ACCOUNT OF GENUS SEDUM AS FOUND IN CULTIVATION. 237 
spathulate leaves which fall in autumn, its large, lax, cymes of showy 
yellow flowers, and its peculiar carpels at first concave on the inner 
edge. 
Description. — A smallish, glabrous, deciduous, perennial. Rootstock very 
short, thick, emitting strong fibrous roots below and many stems above. Stems 
perennial, half a foot long, erect, spreading, or procumbent, with short, wide- 
spreading, leafy, barren and flowering branches, about yV i^^h thick, minutely 
roughened, dark brownish and bare in lower part, green or reddish above. Leaves 
alternate, occasionally subternate, rather crowded, sessile, entire, flat, glabrous, 
oblong-spathulate or broadly oblanceolate, tapered below, shortly spurred, 
bluntly pointed and often slightly apiculate at apex, fleshy, bright green, | inch 
long, J inch broad, spur truncate. Inflorescence flat, 2 to 3 inches across, of three 
usually dichotomous, wide-spreading, finely mammillate, leafy branches with 
flowers in the forks, lowest flower as long as its pedicel, the rest subsessile or 
sessile ; lower bracts resembling the leaves, upper bracts linear. Buds ovate, with 
a campanulate calyx, bluntly pointed, ribbed, the ribs green, yellow, or red. 
Flowers f inch across, usually bright yellow. Sepals leaf-like, green, fleshy. 
Fig. 137. — S. variicolor Praeger. 
blunt, very unequal, from \ inch to f inch long, from deltoid to oblong-linear or 
oblong-lanceolate or oblong-spathulate, widened at the base, not spurred, pale 
green, tube very short. Petals ovate-acuminate to lanceolate, with a short 
mucro behind the tip, patent, about equalliog the longest sepal, -^^ inch long, deep 
yellow, Stamens spreading, slightly shorter than the petals, filaments tapering, 
yellow, anthers reddish. Scales quadrate, slightly retuse. lemon yellow. Carpels 
slender, equalling the stamens, at first erect with the inner edges concave and 
the styles contiguous, soon spreading, but not widely, with erect styles ; styles 
long, slender^ occupying nearly half the length of the carpels. Fruit stellate, 
f inch across. 
Flowers August-September. Hardy at Dublin. 
Habitat.— Yunnan. Seed was received from Rev. Pere E. E. 
Maire in 1915 from Tong-tchouan, labelled " Eboulis des rochers 
des pics, altitude 2,800 metres." 
This is a handsome little plant, and if it proves to be generally hardy, 
will deserve a place in the rock garden. The flowers are usually of 
a rich orange-yellow, but in the batch of plants raised from Pere Maire 's 
seed there was a variety of colour unusual in the genus. Some plants 
bore pale-yellow flowers, others deep orange, while in others again red 
colour was added to enhance the deep-yellow blossoms ; in one of the 
