regnum-plantae:

Aeonium species, Crassulaceae

This display of Aeonium species at the Winter Gardens combines the most striking cultivars from the Canary Islands Room at Glasgow Botanic Gardens, where many more plants native to the archipelago are grown together over a much larger space. If last year I missed the blooming of the Aeonium arboreum var. holochrysum grown there, here I found all the plants loaded with yellow, sun-shaped flowers. Not only the three spikes you see in the middle photo, but a few more around the place, as it’s one of the most commonly grown Aeoniums. 

The dark-coloured rosettes highly contrasting against the green foliage are those of Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’ or ‘Schwarzkopf’, not nearly as dark and rose-bud shaped as it generally looks like when growing in parts of the world where the sun shines for a bit longer and a bit harder than here in Scotland. Lanky and floppy as it is, it’s still very noticeable.   

The two large variegated rosettes belong to Aeonium arboreum ‘Sunburst’ and one is particularly interesting as it displays variegation mostly on one half. 

In the foreground, the smaller and less commonly cultivated Aeonium gomerense, endemic to the island of La Gomera, covers the base of this well-planned, pyramidal show of Crassulaceae.