Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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

🏵 TopTropicals

🏵 What is the flower of the most expensive perfume? Champaka - Joy Perfume Tree. It is the fragrance the most expensive perfume Joy is made of, and our signature flower!

The flowers from this tree - Magnolia (Michelia) champaca - are used to make the world's most expensive perfume 'Joy' and smell like fruity bubble gum 🎀... you can't stop sticking your nose in this flower!

👼 Sacred tree of India and SE Asia
flowers exude a divine fragrance that is exceedingly pleasing to the Gods... and women

🌳 Perfect small landscape tree of a columnar shape. Ideal for containers.

🌡 Relatively cold hardy

💎 Rare collectible, a gem of any plant collection!

📚 Learn more about Champaka

🛒 Shop Champaka - Joy Perfume Tree

#Perfume_Plants #Fun_Facts #Container_Garden #Trees

🏵 TopTropicals

👍🏾 Brown thumb? No problem. This is how to get an indestructible massive indoor plant that is easier than a plastic plant!

🌿 Peperomia x scandens - Emerald Girl is the most exceptional plant we've ever seen.
- doesn't care about water
- doesn't care about light
- doesn't care about cats messing with it
- just keeps growing, and growing, and growing...

😵 It is an indoor miracle!

🛒 Get the plant no one can kill

#Fun_Facts #Shade_Garden #Container_Garden

JOIN 👉 @TopTropicals

🍒 What fruit contains 65 times more of vitamin C than an orange? Now you know - it's Barbados Cherry

Barbados Cherry (Malpighia glabra) fruit has a vitamin C content up to 65 times that of an orange! A single fruit contains the minimum daily recommended vitamin C requirements, as well as vitamins A, B1, B2, and B3, carotenoids and bioflavonoids - great antioxidants.

If you are looing for a compact, but fast growing tree with colorful fruit that starts fruiting right away - plant Barbados Cherry. It will also happily fruit in containers.

📚 Learn more about Barbados Cherry

🛒 Order Barbados Cherry Tree Online

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Container_Garden

🏵 TopTropicals

🗂 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.

Join and share with friends👇🏵
TopTropicals

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

🏵 TopTropicals

🍧 How to get big shade tree in one season with an ice cream on it? It's real!

• 🍦 Ice Cream Bean Inga is the ultimate fast-growing, shade-providing fruit tree with an irresistible twist! It not only transforms your yard into a cool, inviting oasis in record time but also produces fruit that kids (and adults!) can't get enough of!
• 🍦 Picture this: pods up to a foot long, bursting with sweet, creamy pulp that tastes exactly like ice cream!
• 🍦 Craving instant shade? Perfect for those sunny spots where you need shade, the Ice Cream Bean Inga rapidly unfurls its lush, umbrella-like canopy, creating a natural, leafy retreat in just one season!
• 🍦 With its delectable treats and speedy growth, this extraordinary tree is sure to be the highlight of your garden - where shade and sweetness meet!

🛒 Get shade with ice cream benefit

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Nature_Wonders #How_to

🏵 TopTropicals

❤️💰 Fruit of Money and Love

Theobroma cacao, commonly known as the Chocolate Tree or Cacao Tree, is very exciting plant and a superfood as we mentioned earlier.

• 💥 Theobroma means "food of the gods" in Greek. "Theo" means god, and "broma" means food.
• 💥 The Olmecs, Mayans, and Aztecs were among the first to cultivate cacao, using it to make a bitter beverage called xocoatl. It was often spiced with chili peppers and used in various rituals and ceremonies.
• 💥 Currency: in ancient Mesoamerican cultures, cacao beans were so valuable that they were used as a form of currency. For example, 100 beans could buy a slave or a turkey.
• 💥 The Aztecs believed that cacao had stimulating properties and used it as an aphrodisiac. Emperor Montezuma was said to consume a large amount of cacao before visiting his harem. We can't deny that chocolate's mood-enhancing properties, combined with cultural and psychological factors, contribute to its romantic allure! ❤️
• 💥 A cacao pod contains 20 to 50 beans, each surrounded by a sweet, mucilaginous pulp. The pods grow directly on the trunk and larger branches of the tree, a feature known as cauliflory.
• 💥 After harvesting, cacao beans are fermented for several days, a critical step that develops the flavor precursors needed for chocolate production.
• 💥 The Cacao tree thrives in the humid, tropical regions around the equator. It can be grown as an exciting house plant.
• 💥 Health benefits: cacao beans are rich in antioxidants, magnesium, iron, and other minerals. They also contain flavonoids, associated with heart health benefits.
• 💥 There are three main varieties of cacao beans: Criollo, Forastero, and Trinitario. Criollo is considered the highest quality but is less common due to its susceptibility to disease. Forastero is the most widely grown, known for its hardiness. Trinitario is a hybrid of the two.
• 💥 It takes about 400 cacao beans to make one pound of chocolate. The beans undergo roasting, grinding, and mixing with sugar and other ingredients to produce the final chocolate product.

📚Learn more: Plants of Love - Aphrodisiacs of the plant world

🛒 Grow your own Chocolate Tree

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts

🏵 TopTropicals

Researchers discover what a perfume from Ancient Rome was made of: Patchouli!

• ⚡️ A research team at the University of Cordoba has identified the composition of a Roman perfume more than 2,000 years old thanks to the discovery of a small vessel of ointment in Carmona, Spain.
• ⚡️ The mausoleum held the remains of six individuals in six urns, one of which was made of glass and contained the remains of a woman who died between 30 and 40 years of age. Her cloth bag held a rock crystal flask sealed with a stone and bitumen and three amber beads...
• ⚡️The well-preserved material inside the flask was examined with X-ray diffraction, gas chromatography, and mass spectrometry. The study determined that the scent was derived from Pogostemon cablin, a plant from India used to produce the scent Patchouli.
• ⚡️Patchouli only grows in the tropical climates of southern and southeastern Asia. This means it would have been imported into Roman territory and sold in products crafted for wealthy patrons who craved access to exotic ingredients.
• ⚡️ The high quality of the flask holding the scent suggests that it was a valuable product.

⚠️ Get your own valuable Patchouli Plant and always have the heavenly smell with you!

🛒 Plant your own Patchouli

#Perfume_Plants #Remedies #Fun_Facts

🏵 TopTropicals