ACCOUNT OF GENUS SEDUM AS FOUND IN CULTIVATION. 6l 



Description. — A glabrous herbaceous perennial. Rooistock thickened, 

 but not excessively, resembling that of a slender S. roseufn Stems annual, 

 erect, several from the axils of the not conspicuous scales which surround the 

 growing point, 4-6 inches high, leafy throughout, smooth, round. Leaves 

 alternate, loosely imbricate, sessile, linear-oblanceolate to linear-oblong, an 

 inch long, i-} inch broad, irregularly and rather deeply toothed in upper 

 half or throughout their length with teeth triangular to finger-shaped ; on 

 face bright green, flat, with depressed midrib ; on back paler, rounded. 

 Inflorescence dense, in my plants small and infrequent. Buds purple (back of 

 sepals being coloured). Flowers \ inch long, ^ inch across, on verj' short 

 pedicels. Female flower : — sepals spreading, tapering, blunt, twice as long 

 as broad, purple, longer than the green tube ; petals patent, a little longer than 

 the sepals, oblong-lanceolate, acute or obtuse, greenish-white ; stamens absent ; 

 scales rounded, as long as broad, slightly refuse, orange ; carpels green, oblong- 

 lanceolate, equalling the petals, erect, with short diverging styles. 



Flowers June. Hardy. 



Habitat. — ^Trans-Baikal region, eastern Siberia, Kamtschatka. 



The plants which I have seen, and which are described above, 

 were received from the Edinburgh Botanic Garden as S. Stephani, 

 from F. SiJNDERMANN of Lindau as 5. rhodanthum (a quite different 

 N. American species, see p, 67), and from Glasnevin Botanic Garden 

 as 5. asiaticwn. None of them is typical Stephani, which has 

 5-parted usually hermaphrodite flowers, and is intermediate between 

 S. roseum var. elongatum and S. crasstpes, inclining, according to 

 Maximowicz, to the latter, though Kegel placed it as a variety of 

 the former. It would seem, indeed, that Maximowicz would have 

 placed it under crassipes but for its distinct geographical range, S. 

 crasstpes being confined to the Himalayas and Yunnan, and Stephani 

 to N.E. Asia. The Edinburgh and Lindau plants referred to above 

 have usually 4-parted unisexual flowers, but in other respects agree 

 with Stephani. As both of these characters are notoriously inconstant 

 among the Rhodiolas, these discrepancies are probably not important. 

 The .Glasnevin plant has flowers identical with the other two, but 

 5-parted, and the leaves are narrower, being indistinguishable from 

 crassipes. 



So far as these living plants throw light on the question, S. Stephani 

 is certainly nearer to crassipes than it is to roseum. The slender 

 carpels are very near those of crassipes ; the petals also, which like 

 the carpels are larger and broader than those of roseum. The plant 

 flowers in June along with crassipes and after roseum. All my plants 

 being female, I have not been able to compare the stamens or the 

 mature fruit. 



Named after Friedrich Stephan, Moscow botanist. 



16. Sedum dumulosum Franchet (fig. 24). 

 S. dumulosum Franchet, Nouv. Arch. Mus. Hist. Nat. (2) 6, 9, 



Synonyms. — S. rariflorum N. E. Brown in Kew Bulletin, 1914, 208. 5. 

 Farreri W. W. Smith in Notes Roy. Bat. Card. Edinb., 9, 125, 1916. 

 Illustration. — Nouv. Arch. Mus. Hist. Nat. (2), 5, pi. 16, fig. 3. 



A pretty plant, which cannot be confused with any other species 

 in cultivation : the thick aerial " Rhodiola " rootstock, linear leaves 



