Kalanchoe collection - the spoons. Copper, Silver and Grey Ghost.

 If you're in the right zones to grow Kalanchoes outside, a midsize beauty is Copper Spoons, Kalanchoe orgyalis. It's another furry plant, so it's sometimes known as Cinnamon Bear and rather less glamorously, the Shoe Leather Plant. 

It grows to about a meter, three feet, high and doesn't lose the lower leaves. (Well, it didn't until I let it get sunburned during a heatwave.) It's a striking plant that requires little care and unlike some Kalanchoes, doesn't go leggy and horrible at the end of the year. 

Copper Spoons

I bought a small one to fill in the gaps at the bottom of the larger Copper Spoons where I let it get burned in the hot sun. I think if you treat it well, the leaves normally last for years. 

This is such a lovely and long lasting plant that when I saw a variety of it called Grey Ghost, I immediately took it home with me. 

Grey Ghost looked ghostly and great for a few months and then turned into another Copper Spoons. I don't know if that always happens. There's no information on it I can find on the internet, but the nursery label was professionally done, not a handwritten guess. The plant is still a beauty. 

Grey Ghost

You can see that the lower leaves are still grey, but the top is distinctly cinnamon. This is a plant that has not read its own label.

Not closely related is the much more delicate Silver Spoons, Kalanchoe bracteata or Kalanchoe hildebrantii. 

Silver Spoons is the taller, more delicate plant to the right. It's a slow grower - this one is a year old. It's also the only Kalanchoe I've had that's been attacked by aphids. I have a 2" pot in the greenhouse with a young one but it's not exactly growing like Topsy.  One of its names, bracteata, either means 'bronzed' (nope) or 'bearing flowers on specialized leaves.' It's the second one - the bracts are the sites of new growth in this plant. All Kalanchoe seem to have a body part that's raring to grow new plants. 

Information on these plants can be found here:  Etsy Store, Succulents and Sunshine,