Among 74 Eurasian species of Sedum, Rhodiola, and Hylotelephium 10 different combinations of life-forms and growth-forms can be distinguished. The anatomy of the shoots and roots in combination with the patterns of secondary growth, especially of the wood, indicate that these life-forms and growth-forms all have evolved from an ancestral perennating form with unspecialised, suberect or prostrate, rooting, leafy shoots and a hapaxanth flowering shoot. The habit of this ancestral form is similar to Sedum acre, and, moreover, is still quite abundant in Sedum. More advanced life-forms, growth-forms and secondary growth patterns have often evolved independently in different infrageneric groups of Sedum as well as in different genera of Sedoideae, and systematically these features are of little value.