Gift plants

Bat Head Lily, Bat Flower, Devil Flower, Black Tacca. Curious, bat-like inflorescence both in shape and color, with wide spreading, wing-like bracts of rich maroon-black, accompanied by long trailing filaments or "whiskers".

Top Tropicals "mini-catalog" of tropical flowers on playing cards. 54 cards with 54 different images of Top Tropicals flowers, their scientific and common names, and plant family. Including Jokers,13 Clubs, 13 Diamonds, 13 Hearts, and 13 Spades. Learn plants while play! Great entertainment. Take with you when going on vacation so you can easily recognize tropical plants! Limited collectible edition.
See a few cards and picture of all cards together.

Dwarf Cat Tails, Kitten's Tail, Trailing Acalypha. A spectacular plant for a hanging basket, container or ground cover. Foxtail-shaped bright red flowers year around!

This new hybrid has a light, almost white skin when ripe, and a snow white sweet pulp. The fruit is very large, up to 2 pounds! One of the best subtropical fruit trees, small tree, starts fruiting right away, relatively cold hardy. A must for your fruit garden. This plant drops leaves during winter-spring.
Annonas are best suited for container growing, due to small height and early fruit production - 3-4 years from seed.

Giant Bird's nest anthurium. For those that love jungly plants. Their enormous wrinkly leaves have an almost cardboard like texture and grow to about 2ft. Used in places that have good natural light and lots of space.

A showy ornamental Banana with dark red leaves. Huge, tropical, ruby red leaves splashed with bright lime green, each offering a unique pattern of colors. Young plants start out more green and color intensifies with sun exposure. Thrives in hot, humid areas. Perfect for poolside plantings as a backdrop to smaller tropical plants. Stunning in large patio containers. A frost-tender perennial.

A dwarf ginger that is hard to find, but well worth it. Intermittently throughout the year, bright golden-orange cones will appear above the glossy dark green, maroon-backed leaves. Individual flowers will open and last for a period of about two weeks during each bloom cycle. Has a very upright growth habit. An excellent indoor plant, it should be kept out of direct sunlight as this will scorch the leaves, and should be kept in a container even outdoors, as they are very cold-tender and must be brought inside in the fall. When repotting, take care that only the roots are burried in the soil or potting medium, as it is a bit of an epiphyte (air plant) and the rhyzome must remain above ground level.

Calathea Dottie has vivid pink markings with an entire and wavy margin. The leaf surfaces are colored very dark black-green and its midrib beautifully marked with a distinctive bright pink that also encircles the leaf about 0.5-1" from the margin. These beautiful markings remain vivid pink even as the plant matures. Newly emerged leaves are slightly lighter in color. Leaves underside is purple. Dottie has the characteristic feature of folding up their leaves at dusk to dawn by means of the tiny geniculum, an angular knee-like joint connecting it to the petiole, resembling hands put together in prayer, hence the other common name, Prayer Plant. And, in the morning the leaves will return to normal position, that is, almost perpendicular to the petioles. The plant does occasionally produce purple and white flowers. Perfect small accent plant for shade tropical gardens or as a houseplant.

Tea plant. Yes, tea comes from a camellia! Small evergreen tree, usually pruned back to shrubs in cultivation. Interesting white flowers with golden stamens in fall and winter. Tea is the second most commonly drank liquid on earth after water. It has numerous medicinal benefits mainly due to its antibacterial and antioxidant properties.

See instructions how to make tea

Bleeding heart - one of the most spectacular blooming vines. Spectacular, dramatic flowers are slightly flat, they have white sepals on either side of bright crimson petals. The appearance may be liken to a line of dangling hearts, each emerging from the other. This plant is often seen in pots where it will abide in a continual state of flowering. As long as you provide lots of light to it, it'll bloom most of the time.

