Hens & Chicks - Red Rubin

Sempervivum 'Red Rubin'

Crassulaceae

• Full sun (best color)
• Rosettes several inches; 4"–6" tall x 9"–12" wide
• Drought Tolerance: High; requires gritty, sharp-draining soil; protect from winter wet
• Evergreen rosettes, emerald/silver-green with burgundy-red tips; flushes wine-red in fall/winter
• Flower: Starry light-pink (summer)
• Wildlife Benefits: Bees at bloom; deer and rabbit resistant

'Red Rubin' has an easy, tough constitution: very cold hardy, very drought tolerant, and thoroughly low maintenance. Give it full sun for the strongest color and the tightest rosettes, and give it sharp drainage in lean, gritty, well-drained soil. It needs little water once established and, like all Sempervivum, resents wet feet, particularly cold, standing winter moisture in the crown. It is a prolific producer of offsets and fills in quickly.

'Red Rubin' forms large, open rosettes several inches across of fleshy leaves that blend emerald and silvery green with rich burgundy-red, the leaf edges finely fringed with soft cilia. The color shifts dramatically with the seasons: cool temperatures and full sun deepen it until, by late fall and winter, the whole rosette can flush a glowing wine-red, making it one of the better succulents for cold-season color. Each central "hen" is quickly surrounded by a ring of chicks, spreading into a dense colony. In summer a stout stalk rises from mature rosettes bearing starry, light pink flowers, after which that rosette dies and its offsets carry on.

The summer flowers draw bees and other pollinators, and the plant is deer and rabbit resistant. As a garden hybrid of a non-native genus it is an ornamental rather than a habitat plant, but it offers dependable pollinator value at bloom together with year-round, and especially winter, foliage color on almost no water. It carries the same traditional houseleek folklore and skin-soothing uses as its relatives.

'Red Rubin' is the bold-color, larger-scale member of this succulent group, excellent at the front of a rock garden or dry border, in troughs and containers, on green roofs, as edging, or massed as a colorful low groundcover. Its size and strong winter color make it a good anchor around which finer succulents can be arranged. It pairs naturally with the cobweb houseleek and the hardy mix for a range of rosette scales and textures, and with low sedums, creeping thyme, and blue fescue. Placed among stone or gravel, its burgundy rosettes read strongly against both the rock and the blue foliage of blue junipers.