Crassula subaphylla
species of plant
Crassula subaphylla is a succulent plant belonging to the family Crassulaceae. It is widespread in the Karoo regions of South Africa and Namibia.
Description
A small, sparse, shrubby species.
Crassula subaphylla is a small, dense to sparse, straggly shrublet, consisting of numerous brownish stems and branches, 15 – 30 cm tall (up to 60 when scrambling in vegetation). Branches are wiry, woody, but thin and brittle, twiggy (usually decumbent), with flaking strips of bark. Younger branches are slightly velvety (puberulous), reddish-brown, carnose. The leaves are widely dispersed along the branches with internodes of 0.5 — 1 (-3) cm, variable in shape, hairiness and colour (greyish- or reddish-green to yellow-green), distinctively pointed/conical (lanceolate-linear), and easily break off, 5 – 23 mm long and 4 – 8 mm in diameter. It flowers in spring to mid-summer with thyrses up to 8 cm tall with numerous dichasia. The flowers are cream with brown anthers, tubular, panduriform, to 5 mm, have distinctively recurved membranous wings on both sides of the petal tips.
Distribution and ecology
Succulent and Nama Karoo of South Namibia and RCA.
Regional variation
The typical form, with small lanceolate leaves, occurs in the Little Karoo, the Great Karoo as far as Namibia, and in surrounding karooid and mountainous areas, as well as the Overberg in the southern Cape.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Crassula subaphylla” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Crassula, subaphylla and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15483131. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Crassula subaphylla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.