Crassulaceae

Succulent non-woody plants; adapted for growth in dry and/or salt-rich environments; mostly perennials. Flowers usually have equal numbers of sepals, petals and carpels, and as many or twice as many stamen.

Flowers mostly in terminal cymes (solitary in leaf axils and tiny in Water Pygmyweed), usually yellow, white or pink, each plant usually producing both pollen and seeds (except Roseroot), radially symmetrical. Petals and sepals usually 4 or 5, separate or fused. Edges of petals overlapping. Stamens 4 -10, in one or two whorls, their stalks separate or slighlty fused, free or attached to the petals. Carpels usually 4 or 5, separate to slighly fused at the base; ovaries located above the point of attachment of the other flower parts (superior); styles separate, stigmas tiny. Each carpel with a scale-like nectar-producing gland at its base. Fruit usually an aggregate of small pods, rarely a capsule.

Leaves thick, succulent, smooth, often with a waxy coating, usually smooth, round to flat in cross-section, rounded at tips. Leaves simple, unstalked; alternate and spiral, opposite or whorled. Leaf edges smooth or toothed. Stipules none.

Stems succulent, creeping and mat-forming, or upright.