Fantôme 팡톰

Creator unknown, not Pierre Gossot

Parentage / Parenté : Graptopetalum paraguayense x Echeveria elegans

Described by / Décrite par J.C. van Keppel : Succulenta 43 : 180, 1964 (in Dutch) and in Nat. Cact. & Succ. J., Vol. 35/2 (English).as / comme xG. ‘Caerulescens’ (Gossot).

Description

Stem-forming, at first bluish, later grey-brown;

Rosette open, 10 – 15 cm in diameter, offsetting in the leaf axils with a long stalk.

Leaves obovate-round to oblong, ascending, later recurved, with a short apical mucro, ca 7 cm long, upper side concave to flat, underside convex, carinate, bluish, white-pruinose, margins translucent, white, often colouring pinkish.

Inflorescence a single or forked cincinnus, with small soon withering bracts, stalk reddish-green.

Flowers yellow, sometimes pinkish outside, unspotted. Flowers May-June.

Special characteristic:

Often the buds abort and the petal tips remain tightly packed and never open out.

Discussion:

When van Keppel described x G. ‘Caerulescens’ he was convinced that it was the hybrid Pierre Gossot had obtained in 1935 and described in Notre Vallée No. 24-25, July – Dec. 1938 as x G. ‘Caerulescens’. Gossot had indicated that it was a chance hybrid and that he did not know the parents, but that probably G. paraguayense was involved. He had given no hint at all of E. elegans being the second parent. And even more important he had not mentioned that the plant would abort buds and not open out the flowers.

What van Keppel described clearly was not Gossot’s x G. ‘Caerulescens’. As the name ‘Caerulescens’ belongs to Pierre Gossot’s hybrid, van Keppel’s plant has to be renamed –

Emmanuelle Aubé has chosen the name ‘Fantôme’.

See also : The cultivar xGraptoveria 'Fantome' Aubé ex Gideon F.Sm. & Bischofb. is the most commonly cultivated representative of the Crassulaceae in southern Africa.