Orpin d’Espagne

Herbs, annual, tufted, glabrous or scattered glandular-hairy. Stems erect or ascending, simple or much-branched, (glandular-hairy), not bearing rosettes. Leaves alternate, ascending, sessile; blade green, sometimes glaucous, linear to oblong, semiterete or ± laminar, 4-20 × 1-2 mm, base not spurred, not scarious, apex obtuse, (surfaces usually glabrous or, rarely, glandular-hairy). Flowering shoots spreading or erect, simple, 5-15 cm, (glabrous or with scattered glandular hairs); leaf blades linear to oblong, base not spurred; offsets not formed. Inflorescences lax to ± dense cymes, 2-8-flowered or flowers solitary, 2-4-branched; branches not recurved, not forked; bracts similar to leaves, smaller. Pedicels to 0.5 mm. Flowers 5-9-merous; sepals erect, connate basally, green, broadly triangular, equal, ca. 2 × 1 mm, apex acute, (glandular-pubescent); petals spreading, distinct, white with pinkish midvein, lanceolate, not carinate, 4-5(-7) mm, apex narrowly acuminate; filaments white; anthers dark purple; nectar scales white, spatulate-quadrate. Carpels stellate-spreading in fruit, connate basally, white or pale pink. 2n = 40.

Flowering spring-summer. Rocks and waste places; 0-1000 m; introduced; Ont., Que.; Mass., Mich., N.Y., Utah, Vt.; s, c Europe (Balkan Peninsula, Caucasus region); sw Asia (n Iran, Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey).

Sedum hispanicum has been naturalized in North America since 1880; it is sometimes cultivated.