Crassula tetragona

Miniature or chinese pine-tree, Miniature Or Chinese Pine-Tree

Family: Crassulaceae · Type: shrub · Not Native

Miniature pine-tree is a naturalized shrub found in coastal California, including the Central Coast, Southern Coast, and San Gabriel Mountains, persisting in urban interfaces and disturbed sites at elevations below 400 meters. Flowering from June to September, this plant produces small cream to white flowers in flat-topped terminal clusters with delicate, narrow-deltate petals. Growing with erect stems 30 to 50 centimeters tall and 1 to 5 millimeters in diameter, it develops a distinctive subshrub form with multiple branches. Its leaves are pale green, linear to narrow-triangular, approximately cylindrical, and arranged in more than 4 pairs along the stem, each measuring 10 to 30 millimeters long with a small sharp tip. The fruit develops as an erect, ovoid structure containing 6 to 10 small elliptical seeds with faintly textured surfaces.

Habitat: Persisting from cultivation and at dump sites, wildland-urban interface

Bloom period: Jun-Sep

Elevation: < 400 m

Bioregions: CCo, SCo, SnGb

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.