page_title: Cotyledon tomentosa
section_title: Taxonomy
hierarchical_section_title: Cotyledon tomentosa / Taxonomy
caption_attribution_description: English: Cotyledon tomentosa ssp ladysmithiensis at the US Botanical Garden
context_page_description: Cotyledon tomentosa is a species of flowering plant in the family Crassulaceae, native to South Africa. It is a succulent evergreen shrub with large chunky ovate fuzzy green leaves. Its autonymous subspecies is known as the bear's paw because of the prominent "teeth" at the tips of its leaves. It forms large orange bell-shaped flowers in spring. In its native habitat, the Little Karoo region of South Africa, cotyledons usually grow in rocky quartz fields where they have excellent drainage provided by very porous soil.
context_section_description: Cotyledon tomentosa was described in 1862 by William Henry Harvey, and has no synonyms.
  Cotyledon tomentosa subsp. ladismithiensis was first described in 1907 by botanist Selmar Schonland, who named it Cotyledon heterophylla. Schonland noted that C. heterophylla seemed "more robust than C. tomentosa, Harv. to which it is probably nearly allied." Schonland also cautioned that the differences he noted between C. heterophylla and C. tomentosa "to be used with great caution" as "relative characters [in the genus Cotyledon] are frequently inconstant."
  However, the name C. heterophylla was a nomen illegitimum, because it had already been applied in 1824 by William Roxburgh to what is now called Kalanchoe lanceolata.
  In 1936, Karl von Poellnitz noted the conflict and gave the taxon a new name, Cotyledon ladysmithiensis, for its native range near the town of Ladismith, South Africa. Hellmut R. Toelken reclassified the taxon in 1977 as a subspecies, Cotyledon tomentosa subsp. ladismithiensis, retaining a different spelling of von Poellnitz's name. This is the current accepted name of the subspecies, as listed on Plants of the World Online. According to Magrit Bischofberger, von Poellnitz's original spelling should be used according to Article 60.1 of the International Code of Nomenclature, which states a name should not be changed even if it contains a spelling discrepancy (i.e. Ladismith vs. ladysmithiensis). Another spelling variation used by the Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants is "ladismithensis."
caption: "ladysmithiensis" spelling used at the US Botanic Garden
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