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Please Help my 'Aeonium arboreum/Black rose' Succulent Plant10 Sep '09 10:35 am
Hello to all! First, let me apologize for my severe lack of knowledge about pretty much anything to do with gardening and keeping plants alive and healthy beyond simple watering and desired sun exposure. I'm very new at this stuff and although find it interesting and enjoyable, I really don't have a clue yet 
My plant is totally dying and there may not be any hope left for it at this point, but I have to try and ask anyway. I got it from a job that didn't need them anymore so I didn't buy it and so don't know exactly for sure what kind it is but through research I've found this plant seems to be "Black Rose Plant - Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop'" was doing ok for a couple months but has really gone downhill in the last two months or so, especially in the last month--it has lost like all of its leaves and all but one of the woody stems have bent/fallen over.
PLEASE SEE ATTACHED PHOTOS (I had to cut the pic into 4 to meet sizing requirements)
I don't know what is wrong with it. I live in Van Nuys/Los Angeles so that's the climate it lives in. It gets lots of indirect sun as it's home is potted in an inset area just outside my apt door in my courtyard stle apt. I've tried looking into this plant to learn how to best care for it and it seems to me that the conditions I have it in should be fine. Apparently, I have such a green thumb that I managed to kill even this easy going plant haha sad. Here is part of what one article had to say about it: "Black rose is low-maintenance and requires no special care. It does well in borders, rock gardens, flower beds and makes an idea container plant. It’s definitely a plant that holds all-season interest."
Another part of the same article said: "These plants get leggy over time, so to encourage new and more compact growth, cut back branches at several inches below the leaf rosettes." My plant did get sort of tall, almost like it was getting a little awkward. Maybe that has something to do with why it keeled over in the limited pot space it had? Anyway, I'd like to 'encourage new and more compact growth' if it's not already too late but I don't really understand what it means by 'cut back branches at several inches below the leaf rosettes'. Does that mean basically to cut off a cluster of leaves (a 'rosette' I think it may be called) with a few inches of stem under it and like replant it, as if it just did not have such a long stalk/stem? Do I need to get a brand new pot and soil to put the lil guys in because the old pot soil is likely full of old roots and things? An article says: "Many species are easy to grow in a free-draining gritty compost on a sunny window ledge or the greenhouse." Does that mean I should not use potting soil but use something else and where can it be commonly found in stores?
I'm sorry this is so long!! Thank you for reading and I really do appreciate your time and knowledge! If nothing else...please just tell me what you think, is there still a chance that cutting and replanting anything could bring new life back to this thing???
Thank you lots for anything at all in response!!
(((I have another plant that sort of looks like 4 mini palm trees in a pot, but the leaves point more out and up than downward, that has taken a similar path to this black rose plant. It's dying, most of the leaves on 2 out of the 4 stems/stalks started totally drying out/looking burnt so I brought it inside and it's going downhill just as fast. The other 2 stems appear healthy. Could the pot be too small? I don't even know the name of this plant! Ugh. I'll have to keep researching and try to find out. Sorry, that's another time and place.)))
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moosey
head gardener
You Are Not Alone!25 Sep '09 9:37 am
You are not alone! I, too, have had bad luck (that's what I call it) with these Aeoniums. I bought some in a sale from the nursery, and thought that they'd be easy. Well - they were for about six months. During their first winter I tucked some underneath a tree (we get mild frosts) and thought they'd be fine. Oh dear. Not so.
One I remembered about and carefully carried into the glass-house - well, one of my cats sat on the pot and broke off most of the bits.
One which I forgot to give shelter to survived - not only the cold night, but being in a waterlogged outer pot all winter. This shouldn't happen.
Aargh! You can see that I'm going to be no help what-so-ever. It's a blow to the self-gardening-esteem when a plant label claims something is easy care, low maintenance, and you find it otherwise. So I guess you could try reverse psychology - pop it in a pot underneath something and then forget about it?
Sorry I can't help. Sometimes I see these growing so beautifully in mixed borders in magazine photographs. I wonder if they've just been popped in the day before the camera arrived!
Cheers, and good luck, M
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'Aeonium arboreum/Black rose'6 Nov '09 6:23 pm
Perhaps you are showering this plant with too much loving attention. Treat them mean, very little in the way of fertilizer and water seems to be what mine respond to.
The stems that have grown way too long could be cut back to 5-6 inches back from the head end and shoved (yes shoved) into some free draining coarse sand - stand back and watch them pick up. Don't over water them - just a trickle once a week is plenty.
If you're at all unsure of this method, just try it with one or two stems and see what happens.
Hope this helps 
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