Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Pretty pictures: Kalanchoe blossfeldiana

Not a lot of botanical, or even horticultural, content today, but the pictures are big and purty and well-suited for desktop backgrounds. Or even if you don't want a new desktop background, there's still quite a bit more detail to be seen in the full-size picture.

I don't have cultivar IDs for any of the five; they were probably tagged, but with bloomers like these, I often forget to check, for some reason.

My favorite is the pink calandiva (fourth from top).






8 comments:

Liza said...

My, those blossoms are adorable!

Unknown said...

I think the fourth is my favourite too. I've never tried growing these but I do love them.

Do you have any idea what this plant is: http://twitgoo.com/1jq993 ? I thought it was a Leea but the seed it's growing out of threw me for a loop. I want one but need to check care requirements first.

Evil HD with cheap, unlabeled plants...

Ivynettle said...

No desktop pics for me - Kalanchoe blossfeldiana is one of the plants I just don't like. Seen too many of them, I guess.

Jordan in Oregon said...

How does Kalanchoe do as a houseplant? It seems up here we only get them as short term 'flowering gift plants', not really intended for outdoors or in for more than a week. I haven't tried growing them outside as an annual, a little late this year, but the next time we get some in I'm thinking about giving it a shot as a houseplant.

mr_subjunctive said...

Aaerelon:

I feel like I ought to know -- it's sort of vaguely familiar -- but I don't in fact know. Sorry.

Ivynettle:

I know. Me either. But I like the way the photos turned out anyway, considering.

mr_subjunctive said...

Jordan in Oregon:

I don't have firsthand experience with them as houseplants, though that's mainly because the ones that we kept at work, in the greenhouse, always looked worse and worse with time until someone eventually pitched them. I figure if we couldn't grow them in a greenhouse, then the odds of growing them in the even lower-light conditions indoors are pretty slim. People do sometimes keep and rebloom them, occasionally, but I don't get the impression that it's a particularly easy thing to do.

Megan said...

Oh man. We use crap loads of these for home staging... They usually last about two months outside before the blooms die. We have a property with one indoors in a sunny window. It looks alright, but I haven't seen a lot of new blooms on it. Not my cup of tea.

Ivynettle said...

They're usually houseplants here in Austria - didn't know they even could be grown outdoors until this year.
Reblooming is a bit tricky, since they're short-day plants. Never managed it at home, though the plants I left at school bloomed well - there, the light was reliably turned off all night. But they also get rather leggy with age - not much like the compact plants you get in stores.