Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Date: 22 Apr 2025

Is This a Plant or a Coral?

Medinilla scortechinii - Orange Coral Spike

🔥 Is This a Plant or a Coral?



🟠 Medinilla scortechinii - Orange Coral Spike - these flowers look like they came straight from a coral reef! Orange Coral Spike is a rare gem that's hard to find and easy to love.

🟠 Bright orange stems burst into star-shaped blooms that mimic glowing underwater branches - but they're blooming in your garden or home instead. Exotic, rare, and totally unforgettable.

🟠 Compact and easy to grow - stays under 2 ft tall.

🟠 Glossy dark leaves highlight the vibrant orange panicles.

🟠 Grows in light shade or filtered sun

🟠 Great in pots, hanging baskets, or as an epiphytic accent

🟠 Perfect for collectors of unusual tropical plants

🟠 Add a pop of orange to your garden or indoor jungle – this coral spike doesn’t stay in stock for long!

🛒 Buy Your Coral Bloom Beauty

📚 More from previous post:


A splash of tropical flair

#Container_Garden #Shade_Garden #Discover

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Date: 27 Apr 2025

This mysterious plant will make pink butterflies fly in your stomach!

Kalanchoe x Pink Butterfly

💖 This mysterious plant will make pink butterflies fly in your stomach!



💖 Kalanchoe x Pink Butterfly - Variegated Mother of Thousands... This exceptional plant, originally gifted to us by horticulturist Mark Hooten, quickly became one of the highlights of our rare plant collection.

💖 The Kalanchoe x Pink Butterfly is a true standout, known for its unique, stable variegated "sport" - meaning it has a lower chlorophyll content, allowing vibrant, bright pink pigments to shine through. This makes it one of the most colorful succulents you'll encounter!

💖 The plant produces an abundance of tiny, butterfly-like plantlets along its leaves. Unlike other Kalanchoe plants, it has lost the ability to root from these plantlets, making it even more intriguing.

💖 Pink Butterfly is incredibly easy to care for, drought-tolerant, and thrives in both sun and shade, making it the perfect exotic houseplant for any space.

💖 This variegated form is a mutation of an older hybrid, the origin of which is a bit mysterious. The original hybrid, Kalanchoe x houghtonii, was a cross between Kalanchoe daigremontiana and Kalanchoe delagoensis. Over time, a variegated sport of this hybrid emerged, giving rise to the beautiful Kalanchoe x Pink Butterfly we see today.

💖 A must-have for any succulent collector, this plant will not only bring a splash of color to your home but also a touch of rarity!

🛒 Add Kalanchoe x Pink Butterfly to your rare plant collection

#Container_Garden #Nature_Wonders #Shade_Garden

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Date: 4 Mar 2025

How many varieties of Bananas can I grow?

Bananas (Musa sp.) in containers

🍌 How many varieties of Bananas can I grow?



💛 At Top Tropicals, we have a few dozen varieties of Bananas (Musa sp.) - ranging from popular commercial and plantain types to spectacular ornamental bananas with colorful, tropical foliage.

💛 Banana plants are a favorite in Southern gardens, indoor plant collections, and greenhouses in cooler climates. Fast and easy to grow, they transform any space into a tropical paradise in just one season and can produce fruit for you in as little as 8–18 months after planting.

💛 Bananas are a powerhouse of nutrition, packed with potassium for heart health, fiber for digestion, and vitamins B6 and C for immunity. They’re a natural energy booster, great for snacks, smoothies, and even baking. Plus, their tryptophan content can improve your mood, and their low sodium helps regulate blood pressure.

💛 With so many delicious and unique varieties, growing different types of bananas lets you enjoy a range of flavors, textures, and uses - whether fresh, blended, or cooked - making them a must-have in any tropical or indoor garden!

Discover the most popular edible and ornamental bananas in our next post 🔽

🎥 Banana selection today at TopTropicals farm. Come over to pick the best one!

📚 More about Banana from previous posts:


💋Top 10 fruit you'll ever need for your health benefits: #5 Banana growing and fun facts
💋How to make tasty Carambola Banana Whip
💋Why Bananas? They are good for you and are fun to grow
💋Bananas help you feel fuller and enhance your mood

🛍Shop Banana varieties

#Food_Forest #Bananas

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Date: 2 Dec 2024

Why is it called Blood Feather?

Sanchezia stenomacra - Blood Red Feather

Sanchezia stenomacra - Blood Red Feather

Why is it called Blood Feather?



A true gem for tropical plant enthusiasts, Sanchezia stenomacra - Blood Red Feather - is a rare and stunning perennial.

Native to the jungles of Peru, it thrives in humid environments with filtered light, making it perfect for lush, shaded spots in your garden, greenhouse or indoor plant collection.

Its striking blood-red flowers, shaped like delicate feathers, add a bold splash of color and are irresistible to hummingbirds. Feathery burgundy-red plumes rise above the deep green foliage and last for weeks. The true flowers are orange-red and tubular, emerging from the wispy flower heads day after day.

Upright, vigorous grower. When plants become too large, they can take a hard pruning and quickly recover and re-flower. Flowering continuously throughout the year, it even does well under partial sun.

A rare find for private collections, this showy plant is sure to become a centerpiece of your tropical paradise.

🛒 Order Blood Red Feather Sanchezia

#Container_Garden #Shade_Garden #Butterfly_Plants

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Date: 1 Nov 2024

What fruit smells like roses?

Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple, fruit on a tree

Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple, fruit on a tree

Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple, fruit on a plate

Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple, fruit on a plate

Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple, flowers

Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple, flowers

😏 What fruit smells like roses? Rose apple!



🌹 If you liked the Java Plum (Jambolan) from our earlier post, its close relative is even more exciting, because the fruit smells like roses!

🌹 Syzygium jambos - Rose Apple - is a fragrant delight fruit! Also known as Malabar Plum or Pomme Rosa, the Rose Apple produces crisp, juicy fruits with a distinct rose scent, highly prized for jellies and confections.

🌹 This easy-to-grow plant is moderately cold-hardy and can tolerate poor soils.

🌹 Rose Apple trees are versatile – they make attractive, wide-spreading shade trees and can also thrive as compact, bushy fruiting plants in containers. Whether in the ground or a pot, this charming tree brings beauty and fragrance to any space!

🛒 Order Rose Apple

#Food_Forest #Remedies

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