One of my favorite plants to incorporate into landscaping is Dragon’s Blood.
My sister-in-law taught me about this plant and she helped plant several in our landscaping. It works as a ground cover, but you can’t walk on it. It’s decorative.
Dragon’s Blood is the common name for sedum spurium, which is misleading because it’s not in the sedum genus. Sedum spurium is in the genus phedimus, part of the crassulaceae family. That makes it a stonecrop, and yes sedum are stonecrops as well.
Family tree
- Species: Sedum spurium
- Genus: Phedimus
- Family: Crassulaceae
- Order: Saxifragales
Dragon’s Blood is a low-profile, outdoor plant that spreads easily over time. It needs little care and really no pruning or attention at all. However, it’s so visually cool that you will want to spend time with it. In the winter it turns a deep, blood red, hence its name.
As it spreads, it has light gray stems that squiggle longer and longer through time. It looks like a mythical creature. In the summer it turns more green in color.
I have bark around it, but I think it would look really cool among stones, if they are light in weight and color, perhaps.
We have this plant on our Rachio automatic drip irrigation system (which works on or off Wifi), and it gets watered every other day in the summer. It has a smaller drip amount so that it doesn’t get watered as much as the flowering bushes. I think it is probably considered a succulent and could go for longer without water.
Savillum 