"Bless you all for finding this and sharing… Love those books your research cats are hunting through. Where do I get those, too?"
Smokey & Sunshine looked at each other. Then at the books. Then at the donuts.
Sunshine: I knew someone would ask about them. Smokey: About the plants in the photo? Sunshine: No. The books. People want to read them. Smokey: Most of those books don't exist. We made them up for the photo. Sunshine: "The Apocynaceae Family" sounded very convincing. Very distinguished. Like the Corleone family, but with more flowers and fewer offers you can't refuse. Smokey: The Corleones were also toxic. So the comparison holds. Did you notice you spilled donut glaze on the cover and called it peer review. Sunshine: That is simply how great botanical discoveries are made. Smokey: That explains the investigation board. And the suspects list. Sunshine: The point is — now people want to read the books. All of them. Smokey: The books. Do. Not. Exist. Sunshine: Exactly. Which is why we need to convince the Top Tropicals humans to write them. They have 5000 plants, 60000 photos, and 25 years of notes. The raw material is right there. Smokey: That would be a very large book. Sunshine: Excellent. We can call it The Encyclopedia of Plants That Smell Better Than Donuts. Smokey: That narrows it down to exactly one chapter. Sunshine: A very good chapter though. Jasmine alone would fill at least twenty pages. Smokey: While we wait for the humans to write it, the actual Top Tropicals plant encyclopedia is at toptropicals.com. Over 5,000 plants. No donuts involved. Sunshine: ...yet.
Date: 31 May 2026
🔮
The Search for Enchanted Incense
Sunshine: John said it smelled like a thousand
jasmines. Smokey: And somehow that's all the information he brought
back from Thailand. Sunshine: He brought a photo, too. Smokey: Excellent. We can begin our international manhunt.
Well, Smokey and Sunshine have closed the case and found the mystery
plant. The cork board is coming down, the magnifying glass is back in the
drawer, and the "Enchanted
Incense" mug is finally empty.
Now let's talk about the plant itself.
🌸 Some plants arrive with a label. Some arrive with a
story.
Cerbera x manghas - Enchanted Incense - produces some of the most
unusual
fragrant flowers in the tropical garden. Its velvety reddish blooms,
outlined in white and carried on vivid pink tubes, create an exotic display
that looks hand-painted.
When our good friend John Mood returned from a plant conference in
Thailand, he did not bring us a plant. He brought us a mystery.
John had spent decades growing and collecting rare tropical plants. When he
said he had found something special, we paid attention.
On a visit to Chatuchak
Market, one of the most famous plant markets in Asia,
something stopped him. Not the flowers. The fragrance.
"I found a plant that smells stronger than a thousand jasmines," John
told us.
That one sentence stayed with us for years.
He had photographs. He had his memory of that scent. What he did not have
was a name. No tag. No seller information. Just the photos and the certainty
that he had smelled something genuinely unusual.
So we started looking.
We showed the photographs around. We asked collectors. We compared flowers.
Every lead turned into another question. But eventually, after years of
searching on and off, we found it.
The mystery plant turned out to be an unusual Cerbera
unlike anything we had grown before.
Today we call it Enchanted Incense. Fragrance lovers recognized
immediately what John had recognized in that Bangkok market. This was not
just another pretty tropical flower.
🌸 The Plant
Even when
not in full bloom, Cerbera
x manghas Enchanted Incense is a standout plant. Its glossy, deep
burgundy foliage and bronze new growth create a bold tropical presence,
while the unusual flowers add an extra layer of intrigue.
Visitors at our nursery still walk past it and stop. Not because they
noticed the plant. Because they noticed something in the air and could not
figure
out where it was coming from.
The flowers start soft pink and white, then deepen to rich red and auve as
they mature. They come in clusters, four to five inches across, and the
fragrance they produce does not stay close to the flower. It moves. It fills
the space around the plant. On a warm morning it can perfume an entire
patio.
The foliage is worth mentioning too. Deep green leaves with burgundy and
mauve tones that make it attractive even when it is not blooming. The growth
habit is slow and slightly weeping, similar to plumeria,
which is no coincidence since they are close
relatives. Unlike plumeria, Enchanted Incense stays evergreen in warm
climates.
