Did my Echeveria ‘Afterglow’ rot?

I was about to water my Echeveria ‘Afterglow’ when I noticed that the head did not look normal. The main growth point was damaged. It no longer looks like a rosette.

Looking at the center, you can see there are some cypress leaves in it, and underneath them, you can see some dark brown discoloration.

These are all signs that something is wrong.

I tried to look closer without damaging the plant. Zooming in, I could see the dark brown, almost black, discoloration more clearly, but I needed a closer look.

I needed to damage my plant. I needed to remove leaves to better see what’s happening.

Yikes. I removed a couple of leaves, and the stem is dark brown and wet. It looks like the plant is oozing, which is atypical. It looks like I’ll have to damage my plant some more in order to treat it.

So I removed more leaves to better understand the extent of the damage. It looks widespread.

The two small leaves in the middle of the photo are where the growth point used to be. This affliction destroyed the main growth point, and that’s why my succulent not longer has a rosette.

I also noticed lots of offsets.

To see more of the extent of the damage, I removed more leaves. I made a couple of observations:

• The affliction mostly affects one side, but it still destroyed the main growth point.
• Besides this top portion, the length of the stem is healthy.
• The plant produced a lot of offsets.

I came to this conclusion: Since the head or main growth point got destroyed, the plant created offsets to continue growing. Since the plant can create offsets, the rest of the stem and roots are healthy. (You could also go the other way around to say that since the stem and roots are healthy, the plant continued to grow by creating offsets).

Since the plant is still viable, I decided that I was going to excise the rot and keep the main plant. Therefore, I plucked off leaves and some offsets to give myself room to make a clean cut. (I will plant the offsets separately).

Onto one of the main questions: What caused this damage? My suspicion is that rain water collected in the head. The water never evaporated, so it sat there. This sitting water damaged the stem, making it vulnerable to infection. Bacteria infiltrated and damaged the plant. The plant began to rot.

This would explain how the bottom of the stem is healthy and produces offsets, yet the top is damaged.

I got some clean shears. With leaves and offsets out of the way, I used my plant scissors to cut off the rotted part. I removed any brown, wet parts of the stem.

I then covered the cut with cinnamon. The cinnamon acts as a bandage. It covers the wound to keep out bacteria and fungus. I then set the plant on the second shelf with partial shade.

The picture with the cinnamon covering the wound was taken a few days later. The plant has taken well to its treatment so far.