There are less than 20 Glottiphyllum coming mostly from the southern part of South Africa. They are clustering plants similar looking to the bigger trailing ice plant with the difference that they have virtually no stem. The cylindrical, flattened or tongue-shaped leaves come in groups of 2 or 3 pairs, soon pretty crowded. The name Glottiphyllum comes from the Greek for "shaped as a tongue"
They large yellow flowers come mostly in late fall. Glottiphyllum are almost always self-sterile, which means that you need different plants from the same location to obtain seeds. Since this is not always easy to achieve, it accounts for the large number of misidentified hybrids. Glottiphyllum are generally easy to grow from seeds.