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Sunday, 18 January 2026

The Duchess of Beaufort's Flowers PT3

 


So this plate which has two Sedums in it as well as a Snowdrop and Thorn Apple (Datura) main focus. The Sedums shown are a bit of mystery and Gordon Rowley has it as either Dasyphyllum or Sedum Acre, both of which are a poor fit.

The main text referring to this plate also has it as:

On the right are two Sedums, one merely a cluster of leaves and the other in flower. Sedums belong to a large family widely distributed over the northern hemisphere. The majority of the species grow in temperate regions but when they are found in latitudes nearer the equator, they appear on mountain slopes. They have the ability to use cracks in the rocks and to cling to the surface, whether in the rock garden or in the wild. They were known to the Ancients and also to the medieval herbalists, but they were not listed until Linnaeus wrote his Species Plantarum fifty years after these paintings were completed. Then there were only fifteen known species but now over *five hundred have been identified, mainly due to the plant hunters' explorations of Mexico and western China. For this reason it is difficult to decide which species Kychicus has painted, so perhaps it is as well to leave it with his designation- 'Sedum with a white flower'. 

The elongated flower spikes are throwing me a bit on this and the general oddness of the rosettes, I seriously thought the other plant not in flower was an Echeveria. I'm pretty sure due to its age and that the other plants are European in nature that the flowering plant is Sedum album the white stonecrop. The other plant that is just a rosette (if we infer that its also from Europe) is a form of Sempervivum, probably tectorum.

* Kew puts this at 488 species scattered across the world  

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