Echeveria

Echeveria nuda

Description by Reid Moran :

Stems erect, ± branching, to 60 cm tall or probably more, growing as much as ca. 30 cm per year, 6 - 10 mm thick, at first pale green or pink, slightly glaucous, becoming light tan and somewhat silvery, still smooth, terete, the leaf base sites rhombic, ca. 4 - 5 mm wide and high, not long remaining visible, the attachment scars scarcely projecting, lenticular, ca. 1.5 - 2.5 mm wide and 0.5 - 1 mm high.

Rosettes 5 - 9 cm wide, of ca. 15 - 22 leaves, over ca. 2.5 - 5 cm of stem, only the young ones crowded, the mature ones separated, exposing areas of stem about as wide as their thickness.

Rosette leaves dull green, with or without a purple-red margin, at first slightly glaucous, obovate, cuneate, rounded at the apex, mucronate, 2.5 - 5 cm long, 18 - 30 mm wide, 3 - 4 mm thick, with a low slightly asymmetrical keel dorsally, the margins obtuse, the mucro 1 - 2 mm long.

Floral stems 15 - 45 cm tall (including the raceme), 4 - 6 mm thick, from light green at the base and apex to anatolia red in the central part, glaucous, with 10 - 30 leaves rather evenly distributed below the inflorescence. Stem leaves ascending mostly at ca 45 - 60° from the axis, obovate to broadly elliptic, mucronate, obliquely low-keeled, somewhat spurred, the lowest ca. 16 - 22 mm long, 10 - 15 mm wide, and 3 mm thick, the upper smaller. Raceme 10 - 22 cm long, erect from the beginning, with 13 - 30 flowers, sometimes 1 - 2 lower branches 2-flowered. Bracts linear-lanceolate, slender-acute. Pedicels ± horizontal becoming ascending in fruit, 2 - 3 mm long, 1.5 - 2 mm thick, often seeming jointed to the axis, the bracteoles near the base, linear, 4 - 5 mm long.

Flowers in June and July, opening at intervals of ca. 1 day and remaining open 4 -6 days.

Flowers : Calyx disk 4 -5 mm wide, the lobes ascending in bud, widespreading at anthesis, narrowly triangular-lanceolate, subacuminate, 6 - 12 mm long, 2 - 3 mm wide at the base, 1 - 1.5 mm thick, convex dorsally and ventrally with obtuse to rounded margins, somewhat unequal, the upper and two lower longest and about equal, 8 - 12 mm long, the two upper laterals about equal, 6 - 9 mm long, the two upper laterals bent slightly and the two lower considerably towards the uppermost, so that the calyx is bilaterally rather than radially symmetrical. Corolla 10 - 12 mm long, 7 -  9 mm wide at the base, 9 - 13 mm wide at the apex, ca. geranium red in the lower two-fifths and dandelion yellow above and within, the sides shallowly channeled. Petals non-convolute, connate ca. 3 mm, oblong-lanceolate, acute and apiculate, strongly keeled dorsally, ca 13 mm long, 4 mm wide and 2 mm thick, somewhat convex ventrally in the distal three-fifths except for a channel the lenth of the filament, the nectar pit ca. 3 mm long, 2 mm wide, and 1 mm deep, the tip outcurved at right angles to the floral axis, the keel ending in a subdorsal apicula ca. 0.6 mm long. Filaments red, terete.

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