72 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



stems radiating like the arms of a star-fish and bearing rosy ovate 

 flowers are quite peculiar. 



Description. — A glabrous herbaceous perennial. Rootstock thick, very 

 short, erect, branching downward into thick woody roots a few inches long. 

 Root-leaves forming a flat rosette about 4 inches across, entire, green, fleshy, 

 flat, petiolate, the petiole rather longer or shorter than the lanceolate lamina, 

 ^ith a broad clasping base. Flower-stems arising from the axils of the withered 

 root-leaves of the previous season, and appearing before the rosette of new 

 leaves, slender, smooth, red, leafy, decumbent, unbranched, 4-6 inches long. 

 Stem-leaves green, tipped red, flat, fleshy, glabrous, entire, sessile, linear-oblong, 



Fig. 31. — S. Praegerianum, viewed from above 



rather blunt, | inch long, reflexed. Inflorescence a terminal, leafy, lax cyme, 

 bearing 5 to 10 flowers in all, composed of 2 to 3 forked or simple branches, with 

 a flower in the primary or secondary forks, bracts leaf-like. Buds ovate, acute. 

 Flowers ovoid, resembhng those of heather, ^V inch long, the lower ones shortly 

 stalked. Sepals erect, ovate-lanceolate, acute, divided nearly to the base, 

 green flushed red. Petals erect, curved so as to almost meet at the apices, 

 lanceolate, shortly apiculate, rose-coloured, twice the sepals. Stamens equalling 

 the petals, erect, filaments pink, anthers purple, the epipetalous ones inserted 

 J way up. Scales subquadrate, purple-brown. Carpels sHghtly shorter than 

 the stamens, pink, very erect ; styles very short, slender, erect, deep rose. 



Flowers July. Hardy. 



Habitat. — Tibet. 



A single plant was raised at Edinburgh in 1913 from a pinch of 

 seed taken from a dried specimen just received into the Herbarium. 

 The specimen in question was obtained by a native collector at 

 Tarkarpo in the Chumbi Valley, Tibet, at 12,000 feet elevation. 



The stemless rosette of leaves and radiating decumbent flower- 

 stems give the plant an appearance very different froni that of any 

 other Sedum in cultivation. Its nearest relations are Tibetan and 

 Central Asiatic species not in cultivation. Among garden plants 

 the species which is nearest to it is S. primuloides, which agrees in 

 possessing terminal rosettes of stalked, entire flat leaves, from the 

 axils of which arise leafy flowering shoots bearing ovate flowers ; 

 but in primuloides the caudex is (in cultivation) elongated and much 

 branched, the leaves very short and broad, and the flowers white. 



