🐾 Mittens showed up one day out of nowhere and immediately won everyone's heart. Our Shipping Specialist, Chiane, stood no chance against those bright eyes and tiny white paws - so Mittens was hired on the spot!
🐾 Now she’s in training, assisting Chiane with packing orders, inspecting boxes, and occasionally napping on the job (for quality control, of course). Every evening she clocks out and heads home with Chiane to rest up for another big day of helping.
🐾 If you ever spot tiny paw prints inside your plant box, that’s Mittens saying hello! It’s her little “magic paw” blessing to make sure your plants thrive happily in their new jungle home.
🐈📸 Chiane and Mittens shipping plants - from TopTropicals to your door! PeopleCats.Garden
🌴 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.
🟡 Garcinia edulis - Lemon Drop Mangosteen, Madrono - is one of those plants that doesn’t shout for attention, but when you stop and really look at it, you realize how special it is. And today Chiane and Ashley are going to taste the fruit and share their experience!
🟡This tree stays compact and neat, with glossy evergreen leaves that always look freshly polished. Perfect size for a patio pot or a small garden corner. Ours here is slow and steady, but it always looks like it got groomed this morning.
🟡And the fruit… that’s where the fun begins. Tiny yellow-orange globes, golf-ball size, glowing against the green leaves. Inside is that clear, juicy pulp, and when you taste it, you understand the name instantly. Sweet and tart at the same time, like someone turned a lemon drop candy into a tropical fruit.
🟡People snack on them right off the tree, but they’re also great in juices and little dessert experiments. It’s one of those fruits that makes you feel like you grew something exotic without needing a jungle-sized space or complicated care. Give it sun, give it water, keep it in a nice pot, and it’s perfectly happy.
🟡A cute, flavorful, collector-worthy tree that fits right into small spaces.
The year is almost over but the winter is not. This Christmas weekend at
our Sebring B-farm we had it down to 30F. As a tropical gardener, winter can
be challenging, especially if you grow plants outside of tropical zones.
To protect your garden from the cold, consider the following:
1. Monitor freeze watches and be prepared to take action if
necessary.
2. Create temporary structures like mini-greenhouses using PVC pipes,
carport frames, or bamboo sticks to support covers.
3. Use covers such as frost cloth, cardboard boxes, blankets, and bed
sheets.
4. Use Christmas lights and other heating elements, including propane
heaters, to keep plants warm.
5. Add a layer of heavy mulch around plant trunks to protect them from the
cold.
6. Apply plant boosters that improve cold hardiness, such as Sunshine Epi,
Sunshine-Si, and Sunshine Superfood.
At TopTropicals B-Farm, we sprayed our plants with a special cold hardiness treatment Sunshine-Si and covered and wrapped
everything we could. We also moved cold sensitive species inside greenhouses.
All of our plants are looking great and happy!
Photo above: Mulching mango trunks and using Christmas lights for
cold protection
Photo above: Temporary wrapping of a section of a greenhouse with a
plastic or frost cloth protects from a windchill. It may also win you a few
degrees even without a heater. In this particular case, according to our temp
sensors, it was 30F outside, and 41F inside this "dome", no heaters used.
Sunshine Boosters:
Last chance to stock up at a lower price!
Sunshine
Boosters are natural, amino acid-based liquid fertilizers made with only
the highest quality ingredients. Starting in 2023, the pricing for Sunshine
Boosters will be adjusting to reflect the increasing cost of supplies. This is
your last chance to stock up on Sunshine Boosters before the end of the year!
Sunshine Boosters are safe to use year around, with every watering.
Don't miss out on this opportunity to get the best
value for your money!
Use discount for even better
deal:
22FOR22
for 22% off orders $220+
Min order $220. Offer expires 12-31-22
Date: 27 Mar 2026
A few adeniums you dont want to miss: Adenium rainbow
Adenium Beauty
Adenium Chok Sedthee
Adenium Black Dragon
Adenium Red Dragon
Adenium Jasmine
Adenium Marygold
A few adeniums you don’t want to miss: Adenium rainbow 🌈
Some adeniums bring color.
Some bring character.
And some… bring both.
This mix has a bit of everything - strong reds, deep tones, and soft floral shapes that balance it all out.
💡 Trimming tip
It’s always hard to cut back a branch… especially when it’s blooming.
But with adeniums, trimming is key.
After flowering, cut back leggy growth. This encourages branching, and more branches mean more flower buds.
It may feel like you’re losing blooms now - but you’re setting up a much bigger show next.
Trim, let it branch, and you’ll be rewarded with multiple blooms instead of just one.
🌸 Today's featured adeniums
✦ Beauty: Soft, balanced bloom with a clean look - simple and pleasing.
✦ Chok Sedthee: Name tied to wealth and success - a strong grower with presence.
✦ Black Dragon: Deep, intense tones with a bold, powerful look.
✦ Red Dragon: Bright red blooms with strong energy - hard to miss.
✦ Jasmine: Light, delicate feel with a more refined floral look.
✦ Marygold: Warm golden tones that bring brightness into any mix.
A mix like this gives you contrast right away - dark next to gold, simple next to unusual.
That’s what makes a collection interesting: not just how many you have, but how different they feel side by side.
