[Apologies-- I got busy with work and health problems and this is very late in being posted. In fact, I believe there are more proof photos still to come! Yay!]

This is a Kalanchoe Daigremontiana--er, sorry, Bryophyllum Daigremontianum. It's known as "mother of thousands" because it gives off lots of baby plantlets. It's a succulent, like aloe, which means it has leathery "leaves," likes sandy soil, and can go a while without water. This particular specimen was reportedly smuggled home from Madagascar by graduate students at SUNY Stony Brook who did field work there in the summer. I got it from some former SUNY folks who were moving to Canada and were offloading some of their houseplants. It was a cute little 7 inch tall sweetie when I got it. I have overwatered the original, causing it to get stupidly leggy and drop plantlets into all the other plant containers around it.

I haven't been able to confirm this little fact outside of mention on
(gasp!) Wikipedia, but apparently a related plant called Bryophyllum
pinnatum is known as "Goethe's Plant" because Goethe loved giving them
out to friends. So I guess Bryophylla are appropriate for this task.



She's come a long way from the scrawny thing I originally acquired. Here's a decent view of the baby plants growing on her:

They fall all over the place; the space behind my dryer is a graveyard of them.

This was a good chance to use up old soil and the pots left over from last year's herbs and tomatoes:



I potted up the babies you saw on ol' Grandma above on the 1st of February. By the 22nd:



The guy on the right is a group of plantlets that have been growing for about 1 year.



These are going to some players who may use them for this task, too! They did GREAT in soil meant for cacti. Definitely recommended.

Some of these were babies I planted on the 1st. The larger plants were volunteering in the pots with all my other plants, so I dug them up and put them here. All of them seem to be taking hold pretty well. The tendency of this plant to propagate itself into all of your other houseplants' pots is well known: Plants are the Strangest People has a post about it, giving it a 0.0 on a ten point scale from easiest to hardest to grow. On this scale, an artificial plant scores a -0.3; yes, that means this sucker is easy to grow. Nevertheless, these babies didn't grow as happily or quickly in this cheap ACE hardware soil as the ones in cactus soil did. I'm going to sprinkle some cactus soil over the tops before I deliver them.


One of the places lacking plants that we hit was Alana's porch, where an unindicted co-conspirator dropped them off one afternoon because she did not hear him knock.




This plant ended up installed in the office of a published author-- all plants should aspire to such greatness!




More plant photos forthcoming, as we continue to further the Bryophyllum's plans for world domination.