ACCOUNT OF GENUS SEDUM AS FOUND IN CULTIVATION. 13 
V. Variation. 
The species of the genus Sedum present a wide range of size, form, 
and colour. Minute creeping species are found in both the Old and 
New Worlds, and many of the annual species are very small ; on the 
other hand, some of the herbaceous perennials of the Telephium 
section produce annually stems a yard or more in height, and a few 
of the sub-shrubby Mexican species are equally tall. As regards 
duration, about four-fifths of the known species are perennials — 
many herbaceous (that is, dying back to the root in autumn), many 
evergreen, a few deciduous (that is, having perennial stems but losing 
their leaves in winter) ; the remaining species are mainly annuals, 
a few being biennials. 
Hairiness is rare in the genus ; and the most constant characteristic 
is a tendency to succulence, which in many species attains a very 
marked development, and enables them to live in very dry places. 
As an example of the amount of water which these plants may contain, 
a leaf of S. nutans, a Mexican species bearing the largest leaves found 
in the genus, weighed 75 ounce fresh, and when thoroughly air-dried 
•02 ounce — in other words, ff , or over 97 per cent., of its weight was 
due to water stored up in the leaf. 
The species of Sedum differ much as regards the variability which 
they display. Some are very stable and constant in character ; many 
others vary within limits, mostly as regards habit and leaf ; while 
some are highly variable, and, as regards at least general appearance, 
differ more from their type than some allied but quite distinct species 
do from each other. Thus, S. roseum, at once the most variable and 
the most widely distributed of Sedums, has flowers which range from 
the normal yellow through red to deep purple, and which may be 
dioecious or hermaphrodite ; the stem may be stout or slender, a 
couple of inches or a foot in height ; the leaves green to very glaucous, 
broadly ovate to linear, entire to deeply toothed. Other conspicuously 
variable species are S. album, altissimum, anopetalum,reflexum, Aizoon, 
spurium, Telephium. 
Appended are notes of the more conspicuous cases of variation 
(including " sports ") found among the cultivated Sedums : 
Roots varied and often characteristic — thick and tuberous (section 
Telephium especially), woody and hard (section Aizoon), or fibrous. 
Root-stock thick and elongate with conspicuous scale-leaves (many 
Rhodiolas), or spreading laterally into a fleshy mass (other Rhodiolas, 
Sedastrum), or absent. 
Stem very variable as regards form and duration ; perennial and 
semi- woody (e.g. S. populifolium and many Mexican species), creep- 
ing and branching indefinitely (Seda Genuina), annual and erect 
(Telephium, Aizoon, &c.). 
Leaves mostly entire, sometimes serrate, never more divided 
than pinnatifid (S. trifidum) ; spherical or cylindrical to flat, but 
never really thin ; green or glaucous, rarely hairy or glandular ; sessile 
or stalked, often spurred at base. 
