56 
SOUTH AFRICAN SPECIES OF 
more than one season. In that case the base of the stem becomes 
hard and woody. 
This species is chiefly found in the coast districts of South Africa. 
It appears to be absent from the Cape Peninsula. It extends to 
Namaqualand, Beaufort West, Graaff Reinet and Queenstown. Its 
altitude ranges from near sea-level to at least 4500 ft. 
Plants from the eastern parts of Cape Colony (but also sometimes 
in the western, e.g. Diels’ specimens from Clanwilliam) have generally 
somewhat smaller flowers than the type. They agree with the types 
of GY. filicaulis, E. et Z. which came from Uitenhage and the Gauritz 
River. This form is common near Grahamstown and Port Alfred. 
Its leaves are either exactly as in the type or they are flattened, 
oblanceolate, obtuse. Sometimes the two forms of leaves are found 
on the same plant. The petals are only 2 mm. long, the ovaries are 
slightly broader and the styles relatively shorter than in the type, but 
no sharp line can be drawn between the small-flowered form and the 
type. The latter was described by me as Cr. maritime i. A luxuriant 
form of the former was erroneously identified by Mr E. Baker and myself 
in Journ. of Bot. xxxvn (1898), 372 as Cr. peploides, Harv. Whether 
Ecklon and Zeyher’s Cr. filicaulis is the same as the species described 
by Haworth in Phil. Mag. 1824, 186, seemed to me very doubtful. It 
was described as having “ ramis radicantibus.” This I have never 
seen in otherwise typical wild specimens of Cr. expansa, Ait., but 
specimens in Herb. Berol. grown in the Berlin Botanic Garden in 1835 
and 1842 show this character. At all events, they are rooted at 
the nodes of the lower, efoliated, creeping part of the stem, and thus 
possibly Haworth’s species is also to be sunk in Cr. expansa, Ait. 
A specimen collected at Uitenhage by Ecklon and Zeyher (Nov. 
1825) was identified in the Berlin Herbarium as Cr. pulchella, Ait. 
Hort. Kew. ed. 1, I, 392. This plant is not mentioned in the 2nd ed. 
and is obviously not identical with Cr. expansa, Ait. If, as is possible, 
Aiton’s plant is the same which Haworth has described as Cr. pul- 
chella, Ait. in Rev. PI. Succ. 1831, 12, it cannot be a South African 
plant at all, as it has alternate leaves, and such species are absent in 
South Africa 1 . 
Bentham, in FI. Austral, n, 451, and Bentham and Hooker in Gen. 
PI. ii, 657, state that Dasystemon calycinum, DC. in Mem. sur la 
famille des Crassulacees, Paris, 1828, 15, t. 3, is Cr. expansa, Ait. 
However, neither De Candolle’s description nor his figure can be 
1 Willdenow in Sp. pi. i, 1586, says that Crassula pulchella, Ait. is allied to C. glomerata. He 
gives the distinguishing characters, which, however, are hardly sufficient to help us in identifying 
the plant. „ ' 
