Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

The Live Forevers are perennial plants with star-shaped flowers and coarse toothed leaves. This is a short erect plant, up to 2 feet high.

Stems are succulent and un-branched.

Leaves are flat, thick, mostly elliptical and can be either opposite or alternate, very often with course teeth as shown in these photos. Upper leaves connect direct to the stem, lower leaves have short stalks. The upper and lower leaf surfaces can be separated by lateral pressure with the finger tips, creating a purse or pudding bag as the older common names of "Witch's Moneybags" and "Purse Plant" and "Pudding-bags" imply.

The inflorescence is a compound cluster atop the stems. Multiple flower bearing stems branch out from the top of main stem. Each cluster is made up of one or more stalked clusters which form a compound rounded cluster.

Pink flowers appear in compact cymes, each flower has 5 pinkish petals with pointed spreading tips; there are 10 stamens with reddish anthers exserted above the petals; 5 carpels, each of a deeper pink color and with a persistent short style. The calyx is 5-lobed; the petals are twice the length of the 5 calyx lobes which are spatula shaped. The flowers can also be whitish-yellowish.

Seeds are very small but plants seldom produce seed.

 

Habitat: Live Forever spreads vegetatively from a white parsnip shaped tuberous root. The roots attach to stems by small necks which can break off easily and the break will put forth a new stalk. This makes the plant difficult to control if you want to eradicate it. The species prefers drier sites and full sun.

Names: The common name of the Live-forever refers to the ability of the plant to sustain itself for a long period when uprooted or after being cut for decoration with the leaves kept on as both the leaves and the root are fleshy. It is considered to originally be a mountain plant from southern Europe. While the first part of the genus name, hylo, refers to water, the second part, telephium, which is also the species name, is more obscure. Mrs. Grieve (Ref. #7) says it is derived from Telephus, the son of Hercules, who is supposed to have discovered its virtues. Stern (Ref. #37a) says Telephus was a king of Mysia in Asia Minor. The author names for the plant classification are first - 'L.' refers to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist and the developer of the binomial nomenclature of modern taxonomy, who wrote of it in 1753. His work was amended in 1977 by ‘H. Ohba’ refers to Hideaki Ohba (b. 1943), Japanese botanist, associated with the University of Tokyo, whose work includes specialization on the Crassulaceae family. Previously, the plant was classified as Sedum telephium, Sedum triphyllum, and also as S. purpureum.

Comparisons: A garden plant that has similar flowers is the Stolon Stonecrop, Sedum stoloniferum, which is invasive as it also spreads along the ground by stolons and by rooting at stem nodes.