Echeveria x set-oliver EW. new hybrid

By ERIC WALTHER, Botanist Golden Gate Park

Publication in CSSA: 1937 V08, April N°10 p.172-173.

PARENTS: Echeveria harmsii (Oliveranthus elegans) x E. setosa, the latter being the seed-parent.

ORIGIN: Deliberate cross made early in 1932 by Victor Reiter, Jr.

KEY-POSITION: Near E. harmsii, differing in the more numerous flowers borne on each scape, a slightly smaller corolla, more ascending sepals, relatively narrower, more crowded leaves, multi-cellular hairs, etc.

DESCRIPTION

by EW. of plant flowering for the first time in November 1933, in collection of the originator:

FORM A: Plant covered in all external portions with a dense coating of slender, multicellular, uniseriate hairs that are quite colorless except at tips of leaves, bracts and sepals; where they contain the usual anthocyan-red cellsap; stem short, but evident; leaves many, crowded, ascending to spreading, oblanceolate, acute, about 6 cm. long, 10-15 mm. broad, 6-9 mm. thick, color lettuce-green, tips oxblood-red to maroon ; inflorescence of 2 or more simple or bifid, secund racemes; peduncle slender-flexuose, ascending, to 40 cm. tall inclusive of racemes; lower bracts scattered, ascending-spreading, obovate-elliptic-cuneate, acute, to 3 cm. long, spinach-green, red-tipped as the leaves; each racems with 8 or more flowers; upper bracts linear, appressed ; pedicels to 17 mm. long, 3 mm. thick, bractless; sepals subequal, longest to 12 mm. long, jointed at base, but sutures evident, elliptic-lanceolate, sub-terete, more or less spreading at anthesis, colored as the bracts; corolla to 21 mm. long, by 12 mm. in diameter at base and 8-10 mm. wide at mouth, color scarlet-red, but edges of segments apricot-yellow and their tips empire-yellow; segments thick, sharply-keeled, deeply hollowed at base, inside empire-yellow ; stamens subequal, to 16 mm. long; carpels pinard-yellow, to 16 mm. long; styles very long and slender, pyrite-yellow above; honey-glands narrowly-lunate, to 4 mm. long. Flowers in November to January.

FORM B: Identical with the preceding, but inflorescences as many as 12 per plant, each a stout, erect, equilateral panicle, its 3 or more branches each with 3 or more flowers; ultimate pedicels bracteolate, corolla somewhat darker, slightly longer.

REMARKS:

One of the most pernicious activities engaged in by amateurs of slight judgment is the indiscriminate raising of hybrids. Unless strict control is exercised, both as to selection of seed- and pollen-parents, followed by ruthless destruction of all inferior seedlings, the results will be only a further cluttering-up, of both gar-dens and the literature, with more worthless junk.

No such criticism applies to the hybrids described here, for not only do they represent deliberate, intelligent effort directed towards combining in one plant the several desirable features of their parents, but they also are of such self-evident merit as to assure them of further propagation and much wider distribution.

 [When grown in the open the flower stalks are upright, when grown in a greenhouse they are decumbent.-M argrit Bischofberger & Jean-Michel Moullec]