VIVIPARUM  (Maximowicz) H.Ohba, 1977

Synonyms :

Sedum viviparum  Maximowicz (1883) / Sedum telephium ssp. viviparum (Maximowicz) Fröderström (1930)

Section Hylotelephium

Distribution : Russia (eastern Siberia), China (Manchuria), North Korea.

Description by Reid Moran of plants found in South Korea (in CSSJ US 72(6): 325-326. 2000) :

Roots tuberous, 4 – 8 mm thick.

Stems mostly solitary, sometimes 2 – 3, erect, unbranched below inflorescence, often red below or becoming reddish, 20 – 50 (-60) cm high,1.5 – 5 mm thick, with 6 – 9 nodes below inflorescence, the internodes 2 – 7 cm long, terete, the nodes slightly thicker, the leaf scars facing obliquely upward, elliptic to subsemicircular, 2 – 3 mm wide, 1 – 1.5 mm high, the single bundle scar elliptic, ± 0.5 mm wide.

Leaves 2 – 5-verticillate, green and not glaucous ventrally, paler dorsally, epunctate,drying conspicuously brown-veiny with areoles ± 1mm wide, the lowermost spatulate-oblanceolate, subentire, 1 – 2 cm long, the upper ovate to elliptic, obtuse or subacute, 2 – 6.5 cm long, 12 – 30 mm wide, ± 0.5 mm thick, shallowly and irregularly serrate or serrate-dentate, with 5 – 11 obtusish teeth on each margin, the midvein prominently projecting dorsally and impressed ventrally, the margins papillose, the petiole indefinite, 1 – 3 mm long, 2 – 3 mm wide, grooved ventrally.

Inflorescences densely corymbose, 2 – 7 cm wide, of ± 30 – 250 flowers, the main  branches verticillate to alternate; pedicels erect or ascending, 2 – 3 mm long, ± 0.5 mm thick, glaucous.

Flowers ± 3 mm wide, sepals ascending with only the tips touching the flaring corolla, glaucous, triangular-ovate, acute, ± 1.3 mm long and 0.7 mm wide, petals white, apparently connate ca 0.5 mm into a slender tube around a gynobase, ascending in lower 2/3, with tips incurved over pistils, elliptic, subacute, ± 3.5 mm long and 1.5 mm wide, stamens slightly exceeding petals, incurved against pistils, adnate ca 0.5 mm, nectar glands yellowish, oblong or spatulate, truncate, ± 1 mm long and 0.25 mm wide, gynophore in one flower seemingly 0.5 mm long from calyx to nectar glands, pistils erect, 3 – 3.5 mm high, ± 1 mm thick and 1.25 mm wide, narrowed  below to ±  0.25 mm, abruptly contracted to a stout conical style 0.75 – 1 mm long, ovules 12 – 14, follicles erect, obovoid, keeled, 2 mm long, with curved styles.

Cytology : 2n = 36, the plant clearly triploid.

Bulbils grow in some leaf axils and are numerous in the inflorescence, developing by September, pale green with purple dots, subglobose, mostly 1 – 2 mm thick, of 3 – 4 imbricated pairs of ventrally concave hermispheric leaves."