What are flapjacks for your indoor office plant design?

Flapjacks are succulents, which can make a different kind of a botanical statement in your office work place. Some interesting facts follow:

1. Scientific name: Kalanchoe thyrsiflora

2. Family: Crassulaceae

3. Common names: Flapjack plant, desert cabbage, paddle plant

4. Native to: South Africa

5. Description: A succulent perennial. Large, spatula-shaped, leathery leaves are 3 to 4 inches long and wide, and attached to the stem without a leaf stalk. The leaves are opposite, covered with a thick whitish wax and blushed with red margins. The leaves are stacked on each other like flapjacks to form a rosette, and face upward to reduce leaf exposure to the hot sun. The flowers are produced on tall, leafy stalks after the plants mature, usually three to four years. Individual flowers are small and held close to the stalk in dense clusters. Flowers are yellow-green and tubular. The main or mother plant dies after flowering; however, offsets are produced.

6. Light: Grows in full sun and partial shade. However, bright light is required to keep the red leaf margins; the plants becomes greener in shade.

7. Soil/moisture: Tolerant of most well-drained soils; very drought tolerant once established and very salt tolerant.

8. Culture/use: Flapjack Kalanchoe provides a bold look in your Boston indoor office plantings. Use it in beds in your lobbies, as an accent, and in containers and rock gardens. Though very drought tolerant, it will stand some water in the summer and should stand up to the Florida rainy season. Blooming signals the end of the plant's life cycle. Remove the mother plant when it dies and thin the offsets as necessary for a neat look; otherwise, long-term plantings develop mounds of flapjack plant. Kalanchoes in general are not known to be heavy feeders; apply a balanced, slow-release fertilizer with minor elements two to four times per year or as needed. Mulch to suppress weeds, but keep the mulch well away from the stem.

9. Notes and misuses: Flapjack Kalanchoe generally is not susceptible to pests. However, it can be susceptible to rots in wet or over watered locations.

At Plantscape Designs Inc. we apply succulents such as "flapjacks" in our high light areas of our Boston indoor plant designs.

Be aware of tired looking indoor office plants in your Boston, MA officescapes.

Be aware of tired indoor office plants in you offices.

The interior office plants shown here within this blog are examples of tired poorly cared for indoor office plants. These office plants were taken out of one of our competitors clients office. PDI acquired these new accounts because of the competitors incompetent monthly care. Plantscape Designs Linc. later replaced these tired office plants with fresh botanicals.

How does this occur?

1. Our competitors once or twice a month service can do this, because of not enough care.

2. Lack of pruning skills and up keep on a monthly and quarterly time table by our competitors

3. No consistency in turning these office plants away from the sunlight for more even growth by our competitors.

4. Lack of a more regid time table for fertilizing these weak indoor office plants by our competitors.

Plantscape Designs Inc. Boston, MA is consistent with our care and weekly servicing of your interior botanicals unlike other interior landscapers in the Boston, MA area.

Why use cycads in your indoor office plant designs?

1. Cycads are seed plants characterized by a large crown of compound leaves and a stout trunk. They are evergreen, dioecious plants having large pinnately compound leaves.

2.They are frequently confused with and mistaken for palms or ferns, but are only distantly related to both, and instead belong to the division Cycadophyta.

3.Cycads are found across much of the subtropical and tropical parts of the world. They are found in South and Central America (where the greatest diversity occurs), Mexico, the Antilles, southeastern United States, Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Japan, China, Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and southern and tropical Africa, where at least 65 species occur.

4.Some are renowned for survival in harsh semidesert climates, and can grow in sand or even on rock. They are able to grow in full sun or shade, and some are salt tolerant.

5.Though they are a minor component of the plant kingdom today, during the Jurassic period they were extremely common.

They have very specialized pollinators and have been reported to fix nitrogen in association with a cyanobacterium living in the roots. These blue-green algae produce a neurotoxin called BMAA that is found in the seeds of cycads.

6.Care is easy: high light, water twice a month. Do not let roots sit in water.

Plantscape Designs Inc. designs with these ancient botanicals whenever our Boston, MA clients feel adventurous for a new look in their indoor office commercial work places.

Why use tiny Tillandsias with your corporate office orchid arrangements?

We, at Plantscape Designs Inc., use tiny Tillandsias attached to our monthly corporate orchid programs for a more colorful and natural look.

Tillandsias are miniture air plants or bromeliads that flourish in the rainforests of Florida and the Amazon .

These small botanicals attach themselves to stems and branches of trees under the rainforest tree canopies.

All these Tillandsias nutrients and water come from the high humidity of the low cloud covered rainforest.PDI is currently appling tinyTillandsias of 14 diffent species in our monthly corporate orchid gardens inthe Waltham, Ma interiorscapes.