Haworthia Athena

Name and Characters: Athena雅典娜 Correcta克里克特 Longevity寿

Although I’ve been especially drawn to variegated haworthias lately, there are still a few non-variegated varieties that always catch my eye. One of them is Haworthia Athena, believed to be a correcta hybrid.

It features the classic large, triangular windows and a flat leaf surface. Under sun stress, the whole plant takes on a soft pink blush. What makes it particularly captivating is how the windows develop a porcelain-like look, created by a glossy pink layer overlaying a deeper green core. The simple pinkish-white veins further enhance its beauty, standing out gracefully against the leaf surface.

In China, Athena is known as one of the “Four Goddess Correcta” (Athena, Heavenly Pond, Ice Soul Queen, and Moonlight Goddess). If you’re interested in Athena, it’s definitely worth exploring the others as well!

Haworthia Plastic Skin Variegated

Name and Characters: Plastic塑料 Skin皮 Jade玉 Dew露(Cooperi) Variegated锦

Plastic Skin is a fairly common variegated cooperi and is typically more affordable than other varieties. It stays relatively small, which means it reaches maturity faster as well. Compared to other cooperi, it has very small leaf windows that are heavily covered by veins. The tops of the leaves are coated with a thick, waxy outer layer instead of the usual translucent window, giving the plant a reflective, plastic-like appearance.

Whether the reduced window is a pro or con depends on your preference. With less transparency, the leaves tend to show stronger coloration, but you lose some of the dewy, juicy, glassy look that many cooperi are known for. The variegation usually appears in white, yellow, or pink tones and does not develop orange or red hues, even under stress. There is also a non-variegated version of Plastic Skin, though I don’t own one.

Because it is reasonably priced and matures quickly, Plastic Skin makes a great starter variegated cooperi for collectors who are new to variegated haworthias.

Haworthia Ice City

Name and Characters: Ice冰 City城 Longevity寿 

Ice City

Haworthia Ice City has very distinctive, triangular-shaped leaves with exceptionally large windows, and it can grow quite large when fully mature. Using my kind of forgotten 😓math knowledge, I’d describe these windows as resembling irregular triangular pyramids.

I believe the combination of large opaque windows, pyramid-like 3D structure, sharp edges and defined lines is what gave the plant its name, Ice City. Its leaves are considered a mutant form because this irregular, three-dimensional window shape does not occur naturally—it arose from a mutation during tissue culture.

Things get even more confusing from here. Ice City itself is already a mutant of haworthia pygmaea, but there is another mutant form of it sold (which is probably a hybrid). In the market, when you see Haworthia Ice City, it usually refers to the original, more common mutant. When you see Haworthia Ice City Mutant, it typically means the secondary mutant form, which has even larger, frostier windows, and shorter leaves. However, due to translation or naming inaccuracy, the original common mutant is sometimes also labeled as Ice City Mutant. Because of this, accurate identification is important to avoid buying the wrong plant.

Ice City Mutant

In case you are curious, the term Longevity (寿) is somewhat arbitrary and generally just refers to haworthias with triangular leaves rather than round leaves like cooperi or rectangular or square leaves like truncata and maughanii. I recommend thinking of it simply as meaning “haworthia” and largely ignoring it in translation because it doesn't help with identification. I’ll go into more detail about this in a dedicated post later.

Variegated 锦

I mentioned in another post that the variegated Ice City shows mostly yellow variegation and doesn’t really stress pink, orange, or red. It looks very similar to the non-variegated Ice City. It’s still quite small, so I’m excited to see how it looks as it grows bigger.

Haworthia Red Sun Variegated

 Name and Characters: Red红 Sun太阳 Jade玉 Dew露(Cooperi) Variegated锦

This is a relatively new variegated Haworthia that I recently acquired. As the name suggests, this cooperi/obtusa turns a bright red when stressed, and its leaves are quite round—resembling the shape of the sun. It stresses to orange and red fairly easily.

I’ve noticed that some variegated Haworthia species stress orange more readily, while others hardly do at all—Ice City variegated, for example, typically displays only yellow variegation. Variegation itself can appear in a wide range of colors, including white, yellow, pink, orange, and red. A common theory is that variegated plants lack green chlorophyll, leaving other accessory pigments to dominate and influence coloration. However, I’m unsure how sun stress specifically affects these remaining pigments.

I’d love to learn more about this process and how to selectively breed for certain types of variegation. Personally, I haven’t seen a non-variegated Red Sun, which leads me to think that Red Sun likely originates from a seed-grown variegated cooperi that stresses red easily. Feel free to share your thoughts—I’m always interested in learning more about this topic.