Aichryson tortuosum (Aiton) Webb & Berthel.

Common Names include:
ENGLISH: gouty houseleek

Description: Often misspelled (tortulosum), Aichryson tortuosum is a small, very ornamental, perennial shrublet 10-15(-20) cm tall with dense tortuous branches, hence the specific name. It has crowded, fleshy and pubescent (downy) leaves in dense rosettes looking like a miniature Aeonium lindleyi. The small yellow flowers in a lax inflorescence typically have seven or eight petals. This neat little plant is the old and long-known Sempervivum tortuosum. It is quite variable and, as for most members of Aichryson, the true, unhybridized species is rarely seen in cultivation.
Stems: c. 5 mm thick, hairy, often glabrous below, Branches woody, tortuous, divaricate.
Leaves: Highly succulent, 10-12 long, 4-6 mm wide, 2-3 mm thick, blade broadest above the middle, obovate, rounded, sessile, densely glandular-hairy, viscid (scent resinous), dark green, tinged purplish-red or brown.
Inflorescence: From short laxly leafy shoots, few-flowered; Pedicels to 7 mm.
Flowers: 7- to 8-merous, 9 - 12 mm in diameter. Sepals glandular hairy (hairs up to 0.5 mm). Petals 5 - 6 mm, elliptic, acuminate, aristate, deep yellow, tips reflexed, margins often finely ciliate.
Seeds: Dust like.
Related species: Aichryson bethencourtianum Bolle is very similar to Aichryson tortuosum, so similar that an expert in this genus as Bañares Baudet (2008) considers it to be, a subspecies the latter (Aichryson tortuosum ssp. bethencourtianum (Bolle) Bañares & S. Scholz). They are distinguished from each other primarily by the excretion of a viscid substance from the dense hairs of A. tortuosum, which has sessile leaves, as opposed to A. tortuosum ssp. bethencourtianum, which has indistinctly petiolate leaves and longer, non-glandular hairs. They occur sympatrically on Fuerteventura, but only A. tortuosum has reported occurrences on Lanzarote.

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