Addisonia 45 



(Plate 247) 



GRAPTOPETALUM PACHYPHYLLUM 

 Thick-leaved Graptopetalum 



Native of Mexico 



Family Crassulaceae Orpin© Family 



Graptopetalum pachyphyllum Rose, sp. nov. 



In North America there are some twenty-five genera belonging 

 to the Orpine family. One of the recent additions to this family is 

 the little genus Graptopetalum, based on a single species to which 

 we now add a second one. The type species (G. pusillum) was 

 discovered in 1906 in Durango, Mexico, by the late Edward Palmer. 

 Barren plants of it resemble some of the small species of Echeveria 

 but flowering plants look very different, having a rotate corolla 

 like that of a Sedum but differing from that genus in having united 

 petals. 



In 1905 the writer, while making an extensive trip into the interior 

 of Quer£taro with Dr. Fernando Altimirano, then director of El 

 Institute Medico Nacional, discovered a second species growing on 

 a cliff near Cadereyta. Living plants have since been grown in 

 the New York Botanical Garden which have repeatedly flowered 

 and from which our illustration was made in 1922. 



This species differs from G. pusillum in its much more turgid 

 obtuse leaves, besides having other minor differences. 



The thick-leaved graptopetalum is much branched and more or 

 less cespitose, the branches usually very short and crowned by a 

 rosette of leaves, but sometimes elongated and three inches long. 

 The leaves are very turgid, almost terete, glaucous, pale green, but 

 sometimes tinged with purple, about one-half an inch long, and very 

 easily detached from the stem. The flowering branches are usually 

 weak, sometimes spreading or even prostrate, and bearing a few scat- 

 tered spreading leaves ; the inflorescences are in an open few-flowered 

 cyme; the pedicels are very unequal, the longest sometimes nearly 

 an inch long. The calyx is deeply 5 -parted, the sepals are fleshy, 

 green, appressed to the corolla, and somewhat unequal. The 

 corolla is campanulate with a rotate limb, about two-thirds of an 

 inch broad, with a distinct but short tube, its lobes channeled above, 

 acute, cream-colored to yellowish, and spotted with red. The ten 

 filaments are adnate to the corolla at the top of the tube; the anthers 

 are brownish. The five carpels are erect. 



J. N. Rose. 



