Can you eat bird-looking flowers? You can eat the whole tree!

• 🐧 Sesbania grandiflora - Hummingbird Tree - is named for its flowers resembling little birds.
• 🐧 It produces a mass of large, 3-4", curved flowers from November to June. Flowers can be coral red or white.
• 🐧 The fun part is - the flowers are edible! As well as the rest of the plant: tender leaves, green fruit (bean pods), and flowers, used in curries, salads, or fried in batter.
• 🐧 Medicinal uses: bark, leaves, gums, and flowers have medicinal properties.
• 🐧 Lower branches form a beautiful floral canopy. It is a fast growing, but a small tree that will fit any yard. Great everblooming tree for container culture.

🛒 Get an edible Hummingbird Tree

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Butterfly_Plants #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts

🏵 TopTropicals

🍒 How to make an exotic treat: Barbados Cherry Jelly

Barbados Cherry is a vigorous grower that starts producing right away, and by the second year you have so much fruit that you don't know what to do with it - you can eat only so much fruit out of hand! Earlier we shared a recipe of delicious Barbados Cherry Juice drink. The juice tastes very similar to Guava juice: it is very aromatic and tasty, and has a beautiful Baby-pink color. The Jelly recipe is even more exotic teat!

🎀 Barbados Cherry Jelly

• 
  ✔️ 4 cups cherry juice
• ✔️ 5 cups sugar
• ✔️ 1 package dry pectin
• ✔️ 2 tbsp lemon juice

• 🍷To fully ripen cherries, place them in plastic container, cover and leave overnight. Cherries will be dark, rich red color the next day.
• 
  🍷To make juice: Place cherries in a pan, cover with water, bring to boil. Crush cherries and simmer for a few minutes. Strain.
• 
  🍷Add pectin and bring to a boil again. Add sugar and lemon juice and boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and skim off foam. Pour into sterilized glass and seal.

📚 From previous posts:

• •Cherry juice recipe
• •65 times more of vitamin C than an orange - in Barbados Cherry
• •Barbados Cherry Mini Version
• • Learn more about Barbados Cherry

🛒 Order Barbados Cherry Tree

#Recipes #Food_Forest

🔴 Join 👉 TopTropicals

💥 Why Yellow Aphelandra looks red?

👒 Aphelandra hartwegiana - Yellow Aphelandra - is getting ready to bloom! Soon it will be shooting its curious yellow flowers out of these "candles"... Stay with us to see it bloom!

📚 Learn more about Aphelandras from previous posts:

• 📍 What is the best flowering shrub for a shady spot?
• 📍 Panama Queen
• 📍 How to grow Zebra in container?

🛒 Shop Aphelandras

#Butterfly_Plants #Shade_Garden

🔴 Join 👉 TopTropicals

🍈 What fruit tree is full of fruit year around

Our Dwarf June Plum that we mentioned earlier is full of fruit again! Looks like this tree is fruiting year around. We always see either fruit on it, or both flowers and fruit. It is probably the heaviest producer we've ever seen!

• ✳️ This exciting fruit tree will amaze you with its ability to fruit abundantly at a young age and small size. This is a DWARF variety of June plum, or Ambarella (Spondias cytherea).
• ✳️ Compact 6-7 ft tree. Perfect container fruit tree.
• ✳️ Very aromatic fruit, resembling that of a Mango (it's Mango's close relative) but with completely different, fragrant flavor.

✳️ Expect heavy fruit production!

🛒Order Dwarf June Plum

#Food_Forest #Container_Garden

🔴 Join 👉 TopTropicals

🌚 When Bat Head Devil Flower is in bloom

• Tacca Lily - has been in bloom all summer, on an off.
• Curious, bat-like inflorescence both in shape and color, with wide spreading, wing-like bracts of rich maroon-black, accompanied by long trailing filaments or "whiskers".
• Perfect container plant for a greenhouse. Needs filtered light, prefers high humidity.
• Comes in different species and colors: Black, White, Green:

Tacca nivea - White Tacca
Tacca chantrieri - Black Tacca
Tacca leontopetaloides - Green Tacca

📚 Learn more from previous post:
Bat Head - Devil Flower

🛒 Shop Bat Head Lily Tacca

#Nature_Wonders #Shade_Garden #Container_Garden

🔴 Join 👉 TopTropicals