Kalanchoe thyrsiflora
species of plant
Kalanchoe thyrsiflora (also known as paddle plant, flapjacks, desert cabbage, white lady, geelplakkie, meelplakkie, or plakkie) is a species of flowering plant in the Stonecrop Family (Crassulaceae) and native to Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Eswatini. This plant is rare in cultivation, and those plants labelled as "Kalanchoe thyrsiflora" in horticulture are mostly another similar species, Kalanchoe luciae. It is one of the few succulents which flower and fruit once only (monocarpic). A peculiarity of the species is that the round leaves are held in a vertical posture.
Taxonomy
The name Kalanchoe thyrsiflora was first validly published for this southern African species by William Henry Harvey in 1862. Based on an error introduced in The Plant List in 2012, the name K. thyrsiflora has been treated by some as a synonym of K. tetraphylla. However, these two names apply to two distinct species. The name K. tetraphylla dates from 1923 and applies to a different species confined to Madagascar.
Description
It is a succulent plant producing a stalk about 1m tall, which dies back after flowering. It forms a basal rosette of large, rounded, fleshy, stalkless leaves, which are grayish-green with red margins, covered with a white powdery bloom.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kalanchoe thyrsiflora” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 9, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q138187. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1862, 2012 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kalanchoe thyrsiflora” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.