Crassula perfoliata var. minor

The Crassula perfoliata var. minor inflorescence comprises small, bright red, tubular flowers with spreading, rounded petal lobe tips. A flower is about 7 mm long, its five yellow anthers spread around the whitish cylindrical stigma branches.

Stamens and stigma reach about as high as the petal lobes, fully available to pollinators racing around in the sunshine after food. This they obtain while walking or hopping along in short flights upon the flat-topped inflorescence, a public landing strip frequented by many on a busy day.

When all of the bright colouring is over, seed development gets underway. The seeds are very small. The flowers in the inflorescence are arranged in a form known as a thyrse form, conspicuously carried on a peduncle of about 10 cm, above the leaves. The common name of the variety is scarlet paintbrush.

The leaves of this variety are grey-green, sickle-shaped, arranged in two narrow arrays and often shorter than those of the other varieties.

The distribution of the variety is to the southwest of the Eastern Cape.

The habitat is rocky outcrops in grassland.. The variety is not considered threatened in habitat early in the twenty first century (Gledhill, 1981; Manning, 2009; www.plantzafrica.com).