| Dr. Smith's Remarks of the Sedum ochroleucum. | 7 |
The plant has so entirely the appearance of a Sedum and not of a Sempervivum, and I have always thought those genera so natural, and so well marked by the technical character of nectariferous scales at the base of the germen in the former, which the latter wants, that I have often regretted to read Jacquin's account, which I presumed was correct. But meeting with this plant in Dr. Sibthorp's Greek herbarium, it became necessary to investigate its characters myself. In the winter time I could only examine one of his specimens by means of hot water; but there, to my great satisfaction, I found the nectariferous scales as evident as in any Sedum whatever; and on dissecting living flowers last summer in my garden, the same character was every where obvious. In number of parts indeed this flower wanders a little from the character of that genus, and from its class Decandria having often, when cultivated, as many petals, stamens and pistils as Jacquin describes, or even more, though this is chiefly the case in the first flowers of the cyme, and not so much in the external ones. I have therefore introduced the plant in question into the second part of the Prodromus Floræ Græcæ, p. 312, by the name of
Sedum ochroleucum,
foliis glaucus sparsis acutis: inferioribus teretibus; superioribus ellipticis depressis, laciniis calycinis acutiusculis.
It is curious that Linnæus, in a manuscript note, has referred this plant of Jacquin to his own Sedum repestre, a very different species, which he had adopted from Dillenius's Hortus Elthamensis; see Engl. Bot. t. 170 and t. 1802.
Dr. Sibthorp, who was well acquainted with his learned friend Jacquin's plant, mentions it in his papers as one of the most
| common |
