Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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This flower opens in a few seconds! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Phymosia umbellata - Cranberry Mallow Malva Aparasolada

🌺 This flower opens in a few seconds! (Time lapse)

"The earth laughs in flowers." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

🎥 Phymosia umbellata - Cranberry Mallow Malva Aparasolada - one of the most impressive Malva (Hibiscus) shrubs

🛒 Explore Hibiscus species

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#Nature_Wonders #Hedges_with_benefits #Quotes

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Ballistic buttons shooting from the mattress like popcorn! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Dorstenia bahiensis - Mattress Button Plant

🚀 Ballistic buttons shooting from the mattress like popcorn!
  • 🔘Dorstenia bahiensis - Mattress Button Plant is a shade-loving oddball. Its glossy green leaves are topped with flat, wavy discs that really do look like old-fashioned upholstery buttons scattered across the garden floor. But these button heads aren't just for show - on their surface are tiny clusters of male and female blooms, all crammed together like a mini city of flowers.
  • 🔘The real fun begins when those button heads ripen. Instead of quietly dropping seeds like most plants, Dorstenia goes full popcorn mode. With a little "pop!" the seeds are catapulted yards away, just like squeezing a watermelon seed between your fingers. One moment it's calm, the next it's launching its offspring across the yard!
  • 🔘At only 6-12 inches tall, this little understory dweller doesn't take up much space, but it makes up for it with personality. Content in the shade, thriving in any soil, and ready to surprise you with its seed-shooting tricks. Grow it in a pot, use it as quirky groundcover, or just keep it around as a party fun.


🛒 Get your own Mattress Button Plant

📚 Learn more:
How many buttons in this ballistic mattress?

#Shade_Garden #Container_Garden #Nature_Wonders

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What's inside the Devils Tongue that smells like trouble? A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Amorphophallus paeoniifolius (campanulatus) - Voodoo lily

👅 What's inside the Devils Tongue that smells like trouble?
  • 👹 Amorphophallus plants - the Voodoo Lilies - are also known as Devil's tongue, Snake Palm, or Elephant Foot Yam, Corpse flower. This plant has a reputation as wicked as its name!
  • 👹 Amorphophallus is the largest flower in the world and one of the most exotic bizarre flowers. Amorphophallus titanum is known for its massive size, its flower can reach heights of over 10 feet and blooms only once every few years.
  • 👹 Why Corpse flower? Because of the smell that the flower omits, but for only a few hours - just long enough to summon its pollinators, the flies 🐱

    • After that, the air clears, leaving only the memory of the spectacle.
  • 👹 The titan of the group, Amorphophallus titanum, can soar over 10 feet tall. But its cousin in this video, Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, is just as fascinating. It rises from a giant underground corm (which is actually edible in Asia), then sends up either one surreal flower or one umbrella-like leaf as big as a small tree.
  • 👹 Season after season, it alternates between leaf and bloom, keeping its mysterious cycle alive. Hardy enough to rest through winter dormancy, it can even be grown in a pot at home.


🎥 Amorphophallus paeoniifolius (campanulatus) - Voodoo lily

🛒 Discover more of Amorphophallus - rare and enigmatic plants

📚 Learn more:

#Nature_Wonders #Shade_Garden #Container_Garden
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It's a miracle: Miracle Fruit messes with your tongue, makes lemon sweet! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Synsepalum dulcificum - Miracle Fruit

🍭 It's a miracle: Miracle Fruit messes with your tongue, makes lemon sweet!
  • 🍋🍬Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) Miracle Fruit - is a tidy, productive pot plant with a magical surprise.
  • 🍋🍬 Ever wish lemons tasted like candy? This little berry makes sour foods taste sweet - lemon turns into a lemon candy, vinegar into syrup, and the effect can last for hours. The secret is a natural compound that masks the sour taste buds on your tongue.
  • 🍋🍬 Miracle fruit isn’t just a fun trick - it’s also a perfect plant for your garden. A compact, slow-growing shrub, it actually prefers pots since it likes acidic soil. Indoors or out, it can fruit almost year-round, staying a neat 3-5 ft tall in a container.
  • 🍋🍬 Best part? You can surprise your friends with a slice of lemon before and after trying it - and just wait for their reaction!
  • 🍋🍬 What foods did you try with Miracle fruit? How did it change the taste?


🛒 Plant your own Miracle Fruit

📚 Learn more:

#Food_Forest #Nature_Wonders #Remedies

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When plants cross into the Gothic: the Darker Bat Lily. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Black Bat Lily (Tacca chantrieri)

When plants cross into the Gothic: the Darker Bat Lily
  • 🖤 Here’s a striking look at the Black Bat Lily (Tacca chantrieri) - its dramatic dark bracts resembling bat wings, trailing whiskers, and tropical elegance all in one. If you met its cousin, the White Bat Head Lily (Tacca nivea) in earlier video, you'll notice the family resemblance - same dramatic whiskers and wing-like bracts, but this one leans fully into the dark side.
  • 🖤 The Black Bat Flower isn’t just a bloom - it's a full performance. Giant black-maroon"wings" stretch out like a bat in flight, while long, drooping filaments dangle like eerie whiskers or jungle jewelry - some over a foot long!
  • 🖤 Those weird, wild whiskers aren't just for show either. They're thought to mimic the look (and no, not the smell!) of decaying matter, luring in pollinators like flies. Creepy? Yes. Clever? Absolutely.
  • 🖤 The Black Bat Flower blooms best when it feels pampered: filtered light, steady warmth, and spa-level humidity. It’s a smart exotic for a greenhouse or even a bright bathroom with a skylight.
  • 🖤 It grows from a rhizome, and while Tacca chantrieri is prized for its gothic looks, its green cousin Tacca leontopetaloides is actually used in the tropics to make arrowroot starch.
  • 🖤 Patience is part of the package - sometimes it takes months to bloom. But when it does, it becomes the crown jewel of the collection. People will ask if it's real. You'll just smile and say, "Yes - and it lives here."


