Echeveria

Echeveria glauca

First Description by Baker as Cotyledon glauca  (Saunders Refugium Botanicum 1: nr. 15, pl. 61. 1869) :

 

Glabrous, not at all or very shortly caulescent, densely stoloniferous from the crown of the root.

 

The leaves forty to fifty in a very dense rosette, the outer ones almost horizontal, quite two inches long by three-fourths to seven-eighths of an inch broad five-sixths of the way up, the point more or less rounded to a decided mucro, the lower three-quarters cuneately narrowed, both sides extremely glaucous, only the edges of the fading leaves a little tinged with red.

 

Flowering branches a foot high, slender, terete, pinkish glaucous, with only a few distant small bract-like leaves.

 

Flowers twelve to twenty in a secund raceme which is finally four to six inches long.

 

Bracts ovate-oblong, two lines long.

 

Pedicels, sepals and corolla, just as in C. secunda (= E. secunda).

 

Note :

1. Echeveria glauca was described by Baker 1869 as Cotyledon glauca from a plant originally acquired by W.W. Saunders from Van Houtte's nursery in Belgium where it had been selected from a multitude of propagated seedlings of E. secunda because of its more bluish colour. Of course it had no origin in the wild. Though described as species, E. glauca - as well as E. pumila - were in fact cultivars.

 

 Baker stated that E. secunda, E. glauca and E. pumila "agree in general habit, calyx and corolla".

 

2. The name "glauca" had been in use already before Baker wrote his description of Cotyledon glauca and was probably used for various plants. 

Forms of E. secunda like ‘Glauca’ and ‘Pumila’ were very fashionable for some decades in the second half of the 19th century, but lost to cultivation since very long time. Their names cannot be used for currently cultivated selections of E. secunda. Neither can they be used for particularly bluish forms of E. secunda found in habitat in Mexico - nursery selections and an origin in the wild are mutually exclusive.

 

Moreover the name "glauca" has been misused greatly – all E. secunda variants with bluish leaves were liable to get this name, irrespective whether or not they corresponded to Baker's description.

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