Common Name: STONECROP FAMILY
Habit: Annual to shrub [+- tree-like or climbing], fleshy. Leaf: generally simple, alternate or opposite (whorled), in dense to open, basal (or terminal) rosettes, or basal and cauline (not in rosettes), reduced on distal stem or not, often +- red. Inflorescence: generally a cyme, panicle-like, generally bracted. Flower: generally bisexual; sepals generally 3--5, generally +- free; petals generally 3--5, +- free or fused; stamens >> to = sepals, epipetalous or not; pistils generally 3--5(8), simple, fused at base or not, ovary 1-chambered, placenta 1, parietal, ovules 1--many, style 1 per pistil. Fruit: follicles, generally 3--5. Seed: 1--many, small.
Genera In Family: +- 33 genera, +- 1400 species: +- worldwide, especially dry temperate; many cultivated for ornament. Note: Water-stressed plants often +- red. Consistent terminology regarding leaves, bracts difficult; in Aeonium and Dudleya, structures in rosettes are leaves, those on peduncles are bracts, and those subtending flowers are flower bracts; thus in taxa where the inflorescence is terminal, rosette leaves may "become" bracts as stem rapidly elongates to form an inflorescence. In Sedum structures below the inflorescence are interpreted as stems and leaves, not peduncles and bracts. Seed numbers given per follicle. SCIED: Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin, Thomas J. Rosatti.
eFlora Treatment Author: Steve Boyd, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin, Thomas J. Rosatti.

Habit: Annual, perennial herb, shrub, glabrous (hairy). Stem: erect to decumbent, branched or not. Leaf: opposite, 0.1--7 cm, linear to deltate or obovate, bases fused, +- sheathing; margins generally entire. Inflorescence: terminal panicle or flowers 1 in axils of leaves, either 2 per node, axillary, or 1 per node, terminal but appearing axillary by overtopping of main axis. Flower: erect, sepals 3--5, +- fused at base; petals 3--5, spreading or recurved, free or +- fused at base; stamens = sepals in number; pistils 3--5. Fruit: spreading to erect. Seed: 0.2--0.6 mm, elliptic to elliptic-oblong (spheric, reniform), generally with longitudinal lines, sometimes +- smooth or papillate, red-brown. Chromosomes: x=(7)8.
Etymology: (Latin: diminutive of thick) Note: Crassula argentea Thunb., a synonym of Crassula ovata (Mill.) Druce, a waif.
eFlora Treatment Author: Steve Boyd
Unabridged Reference: Moran 1992 Cactus and Succulent Journal 64:223--231