Synonym:
Sedum telephium.
English: Orpine; Livelong; Frog's-stomach; Harping Johnny; Life-everlasting; Live-forever; Midsummer-men; Orphan John; Witch's moneybags.
Name: Telephium was a surgical term for an ulcer difficult to cure; this was named after King Telephus who suffered from a spear wound that would not heal.
Region: Europe except Balkan, Ireland, Iceland, Sicily.
Habitat: hedge banks; shady sides of damp woods; mostly sandy or solonetz soils, pine forests; as a weed in fields, among shrubs in forest; very cold-hardy, tolerating temperatures to -30°C; most, well-drained soils, prefers a fertile, not too dry soil; tolerates poor, sandy to gravelly soils; tolerant of quite deep shade; drought tolerant; in crevices on walls.
Ecology: immune to the predations of rabbits.
Content: polysaccharides; flavonoids, quercetin, kaempferol; alkaloids, sedine, sedamine.
Use: food, edible leaves and young blooming stems, leaves, raw or cooked, young in salads, older ones are cooked as a potherb; medicine; ornamental; green roof and green wall systems; skin conditioning preparations.
Source: Swan.
BotanyHerb; succulent; perennial; groundcover.; 45 cm tall.
Stem: cluster of stems; 20 to 90 cm tall.
Root: short rootstock; cluster of white, tuberous, carrotlike roots; axillary buds on the stem stem, can fall and take root.
Inflorescence: dense heads.
Flowers: pink, red, reddish or yellowish-white.
Pollination: by bees, lepidoptera, flies, self.
TaxonomyTelephium was known to botanists, Dioscorides, Pliny, Gerard and Parkinson. Linnaeus described it as one of 15 species of Sedum. Gray included it and related species as a section of the genus Sedum. Telephium species differ markedly from Sedum by a distinct ovary and ovules, blooming stems, leaves, inflorescence, flower parts, colour and blooming time and chromosome number. Consequently, Ohba segregated Telephium species into a separate genus, Hylotelephium with 28 species, specifying
Hylotelephium telephium as the type species. Molecular phylogenetic studies have confirmed that Telephium constitutes a distinct clade.