Volume II 
JUNE, 1916 
No. 2 
ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN SPECIES OF 
CRASSULA , Linn sect. TILLAEOIDEAE, Schonl. 
By S. SCHONLAND 1 . 
{With 16 figures in the text and 6 plates.) 
A. P. De Candolle was the first to create a section Tillaeoideae in the 
genus Crassula [Memoire sur la famille des Crassidacees, Paris, 1828, 
18, Prodr. ill (1828), 389]. He characterised them as small herbs with 
the habit of Tillaea, with 4-merous flowers but with multiseeded follicles, 
and to it belong according to him all species of Tillaea from the Cape 
described by Thunberg as Crassula natans, inanis, umbellata et decumbens. 
He put into a special section annual dichotomous herbs which in habit 
resemble Scleranthus and have small whitish flowers, disposed in corymbiform 
cymes. He called this section “ Glomeratae ” (as Haworth in Rev. PI. Succ. 
1821, 12, had done before him) and placed into it Or. glomerata, glabra, etc. 
He keeps up the Linnean genus Tillaea (originally established by 
Micheli). According to him this genus comprises very small species of 
Crassulaceae which grow in damp places, have entire and decussate leaves, 
with mostly 3-merous flowers (though sometimes with 4-merous and 5-merous 
flowers). Their most important character is, however, found in the fact that 
the ovaries are only 2-ovuled and that perhaps the nectar-scales are entirely 
absent. At the time of writing this account he could only refer to this 
genus with certainty T. muscosa, L. and T. rubescens, Kunth, and a new 
species, T. verticillaris. 
He further keeps up the genus Bulliarda, first conceived by L Heritier 
and published by De Candolle in the PI. Grasses, t. 74, and elsewhere. He 
only quotes as a distinguishing character from Tillaea its multi-seeded 
follicles, and from Crassula its linear nectar-scales. Some subsequent 
authors (such as Harvey in Flora Capensis, II, 329) have paid little 
attention to these distinctions and proceeded in the delimitation of these 
genera on their own lines, and it is hardly worth while to follow their 
vagaries. 
I must, however, refer to Ecklon and Zeyher’s attitude in this matter. 
In their “ Enumeratio Plants, rum,” Hamburg, 1836, 288, they establish a 
new genus Helophytum which according to them (leaving out unimportant 
1 Contribution from the Herbarium of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown. 
A. B. H. II. 
4 
