I have heard the tower types cross-pollinate rather easily. Maybe the seedling is a 'Mr. Happy' / E. wildpretii youngster.

Thanks, I did wonder about crosses with wildpretii.......

That's some beautiful color.

OK. Now I have a few echium questions. I have two "Pride of Madeiras". But they look very different. one is two years old and kind of leggy and had no flowers last year and only a few this year (see if you can see them in the photos-they are white) and not in the well known spikes. Here's some photos-

Next, this Pride is what I expected. It is one year old and blooming nicely, light blue flowers.

Now here are the three different "Tower of Jewels." The first two I ordered from seed suppliers.

The first one is in shade (no direct sun) and seems happy. Big wide leaves. We had one last year that wilted in the 90 degree sun of summer. I had originally put this one in a partial sun location a couple of months ago and it would wilt in the sun. So I moved it to the shade and here it is, a happy camper (about 18" across right now)-

This one I also bought from seeds and it looks much different. I have them in a full sun location but kind of behind plants so it is partially filtered. I didn't want them to to wilt. The leaves are narrower and more blue grey than the first.

And finally this one we bought at a nursery. It's doubled in size over the winter and looks healthy.

Man I hope one or all throw up the "tower."

Hopefully Gyr_Falcon will know more because I'm certainly not sure...I would have said if it's white flowered, then it's going to be e. simplex, but what you have with the white flowers does not seem like e. simplex form to me....there is a white flowered e. plantagineum, but the form and foliage would be different...there is apparently an e. onosmifolium, but I'm not familiar with it and your form looks different than the pics I saw.

Your P.O.M. with the blue spikes has fatter spikes than any of mine ever have, very nice.

The last pic looks like what my wildpretiis look like. I had 3 that 'made it' and the largest was in the form of your pic and 4' across...we got a few icy nights and it became tattered and now looks bad. The two smaller ones that I had little hope for did not gain a large rosette, but have now shot up and look as though they're going to bloom soon.

Were these not labeled at all when you got them?

What I can say for certain is....LOL..love your use of the nassella tenuissima....I use a lot of that also....have the nurseries down there quit carrying it also?

The TOJ seeds had no scientific names. One pack arrived and you can tell someone just grabbed a couple fistfuls of dried flower and put it in an envelope. The others were seeds counted out. Both came from nurseries in Eureka. I emailed them to get more seeds and never got a reply.

The Mexican grass lines the sidewalk. I have yet to see a dog pee on the stuff, whereas they killed a couple lavenders I planted next to the sidewalk. My original idea was to create a lavender corridor to delight the passerby's olfactory senses. But the dogs had a different idea. The Mexican grass just spread by itself, in fact I spend a lot of time pulling seedlings. But now the idea is to create a flowing, undulating corridor to delight the passerby's visual senses.

Unless something happens to the terminal, E. simplex typically grows with a single stalk, similar to that of Tower of Jewels. Some E. candicans are pink, and I have seen some that are so pale they appear white. They may even be considered and sold as "white" now in the trade. I confess to not being up to date on the more recent breeding and marketing for echiums.

Yes, unfortunately, seeds online from sources that are not well known are questionable rather often.

And, yep, the nassella tenuissima does reseed a tad. After 2 1/2 years in ground here, mine has reseeded this year and I've dug enough for use in other areas that I can now just weed it along with the 'weeds'. It's still worth it to me. I like things that reseed. Since HD has vowed now to not sell it, and that was the only source locally, I have people asking me for seedlings....do you think they will take me away in handcuffs for giving it out?....LOL....

Sorry to not be of more help with the echiums.....

This is a pic I took several years ago of the e. simplex at Quail Gardens in Encinitas (now known as San Diego Botanical Garden).

and

A pic of my e. simplex that I brought up here with me and what Winter here did to it....sigh...

I could have put this in the "Grasshoppers" thread.... yesterday I found two big grasshoppers (2-1/2") munching on the biggest of the tower jewels. Again! Last year they devoured two of them (the broad leaf one in the shade was given the 1-2 punch by the sun and the grasshoppers). I must be Buddhist at heart because I hate killing anything but I sent one's soul transmigrating. The other escaped to munch another day. I did put the dead grasshopper out for the crows and this morning it was gone.

I did have grasshoppers in Fallbrook, seemed to be a lot of them, or at least more than I'd ever noticed before but I never noticed them in particular on the echiums. I did however, have a lot of various plants for them to munch on and I would not have noticed if they were not up around the house. Yeah, they would be a bit squishy and yucky to just step on.

So this pride finally showed some flowers, a couple of quasi spikes, and then a few random clusters. The flower were white/light pink. Now I'm wondering, can I prune this and if so how? Looking at it from the east it looks very leggy (first photo), from the west not so bad.

It is not uncommon for them to get leggy if left unpruned. It is best to tip prune the spent flower heads regularly to encourage the plant to resprout along the stems during the growing season. Heavier pruning is usually left until fall, and should not include the unbloomed stems that will become the following year's flowers. But the thing is, if you prune back to bare stems, sometimes the plant will not resprout from those stems. That is why regular maintenance pruning of the spent heads is generally recommended over hard prunes for this plant.

This is also not considered an especially long-thriving plant. 5-6 years is good; others can survive for quite a few years longer, but they do tend to get leggier as they get older (compact cultivars at a slower rate than the leggier species). Generally gardeners will allow some of the seedlings to grow to replace the parent plant as it ages. So when the parent gets unsightly, they pull it and allow the maturing seedlings to take over the spot and flower in the parents' stead.

Are any of you Echium growers inland?

I have two e. wildpretii that made it and are flowering. They're planted atop a big mound of dug-out sod. I've been digging sod here for two years now....a career....LOL...Things that need super drainage here are going on that mound....I will need to cover it with black plastic this summer in front to solarize the weeds, grass still coming up from that sod and the back area will need to be worked on for quite a while as it backs up to 'wilderness' brambles that will need to be smothered. my main goal for the wildpretii was to get seed for coming years, so I'm happy with that.