Echeveria 'Topsy Turvy' makes a good selection for a container showcasing a single plant.

Talk about gilding the lily. Not only do echeverias resemble flowers, they also produce them. A cereal bowl-size rosette will send forth bloom spikes a foot long or longer and about the diameter of a pencil. These curve and undulate, like antennae. Blooms along an echeveria's flower stalk look like bell-shaped lanterns and appear in cream, yellow, orange, red, pastel pink or combinations of colors. And because the stem is juicy and the flowers waxy, echeveria blooms last a long time.

Echeverias are tougher than they look. They make ideal potted plants, but will grow in flowerbeds, and are fairly tolerant of wet and cold. Like all succulents, they do best in coarse, well-drained soil that is allowed to go dry between waterings.

Echeverias range in size from tiny to as large as a cereal bowl.

Echeverias mixed with other succulents make a handsome scene planted in a rock garden or shallow container.

PROPAGATION: OFF WITH THEIR HEADS
•Many echeverias can be hard to come by, although online nurseries do sell them, and they can be found on eBay.
•The good news is that once you have one, you'll have more. The hen-and-chicks types (such as Echeveria imbricata and E. agavoides ) form ever-enlarging clumps.
•Others, such as E. pulvinata, grow readily from cuttings. And even the fancy ruffled hybrids, which don't pup or branch, are surprisingly simple to propagate, once you know how.
•It sounds shocking (and fatal), but the secret is to behead them regularly. The rosette grows atop an ever-lengthening stem, which over time becomes unsightly, unless you like looking at a gooseneck.
•Using a sharp knife, sever the head 2 inches below the lower leaves. Rest the head on an upended flower pot, in the shade. In a few weeks, roots will sprout from the cut end. Replant the head so its short stem is buried in soil and its lower leaves are flush with the edge of the pot.
•Don't discard the old plant with the headless trunk. Give it bright light and regular water, and one or more baby rosettes will sprout from its bumpy nodes. Remove them and pot them.

Echeveria pulvinata  A mounding, multibranched shrub of loose rosettes has velvety leaves that each come to a rounded point. Leaves are silvery green edged in fuchsia. You have to see the plant backlit to fully appreciate it; its fine, translucent hairs glow. Flowers are bright orange, tipped in red.

Echeveria imbricata  Rosettes suggest satiny blue, teacup-size camellias. These produce offsets (smaller versions of the mother plant that cluster around its base). Once a colony is established, the rosettes squash together, creating concentric circles that resemble raindrops on water. Flower spikes are multiple question marks dotted with orange, acorn-shaped blossoms. Photo from the book, Designing with Succulents.

Fancy ruffled hybrids  During the latter half of the 20th century, nurseryman Dick Wright of De Luz, Calif., hybridized what are perhaps the showiest succulents. Mr. Wright's echeverias resemble crinkly leaved roses, are as big as heads of lettuce and come in red, blue, pink, lavender, metallic hues and blends. Their arched flower spikes, fluffy with buds, resemble ostrich plumes. Some have bumpy leaves that suggest molten lava. Cultivars include 'Blue Crinkles', 'Cinderella' and 'Mauna Loa' – to name a few among dozens.

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