Welcome to your new home! Your plant appears to be Echeveria imbricata. It is typical for Echeveria to drop bottom leaves and with time they will grow tall with just a canopy of leaves at the top. Most of us will whack the stem, leaving enough stalk to replant after a period of time to allow the freshly cut plant to callous. Most Echeveria will benefit from lots of sun and long days. Because of your location, your days and nights don't change as drastically as other locations on our planet but you probably get intense sun from time to time and should protect your plants during the mid-day sun. When a plant begins to get smaller leaves or the stem becomes narrow and elongated, it has become etiolated. Once this happens, it can take some time before the plant will begin "acquiring" a well grown appearance. The attached picture demonstrates all of the above. The plant on the left is Echeveria imbracata. As you see it desperately needs a whack job as do the other two Echeveria in the picture. Note how small the heads have become because of lower light and short days during our winter months. Also, the color on the Echeveria 'Etna' (center) has been lost as have all of its carbuncles on newer leaves and they are much smaller. You can see the dead lower leaves on the Echeveria to the right... this is all natural for this genus, IMHO. This post was edited by bikerdoc5968 on Mon, Feb 4, 13 at 13:25

Hi Kat, Getting the chance to jump in and add my well wishes as well!! Hope you got through your first day all right. Keep hanging in there! Looking forward to having you back here at the table. In the meantime your nurses will have to put up with your wacky sense of humour! LOL Take care and take your meds.

Hello Zhang, qw Welcome to this forum! You have come to the right place to learn more about these amazing plants. Some of us are scientists and some of us aren't so you should receive a good mix of advice from all over the world, we are a very diverse group! Your pictures are lovely and we all love seeing them! I don't know how difficult it would be to send seeds to China, how would one go about addressing an envelope? I ask because from time to time many of us have seeds that we share with others but I don't believe anyone has mailed to China yet, at least I haven't. Several years ago when I first joined this forum I know nothing and so I went back to the oldest post and just read everything forward and devoured posts and the lovely pictures. If you have some spare time, you might try the same. By the way your English is very good; are you using a translator? Donna☺☺

Hi Philip! I agree with Fred, if you can grow the plant outdoors, it could help prepare the plant to bloom next season. I've been to Brighton (it's lovely), but not Sussex. Even with cool, coastal weather, your plant will get more sunlight if it's outside. You'll need to bring the plant indoors when the weather starts to worsen in the Autumn. Assuming your plant has foliage now, it would be a great time to gradually move it to brighter outdoor light. Again, assuming it has leaves and roots, it would benefit from fertilizer at this point in the growing season. As you get further into the growing season, you'll want to make sure you're not giving too much nitrogen, since that can cause the plant to put its energy into lots of leaves but prevent the plant from developing next year's flower bud within the bulb. Even under good conditions, sometimes you don't get a bloom! -Tina