35-70 cm, just enough to hide the "bare legs" of rudbeckia, gelenium or aster. Surrounded by elegant white or perky pink stonecrops, dahlias look great, especially if the background for this splendor is ornamental grasses, such as feather grass or miscanthus.
The role of a “soloist” in garden compositions is rarely attracted to purps of purple, while meanwhile, pink-colored clearings on a green background make a very pleasant impression. Stonecrops planted with a dense ribbon along the garden path will visually make the narrow path more voluminous and picturesque.
Stonecrop purple - landing and care
These plants are succulents; they simply adore brightly lit places. With a lack of sunlight, poor things drastically stretch out and lose their decorative effect - the leaves turn pale, the flowers do not develop. The soil for growing stonecrop purple should be permeable: loam, sandy loam. Sand or gravel should be added to heavy soils. Plants take root well in poor lands and bloom, without waiting for any additional fertilizing. Moreover, growing on a rich soil of beauty does not add to the plant : the stems stretch unnecessarily, the center of the bush dissolves ugly, the color intensity disappears. You don’t need to water or fertilize the plant - is it not economical representative of the plant world? Sometimes feeding may still be required (although not necessarily). If the stonecrop is involved in the composition on a flower bed or an alpine hill, the proximity to other flowers may deprive it of the necessary minimum of nutrients, then you need to feed a little.
The simplest and fastest succulent is propagated by cuttings. Easy-rooted shoots of purple stonecrop are formed on the plant all summer. You can find them even in a bouquet standing in the house for decoration.
Unpretentious, non-capricious, almost no need for care stonecrop purple agrees to grow even on poor rocky soils. This is an excellent honey plant, uninterrupted, like a gold donor, supplying bees with nectar even in dry weather. It is difficult to imagine borders, rabatki, rockeries, mixborders in landscape gardening without purple sediment. On the healing properties of this plant, you can write not just an article, but a whole research work, because they say that it was she who put Ilya Muromets on her feet. And in appearance you will not say! Here is such a modest and healthy plant that lives in our gardens.