Crassula coccinea (red crassula)

Crassula coccinea is found in South Africa, in the Cape region from Paarl to Bredasdorp and on the Cape Peninsula, at elevations of 800 m or higher.

Crassula coccinea is a small succulent perennial, reaching up to 40 cm high. It has a few branching stems, along which overlapping pairs of flat, red-edged leaves are arranged. Older leaves turn brown and persist for a long time. From December–March, dense, flat-topped heads of red flowers are carried at the top of the stems. Each flower measures about 1 cm across. Pollination is by butterflies, particularly the mountain pride butterfly, Meneris tulbaghia, which is unusual among butterflies in pollinating bright red flowers.

Hand-coloured engraving of Crassula coccinea by Sydenham Edwards (1800) taken from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Image: RBG Kew)

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Editor: Martyn Rix) provides an international forum of particular interest to botanists and horticulturists, plant ecologists and those with a special interest in botanical illustration.

Now well over two hundred years old, the Magazine is the longest running botanical periodical featuring colour illustrations of plants. Each four-part volume contains 24 plant portraits reproduced from watercolour originals by leading international botanical artists. Detailed but accessible articles combine horticultural and botanical information, history, conservation and economic uses of the plants described.

Published for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
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Red crassula is cultivated as an ornamental. It is still widely traded and grown under the synonym Rochea coccinea.

The Millennium Seed Bank partnership aims to save plant life worldwide, focusing on plants under threat and those of most use in the future. Seeds are dried, packaged and stored at a sub-zero temperature in Kew's seed bank vault at Wakehurst.

Description of seeds: Average 1,000 seed weight = 0.03 g.
Number of seed collections stored in the Millennium Seed Bank: Two.
Germination testing: 95% germination on a 1% agar medium at 15°C, 8 hours light/16 hours dark; 90% germination on 1% agar at 20°C, 8 hours light/16 hours dark.

The botanical artist Marianne North depicted Crassula coccinea in her painting Vegetation on the Hills near Grahamstown that can be seen in the Marianne North Gallery.

Search Kew's databases for more information on this species

JSTOR Plant Science (includes images of Crassula coccinea)

PlantzAfrica – Crassula coccinea

Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Wiley-Blackwell)