PlantFiles: Chandelier Plant, Mother of Thousands
Kalanchoe delagoensis

A friend gave me a piece of this plant several years ago and I've enjoyed it ever sense. It puts on such a spectacular flower show even from just a small 4" plant and it's just outside my kitchen window so I enjoy it daily when blooming. From the one small piece I have planted several other small pots but I find that not all of them bloom. I'd like to be able to tell which ones will and won't so I can toss the non-bloomers and plant up a few more of the bloomers for a better show each winter.
Yes it is invasive; I find new babies in the surrounding pots but they are easy to pull out and move to another pot or the trash. (Don't accidentally add this to a compost pile!) The pots are on a table over a cement patio, it gets limited water, and is in a mostly shady spot, all of which seem to help keep it under control and the number of babies limited. I don't think I'd want to have it in the garden around open ground, or if I lived in a place with lots of rain.

A clipping of this plant was given to me by a neighbor about two years ago. I was attracted to its height, its bright red teardrop flowers and its unique ability to be "trained." I was able to make it grow into a spiral by replacing an adjustable table over it every couple of days. A very handsome plant. However, IT IS VERY INVASIVE!! In only a few days, it had spread hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny sprouts across my side yard, completely taking over the area. It took many hours, over a few weeks, of pulling each and every one of those sprouts up to clear the ground of the invasion. I still want to possibly grow one or two in a planter for a decorative accent on my porch, but I am so afraid of it spreading again. I am not positive of this, but I would assume because of its invasive nature, it would be outlawed or regulated. (It should be, anyway).

In short... Be wary of this plant! It grows aggressively and can grow in any direction to find a light source. I've found them underneath a picnic table and they were literally growing sideways to find the sunlight. Mowing over them only spreads them faster. If you find yourself overwhelmed with them, expect to be on your hands and knees pulling them up!

I "rescued" a couple little ones that were growing across a sandy rock last year, 'cuz I thought the speckled leaves/stems looked neat. Since then I found out they flowered, and have witnessed their profuse reproduction habits. As an exclusively container gardener, I've found this plant easy to contain for a few reasons... At first, it did spread itself to a couple of other containers, but they are easy to pull out, especially when repotting. Also, because I want to try to get a larger container full of mature plants that will flower spectacularly, I have been pulling the babies off the plants before they have a chance to fall off and just toss them all into one container. This seems to have been working well so far, and since I often want to "putter", but don't always have something to do - keeping an eye on these plants satisfies that need. Babies do not form on the same stalk again, so once they are removed, plantlets only form on the new growth on top, which makes controlling this plant fairly easy. However, I only have four that I have allowed to mature at the moment - we will have to see if I change my tune when there is a much bigger potful...

Ok, I like weird-looking things, and this is one I found in my Mother-in-Law's container-garden on her porch in Santa Monica... and fell in love with it for it's leggy, alien appearance. She had several growing seemingly randomly in the pots, and I was house-sitting at the time... I took a pair of the smaller plants, leaving the many that were there.

I had no idea this little beastie was considered a WEED!

It grew where I put it (in a pot, to hopefully contain it's "seeding" habit), and later asked the M-I-L what it was. She had no idea, but also said she hated them and has since ripped out all of the others that I'd left behind. Pity- I would have taken 'em all.

Now that I know the species, it's "problems", and that it has lovely blossoms, I'm gonna keep a close eye on it. I figure since I live in an apartment where my door is surrounded by a concrete pad, it shouldn't get out of hand. It's getting pretty big, and little babies are growing in the pot, too. Hoping for those awesome-looking flowers, as I'm sure the local hummingbirds will like them!

I have to give this a negative for central Florida, despite the fact that it is "interesting" and blooms profusely in winter, even with little or no water. However, once it gets into a planting bed it is almost impossible for me to get rid of it, a few tiny plantlets seem to survive my weeding it out every time, and then they reproduce like crazy again. Throw it on the trash piles and it just keeps growing and flowering. Leaf width varies a lot, with plants in moist shade having wider, flat leaves and those in dry sand having the narrowest and most "tubular" leaves.

Here in central Florida (Keystone Heights), they seem to be holding their own. We have a few naturalized patches, the biggest being in a bamboo leaf litter area that gets morning sun. This is in a sandhill community; very sandy, fast-draining soil.

I have always had this plant as an oddity and share it with friends that show interest in them " kind of like bread starts :) ". Lived in cooler to now Washington type climates and never had the " too unruley " growth problems. I enjoyed them as a kid and was happy to find some up here. I'm greenhousing a number of the leaf attached babies for next spring. They need to be covered at least and housed up here, Don't get many spring survivors in the outdoor open garden.

