Perennial. — Flowers in June and July. 
Root fibrous, subdivided. Stems numerous, rather creeping at 
the base, entangled, branched ; the branches 2 or 3 inches high, 
upright, cylindrical, leafy. Leaves sessile, dark green, closely im- 
bricated on the barren branches ; scattered on the flowering ones ; 
blunt, convex at the back, flattened above, nearly egg-shaped, fleshy, 
with a spur at the base. Flowers of a golden-yellow, sessile, more 
or less numerous, growing along the branches of the cyme, which 
is generally trifid. Petals spear-shaped, pointed, twice as long as 
the calyx. Capsules membranous. 
Whole plant smooth, succulent, and tender, of a grass-green, forming lax 
wide-spreading tufts, and when extending itself “ over the roofs of cottages, or 
the tops of walls, its golden blossoms,” as Dr. Withering observes, ‘‘exhibit 
a gay appearance ; and mingled occasionally with the crimson or pearly con- 
stellations of its congeners, arrest the attention even of the superficial observer; 
while to the more scrutinizing eye of the scientific, each individual flower displays 
a skill, beauty, and contrivance, truly admirable.” It is very acrid ; and chewed 
in the mouth has a hot biting taste, whence, and from the common place of its 
growth, it has the name of Wall Pepper. A pplied externally it blisters; taken 
inwardly it excites vomiting. In scorbutic cases, and quartan agues, it is an 
excellent medicine under proper management. For the former, a handful of the 
herb is directed to be boiled in eight pints of beer till reduced to four, of which 
three or four ounces are to be taken every other morning. Milk has been found 
to answer this purpose better than beer. Not only ulcers simply scorbutic, but 
those of a scrofulous or even cancerous tendency, have been cured by the use of 
this plant. 
It continues to grow when hungup by the root, which has been considered as 
a proof that it receives its nourishment principally from the air ; but it is remarked 
by Dr. Withering, that though the life of the plant be thus retained for some 
weeks, yet it is at the expence of the juices which its succulent leaves had pre- 
viously imbibed. At the end of three weeks, a plant, suspended by Mr. Gough 
of Kendal, before a window with a northern aspect, had lost about half its 
weight, though it had put out some fine fibres from the root, and had yet life 
enough to enable it to turn to the light, after having been purposely turned from 
it. After being kept in water for 24 hours, it regained more than half of what 
it had lost. Mr. Gough therefore justly considers the succulent leaves as re- 
servoirs, which support the plant in dry weather, and are again replenished in 
rainy seasons, but does not admit that such plants attract nourishment from the 
air more than others. It must be allowed, however, that they subsist much upon 
the humidity of the atmosphere, since their succulent stems and leaves cannot 
derive much nutriment from the arid soil in which they generally grow. — Goats 
eat this plant; cows, horses, sheep, and swine refuse it. See Martyn’s Mill. 
Gard. Diet. ; and Withering’s Bot. Arr. 
A diminutive variety of this plant, (var. (3. diminution of Haworth,) much 
smaller than the species, hardly an inch high, with a creeping stem, a native of 
the higher Alps of Province, has been found on Swaffan Heath, Norfolk. Don. 
The Natural Order Crassula'ce^:, to which the present genus 
belongs, is composed of herbs or shrubs, with fleshy leaves, and 
no stipulas. Their calyx consists of from 3 to 20 sepals, which 
are more or less united at the base. Their corolla of from 3 to 20 
petals, inserted (as well as the stamens) at the base of the calyx. 
Their stamens are equal in number with the petals, or twice as 
many, and then they are frequently alternately shorter and longer. 
Their nectaries (glands ) are 5, or obsolete. The follicles (cap- 
sules) are as many as the petals, 1-celled, tapering into stigmas. 
The seeds are attached to the margins of the suture, in two rows ; 
the embryo is straight in the axis of the albumen, with the radicle 
pointing to the hilum. 
The other British genera belonging to this order, are — 1. Tillaa. 
2. Cotyledon, t. 279. 3. Sempervivum. 4. Rhodiola. 
