Plant in full sun to light shade in a well-drained soil. Irrigate very little to occasionally - foliage color will be best in the sun with little water. It is cold hardy to at least 28° F. This colorful foliage plant makes a great small-scale groundcover for the rock or succulent garden or for use in a decorative container. Cut back stems and re-root when plants become too leggy.

Sedum nussbaumerianum was first discovered by the German botanist Carl Albert Purpus at a sulfur spring in a ravine at Zacuapan in Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1906 or 1907 but was later described in 1923 by the German botanist George Bitter (Friedrich August Georg Bitter) who named it for Ernst Nussbaumer, the head gardener at the Bremen Botanic Garden in Germany. It was in cultivation under this name in California in 1944 or perhaps as early as 1933 as Sedum adolphii and was re-introduced by the Huntington Botanic Garden through the International Succulent Institute as ISI 1682 in 1986 from material collected in the wild by Charles Uhl at 550-600m on a rock outcrop near Cerro Gordo, Veracruz Mexico in 1978 (HBG 40419). This plant was given the marketing name Coppertone by Magic Growers Nursery of Altadena, CA in 2002.

Sedum nussbaumerianum is a plant in the Pachysedum group of the genus, one of 22 subdivisions within the genus Sedum that the German botanist Alwin Berger created and that American botanist Robert Clausen expanded upon. This group includes more than 90 closely related tender succulent species from North America that appear to be more closely related to Echeveria, Pachyphytum and Graptopetalum than to plants in other sections in Sedum. Unlike these other Sedum that produce terminal inflorescences on the stem, plants in this group have lateral inflorescences.

The late Dr. Henk t' Hart and Dr. Bert Bleij wrote the Sedum section in the lexicon "Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants: Crassulaceae" (Eggli, Urs (ed), Springer. Berlin, 2003) and noted this species to be very similar if not identical to Sedum adolphii however Robert Clausen in "Sedum of North America North of the Mexican Plateau" (Cornell University Press. Ithaca, 1975) listed the two species as often confused but separate taxa. The key in Clausen's book distinguishes Sedum nussbaumerianum by it having flowers all in the same plane, petals lanceolate 2.8-3.2 mm wide; principal leaves 5-8 mm thick, convex and obscurely carinate (keeled) dorsally while he noted that Sedum adolphii has petals at different levels in cymes, petals ovate-lanceolate, 3-3.5 mm wide; principal leaves 8-10 mm thick and strongly carinate dorsally. It has become naturalized in Sicily and on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura but has not been noted to do so in our California gardens. We have grown this very nice plant continuously since 2003. 

The information about Sedum nussbaumerianum that is displayed on this web page is based on research conducted in our nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We will also include observations made about this plant as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens that we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We also incorporate comments that we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they share cultural information that aids others growing this plant.