Echeveria

LONGISSIMA var. LONGISSIMA (engl./ fr.)

Type : CAS 251052, from a plant cultivated in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, wild origin unknown.

Etymology : for the extremely long flowers.

Distribution: Mexico (Oaxaca: Paraje San Bartolo, N of Conceptión de Buenavista; Puebla).

 

First Description by E. Walther in Cactus and Succulent Journal US 9: 147. 1935 :

Plant normally quite stemless, wholly glabrous.

Leaves closely rosulate, broadly obovate, mucronate, thickish, above shallowly concave, beneath rounded, 25 – 45 mm long, 15 – 20 mm broad, more or less papillose beneath, color cedar-to elm-green above, at edges and beneath maroon, with well-developed palisade-parenchyma evident.

Type of inflorescence not certainly known, pedicels slender.

Flowers : Sepals much connate at base, ascending, somewhat unequal, longest to 8 mm long, oblong-deltoid, acute, the epidermal cells conspicuous, color spinach-green, not glaucous, corolla narrowly-tubular, to 30 mm long or more, 7 mm in diameter at base, mouth only 5 mm in diameter or less, color light-coral-red at base, pale-greenish-yellow in middle, pois-green at apex, petals narrowly-oblong, 4 mm wide, scarcely keeled except near tips, the latter with subulate apiculus, at base hollowed within and there maize-yellow, near tip grass-green, stamens to 25 mm long or more, styles very slender, to 18 mm long without carpels, their color apple-green, carpels without styles 5 mm long, whitish, nectaries to 2 mm wide, whitish, reniform.

Cytology : n = 42

Note :

1. Walther indicated Echeveria harmsii var. multiflora as synonym of E. longissima. This is wrong. Walther had described E. harmsii var. multiflora from a specimen furnished by C.A. Purpus in 1909, only consisting of a few rather huge withered flowers which however do not correspond to the type of E. harmsii (originally described as Oliverella elegans by Rose). Rose intended to name and describe the Purpus gathering as E. magnifica but this never happened.

2. Walther attested E. longissima having “true palisade cells” while he had seen this in no other species of Echeveria. This is nonsense. So-called palisade cells are essential for photosynthesis in leaves of dicotyledonous plants and are by no means "unique" in E. longissima.

3. The plant Walther described as E. longissima came from his collection in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, its origin in the wild is unknown. 

 

Distributed as ISI 965 (1976)

Link to a summary of the above description in English and French.

 

 

Photo Mateo Lichtenstein

Photos Emmanuelle Aubé

Photos Gordon Rollason, SA

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