Description:

• Shrubs to shrublets with branches erect, cartilaginous, but usually somewhat woody, rarely regenerating from base
• Leaves opposite, free, fleshy, persistent, usually producing pseudobulbils on margin
• Inflorescence a thyrse consisting of several dichasia usually ending in monochasia with few flowers; bracts on peduncle distinct, abruptly shorter than leaves; flowers pendulous, 4-merous
• Calyx: sepals 4, fused more than half their length
• Corolla fused into tube longer than spreading lobes
• Stamens 8, in 2 whorls; filaments glabrous, fused to corolla tube in lower third; anthers usually protruding, with terminal appendage spherical or almost so
• Squamae 4, free
• Carpels 4, free, with ovary abruptly constricted into long, ± filiform styles
• Seeds ellipsoid, with a constriction and abruptly widening at blunt proximal end, covered with vertical ridges and dense horizontal striations in grooves between them
• x = 17 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• Sometimes included in Kalanchoe

Nomenclature:

• *Bryophyllum Salisb.
  • Salisbury: t. 3 (1805)
  • Harvey: 380 (1862)
  • Bentham & Hooker: 658 (1865)
  • Britten: 389 (1872)
  • Berger: 408 (1930)
  • Keay: 116 (1954)
  • Tölken: 73 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genus possibly originally restricted to Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Bryophyllum delagoense (Eckl. & Zeyh.) Schinz, naturalised in disturbed areas and on roadsides, especially in sheltered frost-free areas of Mpumalanga, but also often seen as a garden escape in and around towns