Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Why Dutchman's Pipe is the best butterfly attracting vine? Smell it!

Without any doubt, Aristolochia, or Dutchman's Pipe, is one of the best butterfly plants.

• 🍃 Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe is celebrated for its unique and intricate flowers that resemble Dutch smoking pipes, hence its name.
• 🍃Dutchman's Pipe flowers emit a scent mimicking decaying matter, which certain butterfly species, like the Pipevine Swallowtail, find irresistible 💩🙄
• 🍃The butterflies lay their eggs on the plant, as it serves as a suitable host for their larvae, contributing to the plant's ecological significance by promoting pollination and biodiversity.
• 🍃 As a result, it not only beautifies gardens but also supports local butterfly populations, enriching the ecosystem.
• 🍃 Beyond its distinctive appearance, it's valued for its historical use in traditional medicine, particularly for its alleged healing properties.

🛒 Bring butterflies to your garden!

#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #Fun_Facts

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📖 Fun Fact: Bleeding Heart Vine (Clerodendrum thomsoniae) is named for its unique red and white flowers that resemble... bleeding hearts! 😍

• ❣️Native to tropical West Africa
• ❣️ Spectacular, dramatic flowers look like a line of dangling hearts, each emerging from the other.
• ❣️ It's a climbing vine often grown as a houseplant or in gardens with a trellis for support.
• ❣️Winder heavy bloomer, but as long as you provide lots of light to it, it'll bloom most of the time.

🛒Get your own Bleeding Heart

#Fun_Facts #Hedges_with_benefits

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🗂 Index of TopTropicals Telegram Channel

Follow these tags to find your interests:

#Butterfly_Plants - Butterfly attracting plants.

#Container_Garden - Plants suitable for container garden and indoor culture.

#Fertilizers - All the truth about fertilizers, plant food supplements, and our recommendations for different types of plants.

#Food_Forest - Fruit trees, Spice plants, and Edibles.
Including: #Avocado, #Mango, #Papaya, #Guava, #Jackfruit, #Loquat

📖 #Fun_Facts - interesting plant facts and legends.

🌳 #Hedges_with_benefits - Practical approach to your landscape and how to properly select showy and useful plants for your yard.

♍️ #Horoscope - Plant Horoscopes and Cat Horoscopes. Did you know that cats also have their Zodiac signs?

🛠 #How_to - Q&A about growing plants, tropical garden lifehacks.

👀 #Nature_Wonders - Unusual, amusing, outrageous, bizarre plants...

🐈 #PeopleCats - our Favorite PeopleCats (and some PeopleDogs, too).

🌸 #Perfume_Plants - Fragrant plants and perfume trees.

✍️ #Quotes - Interesting quotes.

#Recipes - Exotic recipes for tropical fruit and edibles.

💊 #Remedies - Medicinal plants.

☁️ #Shade_Garden - Plants suitable for low light conditions.

🌼 #Trees - Spectacular flowering tropical trees.

🏆 #Win - Contests, Sweepstakes, and other specials.

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What is the bluest flower of the Tropics?

Eranthemum pulchellum - Blue Sage, or Lead Flower is brightest gentian blue - very unusual color in the tropics!

• 💙 Winter heavy bloomer
• 💙 Attracts butterflies and bees 🐝
• 💙 Compact shrub, responds well to pruning.
• 💙 Shade lover. Will happily bloom in the shade!

🛒 Order oline

#Fun_Facts #Hedges_with_benefits #Shade_Garden #Butterfly_Plants

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We Grow Happiness

New Complete Guide to Avocado Varieties. How to choose the right type of Avocado.
How many varieties of Avocado are there in cultivation? Did you know that there are hundreds of them? You probably thought there were only 2 kinds - black and green?

You may not realize is that this basic (but practical!) classification doesn't encompass all the wonderful qualities avocados have to offer.

There are numerous hybrids in cultivation, and once you plant your first tree and taste the REAL fruit (not from the grocery store), you'll be eager to explore other varieties. It's a guarantee! While it's true that avocado fruit can vary in "butter" content, most superior varieties are equally delicious.

This Avocado Variety Guide helps to choose the right variety for you. With its interactive tool, you can sort cultivars by fruit shape and quality, cold hardiness, origin, crop season, flower type A or B, tree habit and more.

