ACCOUNT OF GENUS SEDUM AS FOUND IN CULTIVATION. 3 
The cases in which the descriptions or figures are in whole or part 
not drawn from living material may be summarized as follows : 
Fresh material not available — 
S. ruhricaule, S. Hemsleanum, S. japonicum, S. Zentaro- 
Tashiroi. 
Plants which have not flowered with me, or which died before 
flowering : 
5. chapalense, S. cyaneum, S. dendroideum, S. fnitescens, S. 
Hallii, S. lenophylloides, S. oaxacanum, S. polyrhizum, S. trul- 
lipetalum. 
Description helped out by dried material : 
5. Cockerellii, S. glabmm, S. purpureoviride, S. Stevenianum, 
With the design of helping those to whom the technical terms of 
descriptive botany are unfamiliar, I have prefaced the description of 
each species with a brief note of the characteristics by which it may 
be distinguished from its nearest allies. I would like to warn readers 
that reliance on the figures alone may sometimes lead them astray 
in a genus so large and complicated ; even if the full description of 
the plant is not used, a careful study of the short note mentioned is 
quite necessary if pitfalls are to be avoided. 
11. Historical. 
As might be expected in a genus of which a number of species, 
of sufficiently noteworthy appearance, grow in regions associated 
with early civilizations, species of Sedum were known to the ancient 
naturalists (e.g. 5. Cepaea, S. maximum, 5. roseum), being referred to 
by Greek and Latin writers ; these and others were likewise known 
to the medieval herbalists. Coming to the dawn of modem botany, 
we find 15 species enumerated in the first edition (1753) of 
Linnaeus' "Species Plantarum," all of these being European except 
S. Aizoon and 5. hybridum (both Siberian) and S. verticillatum 
(Japanese, &c.). In the 4th edition (1799) of the same work the 
number has risen to 29, mainly by the addition of other European 
species. In 1828 De Candolle (" Prodromus," 3, p. 401) enumer- 
ates 88 species of Sedum, some of them tentatively as non saiis 
nota, but almost all now recognized as good species. De Candolle 's 
list includes a good many additions from the Caucasus, a few from 
Siberia, the Himalayas, Japan, North Africa, the United States, 
and Mexico, and one each from Madeira, Ecuador, and Venezuela. 
In 1862 Bentham and Hooker (" Genera Plantarum," 1, p. 660) put 
down the number of known species at 120. This total is increased to 
130 in standard works published during the next ten or twenty years, 
and this figure is raised only to 140 in such standard recent works 
as ENGLERand Prantl, " Naturliche Pflanzenfamilien," iii. a (1891) 
