Kalanchoe

On the first of February, when my Beloved's mother learned she was dying, her friend brought a plant to brighten her room. The leaves were thick and waxy, the flowers resolutely cheerful. In all that happened over the next two months, the plant was rarely watered, but still it bloomed, a bright spot in the periphery of our vision.

I took the plant home, picked off the dead flower stems, and let it rest. The next February it bloomed again, as it has every year. I have three baskets stuffed full with them. I've given them to everyone I know. In the spring I pluck off growing tips and stick them in soil—they prefer a dry mix with lots of sand—and all summer they grow in low planters, a deep reliable green even through the usual drought of July.

Most house plants have nicknames, but not Kalanchoe. That's the name of the genus, which includes about 125 flowering succulents. I like that about it: it is what it is. It was years before I ventured to pronounce its name aloud. Kal-an-coe? Kal-an-cho? Kal-an-cho-ee? I settled on this last one, because it rhymes with Zoe, my Beloved's mother's name.

And I'm right. We all are, no matter how we say it. Kalanchoe is among the top ten difficult to pronounce plant names, along with Cotoneaster (cuh-TO'-ne-AS-tuhr, not Cotton-easter, as I used to say). But unlike the others, Kalanchoe has four acceptable pronunciations:

KA-luhn-KO-e

kuh-LANG-ko-e

KAL-uhn-cho

kuh-LAN-cho

To the original hot pink kalanchoe, I've added cuttings from a friend that bloom in shining white. In the grocery stores, I see yellow and peach and magenta. Kalanchoe is everywhere at this time of year. I peruse the banks of pots in the grocery stores and hardwares, watching for a broken stem: that's all it would take to start another forest of kalanchoe to keep my Februarys blooming.