Angiosperms (Flowering Plants) • Earth.com

Velvet leaf kalanchoe

(Kalanchoe millotii)

galery
en

Description

Kalanchoe millotii is a succulent plant that is native south-central and southeastern Madagascar. It forms a shrub up to a foot high. The leaf is a hazy green and scalloped, with dense felt covering it. This succulent, like most of its kind, requires porous soil and can only tolerate light frost. The plant is hardy to 36–40 degrees and needs bright light, or full sun to partial shade. This succulent only requires regular waterings during the summer or during heat waves, otherwise watering weekly is sufficient. Kalanchoe is a genus of about 125 species of tropical, succulent plants in the stonecrop family Crassulaceae, mainly native to Madagascar and tropical Africa. A Kalanchoe species was one of the first plants to be sent into space, sent on a resupply to the Soviet Salyut 1 space station in 1979. Kalanchoes require direct sunlight although they can survive with bright indirect sunlight. They only need to be watered when the soil is completely dry. Most are shrubs or perennial herbaceous plants, but a few are annual or biennial. The largest, Kalanchoe beharensis from Madagascar, can reach 6 m (20 ft) tall, but most species are less than 1 m (3 ft) tall. Kalanchoes open 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. Kalanchoe flowers are divided into 4 sections with 8 stamens. The petals are fused into a tube, in a similar way to some related genera such as Cotyledon. The genus Kalanchoe was first described by the French botanist Michel Adanson in 1763. The genus Bryophyllum was described by Salisbury in 1806 and the genus Kitchingia was created by Baker in 1881. Kitchingia is now regarded as a synonym for Kalanchoe, while Bryophyllum has also been treated as a separate genus, since species of Bryophyllum appear to be nested within Kalanchoe on molecular phylogenetic analysis, Bryophyllum is considered as a section of the former, dividing the genus into three sections, Kitchingia, Bryophyllum, and Eukalanchoe. these were formalised as subgenera by Smith and Figueiredo (2018). The genus is predominantly native to the Old World. Only one species originates from the Americas. 56 are from southern and eastern Africa and 60 species on the island of Madagascar. It is also found in south-eastern Asia and China.

Taxonomic tree:

Domain:
Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum:
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order:Saxifragales
Family:Crassulaceae
Genus:Kalanchoe
News coming your way
The biggest news about our planet delivered to you each day