The freebie plant

After catching up with paperwork I decided that I'd take the cats out for a walk after lunch and find a good Blip while I was at it, but when I opened the door it was bucketing down!

So I spent far too much time trying to get a close up of one of my favourite succulents, Bryophyllum (or Kalanchoe) daigremontianum, a native of Madagascar - to the Fiherenana River valley and Androhibolava mountains in the southwest of the island, if you really want to know! Sometimes called Mother of Thousands, even Mother of Millions, it spreads rapidly from rooted plantlets which appear along the leaf margins. Not a plant to grow outside if you garden in a frost free climate as it very rapidly becomes an invasive pest.


Using my Sony bridge camera allows me to focus down to 1cm, but a proper macro lens would have been  better as these plantlets are tiny. I took about 30 pictures before I found one sharp enough to enlarge a little more.

According to another website, it "can even be fatal if ingested by infants or small pets. It is also poisonous to humans." Not a child lover then, that writer!

My brother and I used to grow this plant and its fellow succulent, Bryophyllum tubiflorum, on our bedroonm windowsill when we were kids.