Thick-leaved stonecrop
Sedum dasyphyllum
Family · Crassulaceae · Harmless
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The mat of fleshy blue-grey beads covering wall tops and rock cracks, so smooth it looks made of beads. It flowers white with pink stripes.
Walls and rocks · Uplands · Town and roadside
Also known asCorsican stonecrop, blue stonecrop
How to tell it
Small, nearly spherical fleshy leaves, blue-grey or purplish, in opposite pairs packed tight on the sterile shoots. Covered in microscopic glandular hairs giving a dull, slightly sticky look. White five-petalled flowers with a pink stripe down the middle. Range: mainly a Spanish plant, practically absent from Portugal.
What it is confused with
White stonecrop
Sedum album
The leaves decide: sausage-shaped and green or reddish on white stonecrop, nearly spherical and blue-grey on this. And this one's come in pairs, white stonecrop's alternate. Neither is dangerous.
Open sheet →What it is for
No use. It serves to explain these plants' metabolism: they open their pores only at night, so as not to lose water in the sun, and that is why they survive on a roof tile.