ADDISONIA 79 
(Plate 40) 
ECHEVERIA AUSTRALIS 
Southern Echeveria 
Native of Costa Rica 
Family CRASSULACEAE. ORPINE Family ~ 
Echeverta australis Rose; Britton & Rose, Bull. N. Y. Bot. Gard. 3:6. 1903. 
A fleshy perennial herb, with flowering stems about a foot nS 
fifteen inches high, and bluish-green, glaucous leaves in tufts 
the end of the short branches. The leaves of the tufts are brvadty 
spatulate or obovate, from one and one half to three oe long, 
rounded or short-tipped at the apex, narrowed at 
very faintly veined; the lower apie = the tufts fall fal away a the 
branch develops, leavin ng small s The flow are 
stout, simple or few-branched, sade are clothed with s alee ‘oblong 
to obovate leaves, rather closely set, oe or acute, and about 
oneinchlongorless. The flowering stems are terminated by a dense 
raceme or narrow panicle of showy bright fe flowers. ‘The pedicels 
are somewhat ascending, and less than half an inch in length; the 
nraee are linear, somewhat longer than the pedicels, and early fall 
way. The somewhat unequal sepals are ovate-oblong, purplish, 
the longer ones about six lines long. ‘The petals are lanceolate, 
acute, and somewhat hse Le the seis There are ten stamens, 
which are about the length of the sepals. The capsule is about one 
third of an inch long 
This plant inhabits rocks and stone walls in the vicinity of San 
José and Cartago, Costa Rica, and was originally described from 
living plants collected by H. Pittier at San José in December, 1902. 
William R. Maxon collected living plants in the vicinity of Cartago 
in 1906. Both the San José and Cartago plants have since flowered 
frequently at the New York Botanical Garden, and the Cartago 
plant is the basis of the accompanying illustration. 
The Echeverias, long favorites in greenhouse cultivation and for 
summer bedding plants, number some sixty species or more, most 
abundant at middle and higher altitudes in the drier portions of 
Mexico, but extending southward through Central America, and 
one of them, E. strictiflora, extending north into western Texas; a 
few kinds occur in the Andes of South America. The genus was 
established by DeCandolle in 1828, the type species being Echeverta 
coccinea (Cav.) DC., which was cultivated prior to that time in the 
Royal Gardens at Madrid and was first described as Cotyledon 
