Kalanchoe thyrsiflora (also known as Paddle Plant, Flapjacks, Desert Cabbage, White Lady, Geelplakkie, Meelplakkie, Plakkie) is a species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of Kalanchoe

Kalanchoe

Kalanchoe , also written Kalanchöe or Kalanchoë, is a genus of about 125 species of tropical, succulent flowering plants in the Family Crassulaceae, mainly native to the Old World but with a few species now growing wild in the New World following introduction of the species.Most are shrubs or...

, native to South Africa

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. A succulent plant producing a stalk about 1m tall, dying 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. The inflorescence is terminal and erect with densely clustered thyrse-like panicles of greenish waxy flowers with yellow recurved lobes, narrowly urn-shaped. Flowering from autumn to spring. Common in grassveld amongst rocks.
Widespread over Asia and Africa, the genus is distinguished by its flowers, which have their parts in fours, the stamens being in 2 whorls of 4. The botanist Adanson first described the genus Kalanchoe in 1763. Other genera in the family are Adromischus

Adromischus

Adromischus is a genus of easily propagated leaf succulents from the Crassulaceae family.Adromischus are endemic to southern Africa.The name comes from the ancient Greek "adros" et "mischos" .- Species :* Adromischus alstonii...

, Bryophyllum

Bryophyllum

The Bryophyllums are a section in the plant genus Kalanchoe of the Crassulaceae family. There are about twenty to thirty species in the group, native originally of South Africa, Madagascar, and Asia...

, Cotyledon

Cotyledon (genus)

Cotyledon is a genus of the Crassulaceae family. Plants in the genus occur in the Arabian peninsula and throughout the drier parts of Africa, but mainly in Southern Africa....

, Crassula

Crassula

Crassula is a large genus of succulent plants containing many species, including the popular Jade Plant, Crassula ovata. They are native to many parts of the globe, but cultivated varieties are almost exclusively from the Eastern Cape of South Africa....

, Dinacria, Grammanthes, Pagella, Rhopalota, Rochea and Tylecodon

Tylecodon

Tylecodon is a genus of plants in the family Crassulaceae. Until the late 1970s all these plants were included in the genus Cotyledon, but in 1978 Dr Helmut Toelken of the South Australian Herbarium split them off into a genus of their own...

.