Date: 31 Oct 2025
👻 When plants grow wings...
🌴 Twilight in the garden. Smokey is holding a glowing pumpkin. Sunshine is sipping cocoa.
Sunshine: "Smokey, why does that plant look like it wants to fly away?"
Smokey: "That’s the Bat Lily - Tacca. It’s rare, it’s
weird, and it’s in bloom just in time for Halloween."
Sunshine: "Figures. You always find the spooky ones."
Meet the Bat Lily (Tacca)
Tacca is also called the Bat Lily or Devil Flower. This tropical wonder grows bat-shaped wings and foot-long whiskers. The black form (Tacca chantrieri) looks straight out of a gothic dream, while the white one (Tacca nivea) is ghost-like and elegant.
Some of our plants are blooming right now in the nursery — true Halloween magic! Blooms are delicate and may not travel, but the plants are strong and will flower again soon in your care.
Black Bat Lily (Tacca chantrieri) with dark maroon wings and long whiskers
White Bat Lily (Tacca nivea) in bloom with wide ivory wings
"The White Bat Lily (Tacca nivea) is bold and sculptural, with oversized
ivory wings that command attention. Its pale bracts stretch wide above
clusters
of deep maroon flowers, and long, silvery whiskers spill gracefully through
the foliage. In filtered light, the plant seems to glow from within —
elegant, crisp, and perfectly balanced between the strange and the
beautiful.
If I could pick, I’d go with the White Tacca. It feels more
architectural, more balanced — those oversized wings catch light in a
way that
shows off every vein and curve. It looks engineered by nature, almost like
an
alien design prototype that actually works.
The Black Bat Lily (Tacca chantrieri) feels alive with shadow. Its dark
maroon wings and wiry whiskers make it look like something that fluttered
out of
the jungle at dusk. The bloom’s layered structure and near-black sheen
give it a quiet power — mysterious, understated, but impossible to
ignore. But if I were designing mood lighting for a greenhouse at night, the
Black Tacca wins. It’s subtle, mysterious, like a secret only visible
up
close. Together, they’re perfect opposites — yin and yang of the
tropical underworld: white for daylight, black for moonlight." — says
Tatiana Anderson, Top Tropicals Plant Expert
Special Offer: Discounts on Rare Tacca Plants
Grow your own Bat Lilies — White or Black — at a special Halloween price!
Get 25% OFF Tacca plants with code
TACCA2025
Min order $25 (excluding S/H), valid online only, cannot be combined with other offers.
Hurry, offer expires November 03, 2025!
🎃 Storewide Halloween Sale – For Everything Beyond Tacca
Not into spooky plants? Enjoy savings on all other tropical plants across the store!
Get 15% OFF tropical plants with code
HALLOWEEN2025
Min order $100 (excluding S/H), valid online only, cannot be combined with other offers.
Hurry, offer expires November 03 2025!
👉 Collect Tacca plants:
Date: 4 Nov 2025
Updates from Mittens
- 🐾 Hi everyone, it’s me - Mittens! I’m all grown up now (well, almost). I still go to work with my Mom Chiane - every single day. I help pack your plants, inspect boxes, and sometimes take important naps on the shipping table. I haven’t missed a single day of work!
- 🐾 Everyone says I’m part of the team now, not just a trainee. I think they’re right - after all, who else leaves magic paw prints on your boxes?
- 🐾 If you stop by our Garden Center in Ft Myers, come say hi to me, King, Snitch, and my other friends. We’re the #PeopleCats, and we work hard to make sure your plants travel happy and safe to their new homes!
🐈📸 Chiane and Mittens getting ready for work at TopTropicals / PeopleCats.Garden
#PeopleCats
🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals
Date: 7 Nov 2025
Cats now demand cable!
Riki the cat is watching TV
💻 Cats now demand cable!
"The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth."
- Dorothy Frances Gurney
🐱 Every cat deserves a good show. Who needs Netflix when you have Catflix? Our cats got Cat TV. What about yours?
📱
🐈📸 Riki is watching his TV bird show at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden
#PeopleCats #Quotes
🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals
Date: 16 Nov 2025
Learn more:
Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe
- 🐙 Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe, is one of the most striking butterfly plants. The brown-and-green, pitcher-shaped flowers with long striped tails look like something from another world, and the glossy lobed leaves give the vine a bold, tropical look.
- 🐙 What makes this plant truly special is how butterflies respond to it. They are drawn to the scent of the flowers and use the vine as a host plant, laying their eggs on the leaves. If you want butterflies, this is one of the easiest ways to bring them in and support their full life cycle.
- 🐙 This vine is tough and adaptable. It grows well in subtropical climates, handles low light, and can even be kept indoors. Give it a trellis or a fence and it quickly turns into a showpiece.
- 🐙 Beautiful, unusual, and a butterfly favorite - Dutchmans Pipe is a natural magnet for life in your garden.
🛒 Bring butterflies to your garden!
📚 Learn more:
- Dutchman's Pipe - the best butterfly attracting vine
- Giant Pelican Flower
- Giant, coolest looking flower
#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #How_to
🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals
Date: 24 Nov 2025
One fruit on this tray always stumps people
Tropical fruit on a tray
One fruit on this tray always stumps people
- 🍉 Another day, another fruit tray from the garden! Even at the end of November, something is always ripening here in Florida. This tray turned out especially fun - a mix of familiar fruits and a couple that always make people guess twice!
- 🍉 Today’s harvest includes: sweet Persimmons, Star fruit, a few different dragon fruits: yellow Palora and white with red skin - this is Seoul Kitchen. There's also Cocoplum, which makes great drinks. And - ta-da! - the little showstopper of the day: Curly Locks Orchid Cactus fruit (Epiphyllum guatemalense Monstrosa). It looks wild, but it's edible and tastes like a tiny dragon fruit.
- 🍉 If you live in Florida or any warm climate, growing your own fruit is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Tropical fruit trees are generous plants - they don’t wait for a season, they give you something month after month. Some days it’s a handful, some days it’s a whole tray, but there’s always a fresh treat waiting. Once you start growing your own food, you realize how easy and rewarding it is to fill your garden with flavor.
- 🍉 Every tray has a new surprise. Come along and see what the garden gives us next!
🛒 Explore rare tropical fruit
📚 Learn more:
- Can you name all the fruits on this tray?
- Weird cactus looks like pasta with Dragon Fruit
- Cocoplum: secret fruit in your hedge
- Pitaya vs Dragon fruit - what is the difference and how to grow it?
- How soon will Persimmon tree fruit?
- 10 best fruit trees to grow in Florida and Southern landscapes
- Top 10 fast-fruiting trees
#Food_Forest #Discover
🟢 Join 👉 TopTropicals

