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Common Name : Palm Beachbells, Donkey ear plant

Hindi Name : कलनचो गैस्टोनिस-बोननिरी, कलौंचो | Scientific Name : Kalanchoe gastonis-bonnieri
Family : Crassulaceae
Uses : It is has environmental uses. The leaves have been used in traditional system of medicine for the treatment of ovarian cysts, urinary tract infections, vaginal infections, uterine fibroids.
Native: North West & Central Madagascar.
General Description:

It is a succulent biennial or sub shrub and grows primarily in the seasonally dry tropical biome. It is a fast growing perennial or biennial fleshy with erect stems, usually branched only from the base, the whole plant is hairless. Leaves are ovate-lanceshaped, pointed tapered into a short, wide stalk, large and often enormous, from 15 to 50 cm long, but only 5-8 cm broad. At first upright, then bent and touching the ground with their end. Light green to bronze-green covered with a waxy white powder when young to look overall grey-green and splotched with maroon-brown blotches. Margins are heavily jagged, sawtooth-like. These leaves often have small plantlets (bulbils) developing along the leaf margin near the the tip. These bulbils take root without leaving the leaf blade that feeds them like a runners. At the time of flowering, all the leaves starts drying and bending downward. Flowers are borne at the top of the stem, in a compact large cyme, on a stalk 60-90 cm tall branching near the top with several clusters of hanging flower-buds. Flowers are about 5 cm long. Buds are pale peach-colored darkening and becoming the calyces holding the, yellowish-green or darker reddish-salmon petals with flared tips and yellow interior. Filaments are almost white with yellow anthers. Flowers of K. Gastonis-Bonnieri are similar to those of Kalanchoe pinnata but are smaller, and the sepal-cupes are less inflated.