Crassula connataA.Berger

sand pygmyweed

WFO wfo-0000624923 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Crassula connata, photographed by Shane Johnson
fig. a Shane Johnson, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-20 / obs. 199503487

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000838480
Filed as
Crassula connata (Ruiz & Pav.) A.Berger
Det. by
Wickens, G.E.; Bywater, M.
Collected
Hartweg, K.T.
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 21 botanical countries

Regions where Crassula connata is native: Arizona, British Columbia, California, Mexican Pacific Is., Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northwest, Oregon, Washington, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Argentina South, Bolivia, Chile Central, Chile North, Chile South, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay ArizonaBritish ColumbiaCaliforniaMexico CentralMexico GulfMexico NorthwestOregonWashingtonArgentina NortheastArgentina NorthwestArgentina SouthBoliviaChile CentralChile NorthChile SouthColombiaEcuadorGuatemalaPeruUruguay
Native distribution of Crassula connata, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Argentina Northeast AGE SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest AGW
Argentina South AGS
Bolivia BOL
Chile Central CLC
Chile North CLN
Chile South CLS
Colombia CLM
Ecuador ECU
Guatemala GUA
Peru PER
Uruguay URU
Arizona ARI NORTHERN AMERICA
British Columbia BRC
California CAL
Mexican Pacific Is. MXI
Mexico Central MXC
Mexico Gulf MXG
Mexico Northwest MXN
Oregon ORE
Washington WAS

Not drawn on the map: Mexican Pacific Is.. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 119 in flower of 160 examined

Proportion of examined Crassula connata in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 1 11 9% 2% to 38%
Feb 25 30 83% 66% to 93%
Mar 56 65 86% 76% to 93%
Apr 34 41 83% 69% to 91%
May 3 7 43% 16% to 75%
Jun 0 0 too few examined
Jul 0 0 too few examined
Aug 0 0 too few examined
Sep 0 0 too few examined
Oct 0 1 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 5 0% 0% to 43%

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Crassula connata observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 119 of 160 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,970 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 3.1 °C 6.7 °C 11.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 18.7 °C 28.0 °C 39.0 °C
Annual rainfall 231 mm 364 mm 986 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 6 mm 23 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,970 research-grade observations of Crassula connata that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 13 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Crassula erecta (Hook. & Arn.) A.Berger
  • Crassula minima Reiche
  • Crassula tillaea Macloskie
  • Tillaea connata Ruiz & Pav.
  • Tillaea erecta Hook. & Arn.
  • Tillaea erecta subsp. eremica (Jeps.) Wiggins
  • Tillaea erecta var. eremica Jeps.
  • Tillaea leptopetala Benth.
  • Tillaea minima Miers
  • Tillaea minima Miers ex Hook. & Arn.
  • Tillaea minima var. subsimplex S.Watson
  • Tillaea muscosa G.Forst.
  • Tillaea rubescens Kunth

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.