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The jade plant is an evergreen with thick branches. It has thick, shiny, smooth leaves that grow in opposing pairs along the branches. Leaves are a rich jade green, although some may appear to be more of a yellow-green. Some varieties may develop a red tinge on the edges of leaves when exposed to high levels of sunlight. New stem growth is the same colour and texture as the leaves, becoming woody and brown with age. It grows as an upright, rounded, thick-stemmed, strongly branched, evergreen shrub and reaches stature heights of up to 2.5 meters. The base is usually sparsely branched. Sometimes a single main trunk of up to 6 centimetres in diameter is formed. The succulent shoots are gray-green. The bark of older branches peels off in horizontal, brownish stripes. The oppositely arranged, ascending to spreading, green leaves are stalked with up to 5 millimetres short. The fleshy, bare, obovate, wedge-shaped leaf blade is 3 to 9 centimetres long and 1.8 to 4 centimetres wide. The sharp-edged leaf margins are often reddish. Numerous varieties and cultivars have been selected, of which C. ovata 'Hummel's Sunset' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.