Affordable gardening: the botanical chain letter

There are plants that contain several childhood memories.
And by that I mean beautiful memories, not culinary derailments like Brussels sprouts on the plate, which I still don’t like today.

At the time, this plant, which I mean, only reproduced through children’s birthdays, where it was passed on to the guests as a very hot product from the birthday child.
We called her baby launcher because she produced funny, ready-to-use young plants on her leaves. Without ever producing flowers. It was a sensation.
At that time every child must have had one. They even made it to elementary school on the windowsill. Nevertheless, in the end they could neither read nor write.

Correctly it is called brood sheet and was probably one Kalanchoe daigremontiana .

They invented the pyramid scheme – you had to keep passing it on until the system collapsed in the end. Similar to the chain letters that we as children wrote with enthusiasm.

The tiny offspring that had been found were carefully planted at home and then watched closely.
When did the longed-for babies finally come? And then they appeared, more than you could give away. After all, you only have a birthday once a year.
In addition, all of the guests thankfully declined. Funny.

The offspring soon landed as a free-rider in the neighboring flower pots, much to the dismay of my mother, who had to do more weeding on the windowsill than in the garden.
When the attraction of the new had finally passed and the baby throwers looked more like succulent weeds and not like a presentable houseplant, they were eventually disposed of. They probably had to spend the winter outside, which is equivalent to the death penalty.
In the years that followed, my mother finally had peace of mind until my sister reached the age of being able to have children, when the fun started all over again.

Well, and so I thought the times of the baby thrower on the windowsill would be history, until, yes, until the last one year discovered a few specimens that their babies had already thrown on the ground at a state garden show in the exhibition hall.
That was force majeure, the stranded specimens had to go.

As an excuse, I can say that it was not the weed version, but the architecturally valuable one with a fashionable herringbone look with a leopard print:

It is about Kalanchoe tubiflora, syn. Bryophyllum tubiflorum or Kalanchoe delagoensis .

This brown leaf is really exceptionally pretty. Filigree built with distinctive stains that show up only with age.
It can produce 4, often even 6, young plants per leaf, the makes with 100 sheets by Adam Riese at least 400 – and one copy can have significantly more sheets in the course of its life!

Once it stood outside in the rain on the terrace – the roots of the offspring were already rooted.

Even cats tried to colonize it, but this bold project soon failed, even though the base camp on the western flank looked promising:

You can imagine that this widespread African plant doesn’t have friends all over the world. In the tropics it can become a problem once it is brought in.

In our latitudes the takeover of the garden and fails Furthermore fortunately the annually recurring frost.

The culture of the slim brood is very simple. A sunny place is tolerated, it does without water for weeks and can be shortened if necessary if it gets too big.

Now we come to the chain letter: If you want to call this interesting little plant your own, please do not hesitate to contact us. I can send a few letters with babies – first come, first served. You only undertake to pass the offspring on to 10 friends. No, of course it was just fun.
You accept no further obligations when accepting a delivery. Except, of course, weed plugs on the windowsill. Promised.

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