NODULOSA  (Baker) Otto, 1873  (engl./ fr.)

Synonyms :

Cotyledon nodulosa  Baker (1869)

Echeveria sturmiana  von Poellnitz (1938)

Echeveria nodulosa var. minor  E. Walther (1972)

Series Nudae 

Type : Lectotype Refug. Bot. 1: t, 56, 1869.

Etymology : nodulosus Lat., with nodules, knobby - for the texture of the stems.

Distribution : Mexico (widely distributed and rather common in Oaxaca and S Puebla).

First Description as Cotyledon nodulosa by Baker in Saunders Refugium Botanicum 1, n°. 6, plate 56, 1869 :

Stem naked, grayish brown, attaining a height of six or eight inches and a thickness of half an inch, tumid, gouty, the scars twice as broad as deep.

Leaves obovate-spathulate, aggregated at the apex of the stem in a dense rosette, the largest two inches to two inches and a half long by three-fourths of an inch broad three-quaters of the way up, the apex subdeltoid with a mucro, the lower two-thirds spathulately narrowed to a base two to three lines broad, the colour a dull apple-green with a slight glaucous tinge, the under surface and edge more or less tinged with red.

Flowering branches six to nine inches long, their leaves close and ascending, gradually diminishing upwards, but the lowest not much smaller than those of the rosette.

Flowers four to six in a lax raceme three to four inches long.

Bracts linear, the lower ones not more than half an inch long.

Pedicels finally erecto-patent, the lowest two to three lines long.

Sepals three-eighths of an inch long, linear, spreading.

Corolla half an inch long, decidedly pentagonal, straw-yellow tinged with red.

Cytology : n = 16

Distributed by ISI n° 420 (1963), a clone with especially beautiful markings, and  n° 1137 (1979) as Echeveria nodulosa 'Painted Beauty'.

Note :

This species is much more variable than the description implies. There are forms with sessile rosettes, green plants are not really rare, but on the other hand stem growing plants are often not much-branched.

Link to short descriptions by Myron Kimnach in English and French.