Houseleek Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
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Houseleeks (Sempervivum) are succulent plants of the Crassulaceae family.
They are able to store water in their thick leaves. They occur from Morocco to Iran, through Spanish sierras, the Alps, Carpathians, Balkan mountains, Turkey and Armenian mountains, and the Caucasus. They live mainly on sunny rocks and stony places in the montane, subalpine and alpine belts.
Like some other plants of Southern Europe, their ancestors have likely a subtropical origin. Morphologically, they are obviously linked with the genera Aeonium, Greenovia, Aichryson and Monanthes, which we know mainly from Macaronesia (Canary Islands, Madeira). However, their subtropical cousins are very frost-sensitive, but houseleeks are fully frost-resistant.
The name "Sempervivum" comes from the High Middle-Age and has its origin from the Latin language: "Semper" means "always" and "vivus" means "living". Sempervivum are called "always living" because this perennial plant keeps its leaves in winter and is very resistant to difficult conditions of growth.
Houseleeks grow as tufts of perennial but monocarpic rosettes. Each rosette propagates by lateral rosettes (offsets, "hens and chicks"), by splitting of the rosette (only Jovibarba heuffelii) or sexually by tiny seeds.
Their hermaphrodite flowers have first a male stage. Then the stamens curve themselves and spread away from the carpels at the center of the flower. So self-crossing is rather difficult. The colour of the flowers is reddish, yellowish or - seldom - whitish. In Sempervivum sensu stricto (i.e. Sempervivum subgenus Sempervivum) flowers are actinomorphous (i.e. like a star) and have more than six petals.
In the subgenus Jovibarba, the flowers are campanulate (bell-shaped) and are pale green-yellow with six petals.
The genus Sempervivum is easy to recognize, but its species are often not easy to identify. Even one single clone can look very different under various growth conditions (modifications) or different times of the year. This genus is obviously ina not yet stabilized phase of its evolution and all its members are very close linked to each other. As a consequence, many subspecies, varieties and formss were described, without well-defined limits between them. As a second consequence, it is to see a high frequency of natural hybrids in this genus and the possibility of back-crossings of these. However, more or less 40 species can be individualized in the whole area of the genus, but there are many more local populations, without nomenclatural valour but with sometimes their own characters.
In the Alps, for example, the most distributed species are Sempervivum tectorum (Common Houseleek, sometimes called Sempervivum alpinum), Sempervivum montanum (Mountain Houseleek) and Sempervivum arachnoideum (Cobwebbed Houseleek), each one with several subspecies. Sempervivum (Jovibarba) globiferum and its subspecies (subsp. hirtum, subsp. allionii, subsp. arenarium) lives in eastern and southern Alps. More local are the yellow-flowered S. wulfenii and S. grandiflorum, and the beautiful Limestone Houseleek (S. calcareum). More rare are S. dolomiticum and mainly S. pittonii. S. pittonii is a small yellow-flowered jewel which grows only on two mountains slopes near Kraubath in the Mur valley in Austria and is very threatened.
On roofs or old walls S. tectorum can be find, more or less wild, very far out of its natural area. It is a very old medicinal and witch-plant. Some believe that this plant is able to protect a house from lightning.
"Semp-lovers" are numerous and often have many different cultivars in their collections. Houseleeks are very variable plants and hence hundreds, maybe thousands of cultivars were created, but a lot of them are not much different from each other. The main interest of these cultivars are not their flowers, but form and colour of the rosette-leaves. The most colourful time is generally from March till June.
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