🛒 Add this gothic gem to your collection - Black Tacca

Tacca colors: Black, White, Green:
Tacca nivea - White Tacca
Tacca chantrieri - Black Tacca
Tacca leontopetaloides - Green Tacca

📚 Learn more:

#Nature_Wonders #Shade_Garden #Container_Garden

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The mystery of the White Bat Lily - the plant with wings and whiskers. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

White Bat Head Lily (Tacca nivea)

👻 The mystery of the White Bat Lily - the plant with wings and whiskers
  • Here's a cool shot of the White Bat Head Lily (Tacca nivea) - its dramatic white bracts that flare like wings and those wild, trailing whiskers are impossible to ignore. And it is in full bloom again at Top Tropicals - in the middle of August.
  • This plant that pulls off gothic elegance with two crisp, wing‑like white bracts hovering over a cluster of deep maroon‑black "bat‑face" flowers, complete with long, draping whiskers. Beneath it all lie crinkled, olive‑green leaves that only add to its moody charm.
  • This tropical understory native thrives in humid, shaded spaces - whether that's a greenhouse or a mossy, misty corner indoors. It's an evergreen perennial, endlessly intriguing. When it does bloom, the dark little flowers eventually yield heavy berries - just one more twist in its curious tale.
  • Looking to grow one? You'll need:

✔️High humidity, indirect light, and good air circulation
  • ✔️Rich, orchid‑style soil (think adding bark, peat, perlite to your potting mix)
  • ✔️Consistently moist - but not waterlogged - conditions
  • ✔️And to be patient: flowering often requires a couple of leaves before it even sets stems

  • It's not just a plant - it's a conversation starter, a living gothic sculpture that grows. Maybe a bit finicky? Sure. Totally worth it? Absolutely!


🛒 Add White Bat Head Lily to your collection

Tacca colors: Black, White, Green:
Tacca nivea - White Tacca - the rarest and the most wanted
Tacca chantrieri - Black Tacca
Tacca leontopetaloides - Green Tacca

📚 Learn more:
▫️Spooky Bat Head Devil Flower

#Nature_Wonders #Shade_Garden #Container_Garden
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The bizarre bloom you cant stop staring at. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Stapelia gigantea - Zulu Giant, Carrion Plant

⭐️ The bizarre bloom you cant stop staring at
  • ⭐️If there were an award for the strangest flower, the Starfish Flower - Stapelia gigantea - would be a top contender. Also known as the Zulu Giant or Carrion Plant, it produces massive blooms, sometimes 12 inches across, that look exactly like starfish. The pale ochre-yellow petals are lined with fine maroon stripes, giving the flowers a texture and color you can't ignore.
  • ⭐️ And then there's the smell!🐱

    • Its nickname Carrion Plant comes from its uncanny scent of rotting meat. While that might not sound appealing, it's a brilliant strategy for attracting its pollinators - flies - who can't resist investigating! Just like Amorphophallus - Corpse flower! 🐱
  • ⭐️The plant itself is a stunner even without flowers, with chunky, 4-angled succulent stems that sprawl sideways. In the ground, it can spread up to 24 inches wide, and in a pot, it makes a fantastic conversation piece. Despite its cactus-like appearance, it's actually a member of the Milkweed family. When it sets seed, each pod bursts to release silky parachutes that float away just like milkweed.
  • ⭐️It's bizarre, beautiful, and guaranteed to get people talking!


🛒 Add the Zulu giant to your garden

📚 Learn more:
The most bizarre flower

🎥 More video:

#Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden
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Anthurium with leaves longer than you! A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Anthurium vittarifolium - Long Leaf Anthurium

🍃 Anthurium with leaves longer than you!
  • 🌿 Ever seen an Anthurium with leaves longer than you are tall? Anthurium vittarifolium - Long Leaf Anthurium - is a true rainforest treasure from South America. Its strap-like leaves can reach an incredible 6 feet in length but stay only about 2 inches wide, creating elegant green ribbons that drape down like a waterfall.
  • 🌿 Grow it in a hanging basket and you’ll get a cascading curtain of foliage that instantly turns any space into a jungle hideaway.
  • 🌿 As if the leaves weren’t enough, this rare beauty produces clusters of bright pink berries that pop against the deep green leaves, adding an unexpected splash of color!
  • 🌿 It's rare, it's dramatic, and it's the kind of plant that makes people stop and ask, “What on earth is THAT?”


🛒 Grow the 6-foot leaf Anthurium

📚 Learn more:

#Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden #Shade_Garden
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A banana with no bananas? Scarlet red flowers of Musa coccinea. A Top Tropicals Garden Blog post.

Musa coccinea, Scarlet Banana

🔥 A banana with no bananas? Scarlet red flowers of Musa coccinea.
  • 💃 Musa coccinea, Scarlet Banana, is a small tropical plant from China and Vietnam that grows like a banana but doesn’t bother with fruit you can eat. Instead, it puts out tall, upright spikes of red bracts with yellow flowers tucked inside - like a torch made of petals.
  • 💃 Each stem flowers once and then fades, but new shoots keep popping up from the base, so the plant just keeps going. The leaves are classic banana style: big, dark green, and glossy.
  • 💃 You’ll see the flowers in summer, and they last a long time - bright, strange, and impossible to ignore. The plant stays compact, does well in pots, and even the fruit (small and orange) adds a weird touch. It's one of those plants that doesn't try to fit in.


🛒 For fans of strange plants

📚 Learn more:

#Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden #Bananas

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