SEDUM. 



S. rctcroidcum — S. amplexicaide, q.v. 



S. rhodantlnun has a name which announces beauties that the 

 plant does nothing to fulfil. It is a stout Rhodiola, from stream- 

 sides all up and down the Rockies, sending out a great number of stiff 

 stems of a foot or 18 inches, densely leafy with crowded foliage flat and 

 narrow and lucent dark-green. Tho flowers are small, of indeter- 

 minate whity-pink, in axillary clusters at the tops of the stems in 

 July and August. Quite a pleasant " furnishing " Sedum, but should 

 never have been called " Rose-flower." 



S. Rhodiola — The Rose-root is typical of its group. You may see 

 it in the high limestones of Ingleborough, as in most other considerable 

 mountains of the globe, forming immense woody swelling root-stocks 

 that have a distinct scent, if you tear them, of damask roses gone 

 bad ; from these spring unbranched stout stoms of 6 inches or so, set 

 with ample and rather incurving oval flat leaves, deeply toothed on the 

 upper half, and very thick and fleshy, of blue-grey tone. The blossoms 

 are yellowish and insignificant, in close rounded heads at the tops of 

 the stalks in summer, more or less enclosed in the uppermost leaves. 



S. rhodocarpum has 8-inch stems, yellow flowers, and a home in 

 Mexico. 



S. roseum is a beautiful little rooting matting species from Caucasus 

 and Daghestan. It spreads with short fine rooting stems, and the 

 other shoots are as fine as threads, 1 or 2 inches tall, set with opposite 

 pairs of quite minute flat blunt -oval leaves, continuing almost to 

 the huddled lax irregular sprays of flower-stars, which are whito 

 inside, and with a pink flush outside, deepening to a rosy rib down 

 the back of each petal. 



S. rosulatum makes no fat stock, but the obovate spoon-shaped 

 leaves are rosetted below, and set here and there on the stoms of 

 3 or 4 inches, that bear weak and straggly scorpion-tail heads of 

 pedicelled white stars. Common in Afghanistan and Kashmir. 



S. rubens is a valueless little annual Crassula, with red foliage and 

 small greenish flowers. 



S. rupestre is the largest and brightest of English Sedums, unfurling 

 scorpion-tailed heads of brilliant golden flowers, on 10-inch stems 

 beset with cylindric glaucous leaves. It may be seen on many an 

 old wall up and down England. It is not to be distinguished from 

 S. reflexum except by its slightly diminished size in all its parts, and 

 its flowers Bitting tight to the sprays, instead of having each a tiny 

 foot-stalk. S. Forsterianum is the same thing — a variety built up on 

 variable and local conditions. 



S. sanguineum has but little worth. 



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