Electric-Green Bat Flower - Incredibly Rare Green Isle

👽 Electric-Green Bat Flower - Incredibly Rare Green Isle

Most plant collectors recognize the famous Black Bat Flower, Tacca chantrieri. Dark wings. Long dangling whiskers. A flower that looks like something escaped from a tropical cave.
But then there is this one. Tacca chantrieri 'Green Isle'.
Same species. Completely different look.
Instead of the characteristic dark purple-black display, Green Isle produces an extraordinary green inflorescence, with broad wing-like bracts and ridiculously long green whiskers hanging below. In good light, the color can look almost electric green.

💚 Is that really one giant green flower?

Not exactly.
What looks like the "bat wings" are actually bracts - modified leaves surrounding a cluster of much smaller true flowers. Below them hang the long thread-like structures usually called whiskers.

On the ordinary Black Bat Flower, the whole arrangement is so dark that it creates the famous bat silhouette.
On Green Isle, you can actually see the architecture.
Green wings. Little flowers tucked in the center. Long green whiskers cascading underneath.
It's wonderfully weird.

💚 So where did Green Isle come from?

That's where the story gets a little mysterious.
'Green Isle' is known in specialty horticulture and is listed by the Royal Horticultural Society, but even the RHS currently gives its botanical name status as unresolved.

It has circulated as an unusual green selection of Tacca chantrieri, but there isn't much published documentation about its original selection or introduction.
In other words, the plant exists. Its history is much harder to find.
And that seems appropriate for a plant this strange.

💚 Same Bat Flower, same jungle preferences

Don't let the alien-looking flower fool you. Tacca chantrieri is a tropical forest-floor plant.
It likes warmth, high humidity, filtered light and moist but well-drained soil. In nature the species grows in tropical forest habitats rather than baking in open sun.
And it isn't a bulb in the usual sense. Tacca is a rhizomatous perennial, growing back from its underground rhizome and producing those big, glossy tropical leaves before sending up its bizarre flowers.

💚 We finally have a few

We've grown Black and White Bat Flowers for years, but Green Isle is one we don't see very often.
Right now we have a small number of established plants in our collection - and seeing that electric-green flower in person is even stranger than seeing it in photographs.
Black Bat Flower looks gothic.
White Bat Flower looks ghostly.
Green Isle looks like the bat landed on another planet. 👽

🛒 Catch This Rare Green Bat

📚 Learn more:

Tacca Green Isle in Plant Encyclopedia
No, It's Not an Orchid: 7 Weird Questions About Bat Flower
7 Mistakes That Keep a White Bat Flower From Blooming
The SECRET growers never tell you: simple trick how to bring Tacca back to life and keep green

#Container_Garden #Shade_Garden #Nature_Wonders #Discover #Fun_facts

🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals