This lifeform is found in Japan. This non-native lifeform is now locally established in greater North America. The yellow color will help identify this lifeform. This lifeform is frequently domesticated.

Sedum kamtschaticum is native to Japan. The flowers are yellow. There are several named varieties. In the varieties, the flowers turn from yellow to orange or reddish.

Sedum genus is native to the northern temperate and cold  regions.  It is also found south into the mountains of the New World tropics.  There are over 300 species.  These are fleshy mostly glabrous herbs usually with  entire or dentate alternate leaves.  The flowers are usually in terminal one-sided cymes.  There were 56 species and 32 named subspecies growing in greater North America as of 1994.

Stonecrop (&Houseleek) Family (Crassula) is found primarily in the arid areas of North America, Eurasia, and Africa. Different authors place the number of species at well over 500 but under 1,500. There are about 33 recognized genera in this family of leaf succulents which Gordon Rowley's Encyclopedia of Succulents very nicely discusses. There are about 117 species arranged in 15 different genera growing in greater North America.

Rose Group (Order Rosales) contains many large and very important families. Included here are fruit trees in the family Rosaceae, the nitrogen fixing plants like clover and alfalfa (in the family  Leguminosae), and a large assemblage of plants divided into over fifteen different families.

Dicots (Dicotyledoneae Class) are the predominant group of vascular plants on earth. With the exception of the grasses (Monocots) and the Conifers (Gymnosperms), most of the larger plants that one encounters are  Dicots. Dicots are characterized by having a seed with two outer shell coverings. Some of the more primitive Dicots are the typical hardwood trees (oaks, birches, hickories, etc). The more advanced Dicots include many of the Composite Family flowers like the  Dandelion, Aster, Thistles, and Sunflowers. Although many Monocots reach a very high degree of specialization, most botanists feel that the Dicots represent the most advanced group of plants.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.