This plant gets a lot of attention from visitors. It has not spread from it's original place, but it seems to be doing very well. We started a couple of broken off bits in pots for indoor pots, and they are doing OK. Not at all invasive here.

I live in "Central" Florida, about 75 miles north of St. Pete/Tampa and this plant was in an area next to the house divided by low bricks from the yard. Not in a true raised planter. It is against the house wall on the east side and gets the morning sun. There are a number of them and they began blooming around New Years day. We had a freeze five or six days ago, down to 24 degrees, so before it hit I went out and cut four of the umbles off with about a foot of the stem and put them in a vase with water in the house and they are still happily blooming. The ones left outside were damaged by the cold but the plant bases seems to have done fine. I don't think they can grow out into the yard because of frost. They survive the frost if they are under the roof line so I have no problem with them "invading" the yard They are absolutely gorgeous as a cut flower in a tall stemmed green vase.

I love these guys!!!
I actually got two different kinds of plants from the same clipping. The one I have that blooms, (I call it the "male"), doesn't have the little leaf-buds at all. Sometimes he has 1 baby at the very tip of his leaf, and the baby can grow as large as a regular plant just as it is. The other kind (I call the "female") has little leaf buds all around the leaves, and even some of the leafbuds get leafbuds! They never produce the stalk and flowers.
I have seen how easily they spread, but I just scoop them up and give them their own little pot. I have given these to many friends as gifts adn they seem to do great in almost any condition. The babies remind me of "Audrey 2" from Little Shop of Horrors, when they start to mature.
I am sorry some of you don't like them, I just love them dearly, and am looking at buying some of the other varieties.

I've never had a problem with this plant being invasive, but my back porch is a pretty severe environment and it's hard to take root in concrete. It's just a funky plant that sprawls around on the floor, five feet away from its pot.

In Australia, we call them "Mother of Millions", that's a much better name because there are so many of them. I reckon each one would produce at least a million plants.
They are a big problem in Queensland Australia, a Class 2 weed. I spend 2 hours in a group once a month just removing them all and I hate them. There's got to be a better way of extinguishing them than this. They compete with native grasses and are so feral species. I hate the person who decided to bring them from Madagascar to Australia!!!

"Mother of Thousands" is such an appropriate name for this plant. They grow everywhere, don't need dirt, they grow in orchid bark, between the leaves of bromeliads, in leaf litter on a cement patio, as well as in every pot within 50 feet of the plant. I don't know how they get there, either, but unwanted plants are easy to remove.

I put up with this mild nuisance because I like the umbels of trumpet-shaped flowers. They have to be fairly large to bloom, and a large potful of them in bloom can be spectacular. They don't freeze well, but seem to tolerate everything else.

What?? There's more than one of these stunningly prolific plants? It's a wonder we aren't drowning in the things... Nevertheless, I purposely brought it with me when we moved 30 miles. Not that I could have escaped it, but I do really enjoy its archetectural accents, its willingness to grow nearly anywhere, and the ease with which the babies can be pulled or scooped away where not wanted. These are very easy pot plants due to their drought tolerance, and in fact will grow in pretty deep shade without much trouble.

You have to love their versatility. Or at least, appreciate it!

You have two different species of plant under this name...K tubifolia is not the same plant as mother of thousands, though it has been called that, too. Both are weeds and once in your greenhouse will never, ever go away... they start to show up in every pot, and I'm not really sure how they get there... carried about by ants, maybe? Both are pretty marginal here in So Cal outdoors, but despite being melted to the ground by frosts, come back spring after spring in more and more places. Good thing they don't have nasty roots- they pull up out of the ground easily (though tubifolia is a lot easier to pull up than the larger daigramontiana (the name I learned of this plant).

My climate is Mediterranean; my specimen is 4-5 feet. After flowers expire, tiny new plants develop. Porous (free draining) soil - I use any of the cactus/succulent mixes that can be purchased at Home Depot or plant nurseries.

This species is extremely hardy in my area, invasive growing everywhere and in other potted plants. I have found that every part of this plant will root and grow new plants.

Due to intense vegetative reproduction, this plant rarely blooms. But when they do, tubular, relatively big orange flowers come from the top of the plant. Very beautiful, and very hard to see.

This plant reproduces via "plantlets" on the tops of the plants ... they fall into the dirt and grow from there. Not cold hardy in winter in most parts of the country. Also known as "Propeller Plant."