Friday, August 15, 2008

Kalanchoe somaliensis

There are many more species of kalanchoe that are more amendable or more correctly adaptable to continuously hot and humid tropical environment. K. somaliensis is one of them. Recent literature has placed it under one of the numerous synomyns of K. marmorata; in flower it may be a K. marmorata, so far it has not flowered. From the heat tolerance point of view, this is definitely not a typical K. marmorata. I had given at least 2 tries to K. marmorata from 2 different sources hoping to get a warm tolerant clone. They quickly succumbed to the weather and rightly so coming from 1200-1400 m montane zone of East Africa. K. somaliensis does have some semblance to K. marmorata; imagine the later without purple marbled markings and more pruinose. It probably comes from a warm area and dry habitat. The leaves develop even more intense white-blue pruinose under full sun as protection against sunburn. This clone comes to me from France.

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