ACCOUNT OF GENUS SEDUM AS FOUND IN CULTIVATION. 



231 



Description. — Bright-green, glabrous, evergreen perennial. Roots fibrous. 

 Stems decumbent, sinuous and rooting below, with many ascending or erect 

 branches about 6 inches high, almost all of which flower. Leaves alternate or in 

 whorls of 3 to 5, usually alternate on the upper part of the flowering shoots, 

 bright green, sessile, linear, nearly terete, blunt, i to ^ inch long. Cyme terminal, 

 flattish, leafy. Flowers golden yellow, sessile, | to J inch across. Sepals unequal, 

 resembling the leaves in shape and colour. Petals lanceolate, acute, concave, 

 wide-spreading, twice the sepals. Stamens nearly'as long as the petals, filaments 



Fig. 133. — 5. mexicanum Britton. 



yellow, anthers reddish. Scales minute, cuneate, yellow. Carpels slightly 

 spreading, yellow, equalling the stamens. 



Flowers April (gentle heat) ; June (cold frame). Not hardy at 

 Dublin ; nearly so at Rostrevor. 



Habitat. — Near Mexico City. 



Though only described in 1899 from specimens raised in America 

 from seeds collected near Mexico City, there is evidence of its culti- 

 vation in England at an earlier date. It is clearly the plant (of which 

 Maximo wicz remarks " mihi ignotum "), described by Masters in 

 1878 as S. sarmentosum Bunge (a Chinese species), under which name 



