Douglas Stonecrop
Sèdum Douglásii
Yellow
Spring, summer
Northwest
This makes beautiful golden patches, on dry slopes or more or less open hilltops, usually among limestone rocks. The reddish stems are from six to ten inches tall, the leaves are rather long and narrow, thick but flat, forming pretty pale-green rosettes, more or less tinged with pink and yellow, and the pretty starry flowers are three-quarters of an inch across, bright-yellow, with greenish centers, the stamens giving a feathery appearance.
Yosemite Stonecrop
Sèdum Yosemiténse
Yellow
Summer
California
On moss-covered rocks, moistened by the glistening spray blowing from the Yosemite waterfalls, we find these beautiful plants, covering the stones with a brilliant, many-colored carpet. The flowers are stars of brightest gold, about half an inch across and delicately scented, and form flat-topped clusters, three or four inches across. The upper part of the stalk, which is about six inches tall, and the upper leaves are delicate bluish-green, but both stem and leaves shade to vivid scarlet at the base. Spreading out on the ground from the base of the stem in all directions are numerous little runners, each bearing at the end a small rosette of thick, blue-green leaves, forming a beautiful contrast to the vivid color of flowers and stems. The leaves and runners are very brittle and break off at a touch.
Douglas Stone-crop—S. Douglasii.
Yosemite Stonecrop—Sedum Yosemitense.
There are several kinds of Dudleya; perennials, very thick and fleshy; root-leaves in a conspicuous rosette, stem-leaves mostly bract-like, usually with a broad, clasping base; flowers mostly yellow or reddish; calyx conspicuous, with five lobes; petals united at base; stamens ten. Most of these plants grow in the South, often on rocks, in such shallow soil, that they would die in dry weather, except that the juicy leaves retain their moisture for a long time and nourish the plant. They resemble Sedum in appearance, but as the petals are more or less united the flowers are not starlike. The Indians make poultices out of the leaves.
Hen-and-Chickens
Dúdleya Nevadénsis (Cotyledon)
Orange-red
Summer
California
The succulent, reddish flower-stalks of this handsome plant bear large, loose, rather flat-topped clusters of orange-red flowers, on coiling branches, and are about a foot tall, with scaly bracts, springing from a large handsome rosette on the ground of very thick, pale-green leaves, often tinged with pink. Other smaller rosettes form a circle around it, hence its nice little common name. D. pulverulénta (Echeveria) is beautiful but weird-looking. It has red flowers, and the rosette, resembling a small Century-plant, is covered all over with a white powder which, among ordinary herbage, gives an exceedingly striking and ghostlike effect. This plant is sometimes a foot and a half across, with as many as eight, tall stalks, and is found from San Diego to Santa Barbara.
