Echeveria gibbiflora 'Caronculata'  De Smet

Taxonomic history by Roy Mottram

Echeveria caronculata De Smet, No.12.- 1879. Nouveautés. Catalogue des plantes de l’Établissement Horticole de Louis de Smet: 2, 31. 1879.

Echeveria gibbiflora var. caronculata (De Smet) Duursma, Onze vetplanten voor kamer, kas en tuin: 119. 1930; Succulenten in beeld en woord: 150. 1930 (“carunculata”).

Echeveria gibbiflora ‘Caronculata’ (De Smet) H.Jacobsen, Das Sukkulentenlexikon: 168, t.58(3). (30 Nov) 1970 (“Carunculata”).

Echeveria grandifolia ‘Blister Leaf’ Walther, Echeveria: 208. 1972. A superfluous unestablished name (Cult. Art. 31.7).

Etym: The original epithet was a latinisation of the French word caroncule, wattle. The French caroncule and the English caruncle are both derived from the Latin caruncula, a small piece of flesh, hence the attempted ‘correction’ to carunculata by Duursma. However, the accepted name of a cultivar is the earliest to be established (Cult. Art. 11.1) and can only be overridden by a Registration Authority ruling.

ST: No original material is extant. It was not illustrated until 1925 onwards, but then very frequently. Jacobsen’s photo from 1970 has been cited by Kimnach in Eggli (ed.) Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants: Crassulaceae (2003: 112), and is as good as any as a representation of this cultivar.