This crazy little cactus makes a wonderful hanging basket specimen and quite the conversation piece with its twisted, arching limbs. A night bloom epiphytic cactus with curly twisting leaves, Epiphyllum curly locks is an example of a cactus that uses its stems to capture more moisture and light. The plant has curly, curved stems which are the result of a mutation of a plant called Epiphyllum guatemalense. The name for this mutated cactus is Epiphyllum monstrosa - a jungle cactus native to Guatemala and will attach itself to a tree and live off of the composting debris that collects in the crook of the tree. Commonly called Orchid Cactus due to the blooms resembling orchid blossoms. The flowers are fragrant and usually open at night. Oval, bright pink seedy fruits form once blooms are pollinated. These fruits are juicy and edible. The plant is also self-pollinating and fruits can form even without the intervention of insects and mammals.
Epiphyllum are sensitive to being moved so choosing spot in bright, indirect light would work best. Epiphyllum will also only bloom when root bound, so take this into consideration when repotting.

Also called "First Love" (sometimes misspelled as YAshioka), this cultivar is one of the darkest green of all gardenias, it has a 3 to 5 inch bloom so perfect, it looks artificial. It was developed by Tadaoki Yoshioka while he lived in Hawaii, and he later brought it to Florida when he moved to Ft. Lauderdale with his family in 1954. The gardenia was named after his daughter, Aimee (Aimee Hironaka), who died in a plane crash in Dallas on August 2, 1985 (Delta Flight 191). Aimee gardenia grows openly and upright and blooms twice a year and slightly later than others. Flower Size 3 - 5".
See picture of flower,
page about gardenias, their cultivation and varieties.
See picture of actual plant for sale (1-2013).

One of the most desired plants. It is a good grower with large leaves. Very large flowers, 3 to 5 inches in diameter, March thru June. Has a tendency to have yellow-green foliage. Flower Size 3 - 5". Large bushy grafted plant, with buds or/and flowers, can be planted in ground.
See picture of flower,
page about gardenias, their cultivation and varieties.
See picture of actual plant for sale (1-2013).

Fragrant Hoya - rare compact hoya from Thailand. The flowers are extremely beautiful, like frost crystals. The flower is open about 4 days and has high fragrance. Starts to bloom when it is very young.

Aztec Sweet Herb, Sweetleaf - Mexican herb with an incredibly sweet leaf. Leaves can be eaten from the plant like candy or tossed into fruit salads for an unusual addition. It is used since the time of the Aztecs for coughs and colds.

Dwarf form of favorite Pandanus with large heads of cascading green and yellow thin leaves. You can have a nice exotic Screw Pine as a dwarf in a pot.

Patchouli, Pucha-pat - fragrant herb yielding a volatile oil by distillation. It is used in coarser perfumes and in 'White Rose' and 'Oriental' toilet soaps. Sachets are made of the coarsely-powdered leaves. Often grown in Indian gardens for home use.

Orchid Cactus, Thanksgiving Cactus, Christmas Cactus, Crab Cactus...
Spectacular, large-flower variety that flowers twice a season, 'New Deal' is a remarkable "Christmas cactus" hybrid, completely lost to the trade today, which is being offered here for the first time after it was originally offered for purchase at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden over 80 years ago. That institution was having a special rare plant sale on the day of the famous presidential election on November 8, 1932, when F.D.R. was historically voted in as the next American president. Not only is New Deal an exceptionally obscure, heirloom cultivar especially easy to grow under average house plant conditions, it reliably produces almost an overabundance of brilliant violet-pink and white flowers which are easily an inch larger than any other variety. The plants we are offering are all 3rd generation vegetative propagation from an original specimen (still alive btw). Its name is identical to President Franklin D. Roosevel main campaign slogan.
See Article about this plant.

Orange Bird of Paradise. One of the most well-known plants in the world. The fascinating blooms are sold as cut flowers by the million. The most tropical-looking!

VERY RARE! White Bat Head Lily, Bat Flower, Devil Flower, White Tacca. Curious, bat-like maroon-black inflorescence both in shape and color, with wide spreading, wing-like white bracts, accompanied by long trailing filaments or "whiskers". The small black flowers are succeeded by heavy berries, corrugated olive-green leaves with oblique base. These are interesting, evergreen, perennial and herbaceous plants that grow wild in many tropical climates. They can be grown in humid, tropical greenhouses