Wee Crassula species - hunt, observe, share
Over the last few years, I have become increasingly interested in the tiny, non-aquatic, annual Crassula species of western North America:
Sand pygmyweed (Crassula connata) - native
Mossy pygmyweed (Crassula tillaea) - non-native
Aussie pygmyweed (Crassula colligata subsp. lamprosperma) - non-native
I am intrigued by how abundant and easy to find these species can be, while in season, and how easily overlooked they can be by folks who don't generally overlook plants - presumably owing to the small stature of these species.
I am starting this project to see if I can increase interest or activity of naturalists in western North America, in searching out these teeny-tiny, short-lived, plants. I think it would be interesting to better document the distribution, and unusual occurrences, of the native C. connata, but also to improve our understanding of the ranges/spread of the two non-native species.
Main project page: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wee-crassula-challenge
I'm tagging a number of folks down in the comments, and if you are interested, go out and observe some of these wee Crassula. This is a "traditional project", so you have to join the project, and then you can add an observation to the project when posting/editing an observation.
As I want to see whether a project like this can actually increase observation activity/interest for these easily overlooked species, I've closed the project to observations from past years. Feel free to share this effort with whomever you wish. I would love to get more people out looking for these wee Crassula species.
Hope you're interested... :)
-Glen
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How timely! The roads at the Bernard Field Station are covered with Crassula right now. We we just remarking on them yesterday. Supposedly we have both C. connata and C. tillaea on the site. I'll see if I can confirm.
@nvhamlett, yeah I thought I should launch this while there are a lot about. Still got some time this season before they're toast. :)
I suspect that the Bernard has all likely has all three species, though one is often locally dominant in a given locality. Info here may be of use in differentiating the species: https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/grmorrison/76252-id-tips-for-wee-annual-crassula-species-of-western-north-america
Fantastic, it's blooming all over the Central Valley now. I'll be on the lookout!
Tons here in Orange, I've got a lot already in my backlog. All Sand Pygmyweed I believe.
Tagging in some of the most active observers of Crassula connata and Crassula tillaea, and plants generally, in the Pacific Northwest. @sadie_hickey @peterzika @ajwright @nettleman_ @wyliethomas @chlorophilia @chrisfluit @fmcghee @johndreynolds @iancruickshank @bstarzomski @abe @rambryum @enspring @katemckeown @natureguy @outdoorobserver @lenachiasson @rhjackso @ellyne
Hope some of you are interested in getting out for some wee Crassula observing. :)
How much C. connata do you think is actually C. connata?
@ajwright, good question! Interestingly, C. connata is really the easiest to confidently ID. It's the presence of the non-native C. tillaea (and in some parts, C. colligata) that complicates matters. When I was making a really thorough push through the body of observations for these wee Crassula species more than a year ago, I found tons of C. tillaea misIDed as C. connata, fewer the other way around, and some C. colligata misIDed as C. connata, but just a few. What was most interesting was a large number of other annual Crassula species native to places like South Africa, Australia, the Mediterranean Basin, and elsewhere that were misIDed as C. connata. Basically, these wee Crassula species are under-observed all over the world, but because California has so many iNat users, our native, annual Crassula ended up dominating the CV model for these kinds of wee Crassula species the world over.
I do think there are a lot of observations of Crassula aquatica here in California that are currently misIDed on iNat as C. connata. There isn't a clear devotee for C. aquatica on iNat, so those haven't been cleaned up, and I don't know the species well enough to confidently sweep through them and say many aren't C. aquatica.
I also haven't tried to do any clean-up of South American C. connata observations, as it is native down there, but I don't know if there are other lookalikes down there that may need to be considered.
C. connata and C. tillaea are relatively easy to tell apart based on general plant form and especially the shape of the leaves. These plants are very common but can be easily overlooked. They are rather colorful though, so once you start to notice them you are unlikely to have trouble finding them
@sadie_hickey 100% agree on the color being helpful to find them. I routinely spot patches of these species along roadside at full driving speed, or on foot at fairly large distances.
Yes, my sense is that C. tillaea is often misreported as C. connata, in part because the former is such an agressive invader of the same habitat - I've visited known C. connata sites, with correctly identified vouchers, and found only C. tillaea. Or at least, that's the case up here. Sometimes California legitimately has native things in more ruderal habitats than in their peripheral ranges up here, but there are also large-scale misapplication issues that play in both places (analogously to the Cardamine hirsuta/oligosperma situation).
Some of the challenge (for me) is that a lot of connata does have the awned tips on the leaves, so sometimes non-flowering examples are hard to classify. I alternate between periods of great confidence with the plants on "gestalt" and none at all.
Yeah, without flowers, the connata-tillaea division is tough. I find in most cases if I check around within a population you can usually find a few individuals ahead or behind the curve in development, but that can be a pain in the butt. At this point for me I can see differences in the leaf shapes, as well. The leaves of C. connata are like a 3D ellipse, thickest about halfway down the leaf, and those of C. tillaea are more like a 3D obovate shape, thicker closer to the tip. The speckling is often helpful too, since C. tillaea reddens pretty evenly, without forming much speckling/spotting, while C. connata almost always does form spots/speckles of red, at least with some age and sun exposure. On all counts winter IDs are harder than later IDs, where flowers and other characters are present.
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