Aeonium haworthii Salm-Dyck   Crassulaceae (Orpine Family)   Canary Islands   Aeonium

                                           May Photo

Plant Characteristics:  Fleshy subshrub, to 3-4 dm. tall in older specimens with many offsets,  older rosettes have stems; lvs. +/- 25 to a rosette, green, glabrous, spatulate-oblanceolate, to 4 cm. long, 1.5 cm. wide, with a mucronate tip, margins tinged dark red and with a few short white stout hairs less than 1 mm. long, some appearing glandular; the first leafy flowering stem originates from center of rosette, subsequent shoots, which may number, 2,3,4 or maybe more come from below center but not from base of rosette, all 15-18 cm. tall; fls. in cymose panicles; petals 8, narrow triangular, 10 mm. long, joined only slightly at base, pink, spreading in upper half from campanulate lower half; calyx 8 parted, the segments slightly less than half as long as petals; stamens 16 in two whorls; pistils 8, not connate at base.  (my description from live material, using Bailey as a guide).

Habitat:  Escape from cultivation; most likely thrown over the bank with yard trimmings from the old Castaway's restaurant that burned about 1956.  (my comment).  Blooms April-May.      Hickman, Ed. 524 indicates that the plant is found on sea cliff below 100 m. along the south Coast.  This information would indicate that it is naturalized here.  (my comment).

Name: Aeo-nium, dioscoridean synonym of AE. arboreum. (Bailey 466).  Haworthii, for Adrian Hardy Haworth, 1768-1833, England.  (Bailey 44).

General:  Occurs in only one place in the study area and this on the Castaway's Bluffs where it is well protected by a large acacia tree on the uphill side and by Opuntia littoralis on the other sides. (my comments).       Aeonium differs from Sempervivium in that the rosettes have stems, the petals are not hairy or fringed and the rosette leaves are not as dense.  In Sempervivum, the offsets develop, forming mounds against the ground.  The key to Sempervivum in Bailey does not list a species with 8 petals, it lists those with 6-7 and 9-20 petals.  Differs from Echeveria in that the petals spread from below the middle rather than at the tips.  Also, Aeonium petals are not united into a tube as in Echeveria and the flower stems are not axillary.  (from a  letter by John Johnson 5/6/91).        About 36 species, cult. outdoors in warm-temp. regions, under glass in cooler climates.

Text Ref:  Bailey 465.

Photo Ref:  March-April 87 #3; April 2 87 # 11A,12A,13A; May 1 87 # 7,8.

Identity: by R. De Ruff, Genus identity confirmed by John Johnson.

First Found:  March 1987.

Computer Ref:  Plant Data 412.

Have plant specimen.

Last edit 3/4/05  

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