🛒 Shop Avocado Varieties

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #How_to

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Can you eat bird-looking flowers? You can eat the whole tree!

• 🐧 Sesbania grandiflora - Hummingbird Tree - is named for its flowers resembling little birds.
• 🐧 It produces a mass of large, 3-4", curved flowers from November to June. Flowers can be coral red or white.
• 🐧 The fun part is - the flowers are edible! As well as the rest of the plant: tender leaves, green fruit (bean pods), and flowers, used in curries, salads, or fried in batter.
• 🐧 Medicinal uses: bark, leaves, gums, and flowers have medicinal properties.
• 🐧 Lower branches form a beautiful floral canopy. It is a fast growing, but a small tree that will fit any yard. Great everblooming tree for container culture.

🛒 Get an edible Hummingbird Tree

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Butterfly_Plants #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts

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What was discovered in the Pyramids: Pigeon Pea - an Ancient Superfood...

• Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea - existed for more than 4800 year! It's been widely consumed in South Asia, South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Documented in India since 2,800 BC; reached Ancient Egypt around 2,200 BC.
• Provides flavorful, nutritious, and healthy food, with potential to become widely popular like Japanese sushi 🍱
• It is a showy perennial woody shrub or small tree, 4-8 ft tall, with soft leaves. Can be grown in container
• Pretty flowers are yellow, with purple or red streaks, pods containing oval to round seeds.
• Many culinary uses: the tasty and healthy beans used in rice dishes, soups, stews, tempeh, tofu. Unripe pods eaten in curries, leaves and young shoots cooked as a vegetable.
• Rich source of fiber, protein, vitamins (B, C, E, K), and minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, zinc).
• Medicinal value: various folk medicinal uses for sores, bladderstones, jaundice, skin irritations, bronchitis, coughs, pneumonia, toothache, dysentery, and more.
• Everyone can grow it! The plant is super easy, tolerates poor soils, drought tolerant, improves soil quality like many other beans.

📚 Learn more about Pigeon Pea

🛒Grow your own Pigeon Pea Superfood

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts

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What is this spiny Hedgehog fruit and how does it taste?

👀 This is one of the coolest looking tropical fruit!

Annona montana - Mountain Soursop or Hedgehog Annona. It is also called Wild Custard Apple, Guanabana de Monte, or Wild Soursop.

• 📍 This fruit is prized for its deliciously sweet and tangy fruit, reminiscent of a blend between pineapple and strawberry. It tastes similar to regular Soursop (or Guanabana), with slightly milder flavor. The pulp is highly scented.
• 📍 The fruit, up to a pound, has the most unusual looks! Just look at these curious Hedgehog spines!
• 📍 The tree is medium sized, with beautiful, large, leathery dark green leaves that emit a strong aroma when crushed.
• 📍 Mountain Soursop is much more cold hardy than the Soursop, established trees can take some frost, down to 24F when full grown.
• 📍 Trees produce within just 2-3 years from seed, like many Annonas, and can happily grow and produce in a large container.

👨�‍👧 We guarantee that everyone who sees this fruit in your garden will ask for seeds even before they taste the fruit! And you will have lots of seeds to share because Mountain Soursop is very reliable producer with many seeds in each fruit.

🛒 Order Hedgehog Annona

📚 Learn more about Hedgehog Annona

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Nature_Wonders

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🍊 Why exotic Mamey fruit is so much wanted?

Pouteria sapota, or Mamey Sapote - is Cuban favorite. It is considered by Cubans to produce the best fruit in the world.

🍹 The fruit has delicious bright orange soft flesh, sweet and pumpkin-like in flavor. The Mamey fruit is eaten fresh, in milk shakes and ice cream.

👀 Mamey has a curious growth habit: flowers emerge in clusters in the axils of fallen leaves along the branches, followed by the showy fruit. This is called cauliflorous - plants that flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks. Other examples are Cucumber tree and Jaboticaba.

🌳 Mamey is a slow growing, compact tree, but needs some space to spread the branches. It normally grows 20 ft in height and 20 ft wide.

🛒 Order Mamey Tree

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Nature_Wonders

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