Succulents with Flowers

As if succulent plants aren’t already intriguing and beautiful enough, on top of their interesting textures and forms some of them also have the most incredible flowers.

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Often, they are the form of tiny crowns – Sempervivum flowers in magnification are beautiful!

Flowering succulents range from simply interesting, to gorgeous, to outright flamboyant.

It’s almost as if they figure they won’t attract the right insects if they’re too subtle, so they produce these incredibly complex and colorful flowers.

Some produce tall sprays of delicate pale green and pale pink trumpets, like Haworthia. Echeveria bloom in season, usually in the fall, depending on where you are.

Collect the seeds to grow your own new plants.

Aloe flowers are beloved by hummingbirds, and Aloe bloom stalks tower over trees and buildings alike.

One huge botanical greenhouse had to remove part of the roof to give the flower stalk room to grow!

Some attract insects by scent, sometimes not the kind of perfume that attracts us, in the case of Stapelia and Huernia.

These are also known as Carrion Flowers, so that should give you an indication of how they smell.

Others, like many of the Kalanchoe species offer spires and spikes of bell like blooms, in multi colored striped and blended flowers. Then stripes and spots are known as ‘bee guides’ and assist the pollinators in finding the nectar.

Some flowers use perfume to help the insects locate them – if you’ve ever had the unique experience of the Queen of the Night blooming at midnight, you’ll know first hand how strong a fragrance it is, and specifically evolved to attract moths to pollinate them.

Stapelia and Huernia are known as ‘carrion flowers’ because of the smell of rotting meat, designed to draw in flies to perform that same role.


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Kalanchoe daigremontiana, the Mother of Thousands plant, has fabulous cascading flowers of pink or peach colors.

Many others in the genus are equally as gorgeous in bloom, like the Kalanchoe x houghtonii below;


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Cactus plants are renowned for their gorgeous fleeting tissue paper flowers, only after a long period of drought.

Ephiphytes like Schlumbergera and Epiphyllum are misleadingly dull – until they flower with masses of flowers all at once, or with dinner plate sized orchid blooms.

Other colonizing plants make a carpet of texture, but when they burst into flower it adds a whole new dimension. Most succulents lift their flowers high into the air on arching stems, probably to make it easier for insects to find them.

They are also seasonal and bloom in fall, winter or spring, giving them their name of Holiday Cactus – Thanksgiving Cactus flower in the fall, Christmas Cactus around the Christmas holiday and Easter Cactus in spring.

Succulent flowers come in all shapes and sizes, but most are designed by nature to attract their pollinators – insects.

See more Flowering Succulents here…

…maybe yours is here…

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Help identify my plant! 
Hi, I received this plant as a gift a few years ago. I’ve been trying to identify it for a long time, without much success. For the first time this …

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Carpobrotus
Hi I found this plant growing in my garden underneath some fronds of sedum “angelina”. I noticed it because of the bright red flowers but have no idea …

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Yellow Flower 
If possible can you identify just from the photo. Hi Lee, from the leaves, this appears to be some kind of orchid – there are many, many kinds, of …

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Gasteraloe 
This plant looks like an aloe plant but with leathery leaves and a single stem of about 2″ skinny tubular flowers about an inch apart and changing color …

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inverted heart shaped small green leaf 
Small disc shape green leaf on dark stem at the end of the stem is a closed whitish bud that looks star shaped until it grows deepening in color to a …

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beautiful flowering succulent 
it was about 30cms high, the stem was red and white. I think it cam in some mulch that was delivered here. its had a flower for 2 months, now theres no …


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green stalks, leaves grow then drop, strange-shaped pink flowers 
green stalks, leaves grow then drop, strange-shaped pink flowers; see photo(s) Hi Philip, that one has me stumped! I don’t know what this plant is, …

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Yellow/Orange Flowers with Fuzzy Leaves 
I purchased at a flower shop in Honolulu. Its around 6″ tall with fuzzy leaves, orange and yellow flowers. Each flower has 5 petals with small green petals …

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mysterious whit flowered plant 
A plant about 3 feet tall. It has an odd white flower with a yellow center. I won’t know how to properly take care of it until I find out what it is! …

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Spathe Flower 
Hi there, I’ve had this plant for a couple of years now. About a year ago I cut it back and gave some cuttings to my mum. The leaves on the original …


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Arched leaves that look folded on themselves, flowers on long fragrant stalk. 
Hi, I have a plant with fleshy leaves that are kind of half moon shape. The leaves have a notch in their upper edge, and they have the appearance …


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Maybe in the Christmas Cactus family?? 
A friend bought a sick succulent several years ago, on sale at a Lowe’s, that wasn’t identified. It bloomed last summer for the first time, and then set …


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Stemmed plant with downhanging orange blooms 
This one was thick stem and branches, thick leaves and downhanging pods that produced orange coloured blooms. Got it from my brother in Houston, TX and …

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Trailing with small orange flowers 
Hi, I’d like to know what species this is, I picked the plant up from a dollar store. It has squat, oval leaves and a tiny (1cm blossom) orange flower …


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low round succulent plant with pink flowers on on thin frail stalks 
a round lowish succulent plant which grows in California and has feather-like stems with bright pink flowers at the tip What a pretty plant – if no-one …

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Long stems, oval leaves, yellow stemed bulb shaped flowers 
I have a picture… Drought Smart Plants says; and a gorgeous picture it is! That’s quite a plant. It doesn’t look familiar to me, so maybe someone …