Kalanchoe
Habit | shrub
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Lifespan: | ⌛ | perennial |
Poisonous: | ☠ | Some species |
Bloom: | ❀ | early spring |
Exposure: | ☼ | part-sun |
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Features: | ✓ | flowers |
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Kalanchoe, also written Kalanchöe or Kalanchoë and pronounced /ˌkælənˈkoʊ.iː/,[1] is a genus of about 125 species of tropical, succulent flowering plants in the Family Crassulaceae, mainly native to the Old World but with a few species now growing wild in the New World following introduction.
Most are shrubs or perennial herbaceous plants, but a few are annual or biennial. The largest, Kalanchoe beharensis from Madagascar, can reach 6 m tall, but most species are less than 1 m tall.
Members of Kalanchoe genus are characterized by opening their flowers by growing new cells on the inner surface of the petals to force them outwards, and on the outside of the petals to close them.
These plants are cultivated as ornamental houseplants and rock or "succulent" garden plants. They are popular because of their ease of propagation, low water requirements, and wide variety of flower colors typically borne in clusters well above the vegetative growth. The section Bryophyllum - formerly an independent genus - contains species such as the "Air plant" Kalanchoe pinnata. In these plants, new individuals develop vegetatively as plantlets, also known as bulbils or gemmae, at indents along the leaves. These young plants eventually drop off and take root. No males have been found of one species of this genus which does flower and produce seeds, and it is commonly called, the Mother of Thousands. These plants are the food plant of the caterpillars of Red Pierrot butterfly. The butterfly lay its eggs on the leaf and after hatching the caterpillar go inside the leaf and eat the leaf from inside.
ExpandRead about Kalanchoe in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture
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Cultivation
Propagation
Pests and diseases
Species
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References
- ↑ Sunset Western Garden Book, 1995:606–607; Template:OED
- Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963
External links
- w:Kalanchoe. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
- Kalanchoe QR Code (Size 50, 100, 200, 500)