EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Broadleaf Stonecrop

Broadleaf (or Broad-leaved) Stonecrop (Sedum spathulifolium), Family Crassulaceae
Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

Explanation:  Standing on a rock outcrop on a local hilltop in southern Vancouver Island, off the mainland coast of British Columbia, Canada, I happened upon this amazingly geometric member of the stonecrop family of succulent plants.  With its relatively broad leaves, this is, well, a broadleaf stonecrop.  

A perennial herb growing from thick rhizomes, broadleaf stonecrops are typically found in rocky outcrops, cliffs, bluffs, and in forest openings.  

Here, seen growing in a bed of moss.

Some taxonomies equate the species with Sedum pruinosum.  
Regardless, the species can be planted as a cultivar and is quite variable in appearance.  

As reported by Pojar and MacKinnon (1994), the plant has been used by indigenous people as a poultice, and women are reported to have chewed the leaves to ease childbirth.  Further, stonecrop plants found growing on the roof of your house was thought to help protect the home from fire and lightening; the fire part seems plausible, as the plant can grow in very moist substrates, such as the moss bed in the photo above (but the lightening part?  hmm ... ). 

The species is found from southern California through western North America
up to British Columbia.

Now, move in closer ... and suddenly the rosette of leaves seem to take on a fractal appearance, sprouting ever deeper into a tunnel of emerging, overlapping patterns ... 

... and seemingly taking on a Fibonnaci sequence!  

And this is a wonderful lesson in simple natural history, to take the time to make closer and closer observations of what you first thought was "just some plant" ...

  
Information:
     Pojar, J., and A. MacKinnon. 1994. Plants of coastal British Columbia including Washington, Oregon & Alaska. Lone Pine Publishing, Vancouver, B.C. 527 pp.