It is a compact, slow-growing small tree that is happy in a container. That
makes it practical for gardeners in colder climates who need to bring it in
for winter, and for anyone who wants a fragrant plant near a seating area
rather than somewhere across the yard.
🌸 Why We Grow It
The
flowers of Cerbera
x manghas - Enchanted Incense - look otherworldly. Deep reddish petals,
bright pink
tubes, and contrasting white edges combine to create one of the most
distinctive fragrant blooms.
We grow thousands of plants, and most can be described in a sentence or
two.
This one cannot.
A large Enchanted Incense grows right outside our office. Every year it
reminds us why we
spent so much time searching for it.
Visitors stop beside it and ask the same question: "What is that
smell?"
They usually notice the fragrance before they notice the plant.
Some follow the scent across the nursery. Others stop in the middle of a
conversation and start looking around. Nearly
everyone ends up standing next to the tree trying to figure out where that
incredible fragrance is coming from.
In a world full of beautiful tropical plants, Enchanted Incense remains
one of the few that announces itself before you even see it.
Cerbera
x manghas -
Enchanted Incense can display remarkable variation in flower color. This
form
combines soft rose-pink blooms with white-edged petals and rich burgundy
foliage, creating a striking contrast throughout the plant.
Light: Full sun is best (at least
six hours
daily). It will tolerate partial shade but blooms much more generously in
good
light.
Watering: Water regularly during
warm weather. In cool weather and winter, keep the soil on the drier side.
Overwatering when
temperatures are low is the most common mistake.
Soil: Use a well-draining mix. This
plant absolutely does not want wet feet.
Fertilizer: Feed with a
Green Magic
controlled-release fertilizer for flowering plants in spring, supplemented
with occasional liquid fertilizer through the summer. For non-stop blooms
without the risk of
salt build-up in containers, we highly recommend
Sunshine
Boosters™.
Read
our Guide to Sunshine Boosters™ and Green Magic fertilizer
Winter Care: Bring it indoors
when temperatures approach the mid-30s°F. The rootstock is fairly
tough,
but the foliage is not. Cold and wet conditions combined are the real risk.
One Last Thing
A closer
look reveals the remarkable details of Cerbera
x manghas - Enchanted Incense.
The velvety petals, crisp white edging, and fuzzy pink center give the
flower an appearance
unlike anything else in the garden. And then comes the scent...
John came back from Bangkok with a few photographs and a fragrance he
could not forget. It took us years to track down the plant behind that
memory. We have never regretted a single minute of the search.
Sunshine: So after all those years, what's the answer? Smokey: Stand next to the plant. Sunshine: That's it? Smokey: The fragrance explains the rest.
A closer
look reveals the remarkable details of Cerbera
x manghas - Enchanted Incense develops into an attractive small tree
with lush evergreen foliage and colorful new growth. In the
landscape, it combines year-round structure with clusters of bright
redding-pink fragrant flowers that stand out beautifully against the glossy
leaves.
Date: 21 Jun 2026
🍓The Strawberry Moon Rises: A Gardener's
Excuse to Go Outside
Sunshine: Look at my strawberry-glazed donut. Same as the
Strawberry Moon. I have been waiting for this all month. They say moon
gardening is useful. Let's go planting! Smokey: Science hasn't found much evidence for it. Sunshine: Then what's the point? Smokey: If the moon gets people into the garden, that's
good enough for me.
On the evening of Monday, June 29, 2026, the full Strawberry Moon will rise
low in the southeastern sky. Whether you follow a lunar calendar or not,
it's a good excuse to spend a little time outside on a summer evening.
🌛 What Is the Strawberry Moon, Exactly?
Many of the familiar full moon names come from Native American
traditions and reflect seasonal events in nature. June's full moon was named
for the
season when wild strawberries ripen across much of North America, not for
any
color in the sky. Despite the name, the moon won't glow pink or red. If it
looks warm or golden, that's simply because any full moon takes on an amber
tint when it hangs low near the horizon, the same atmospheric effect that
paints
sunsets orange. The "strawberry" is about the harvest, not the hue.
This year, the Strawberry Moon rises on the evening of June 29 and will
appear low in the southeastern sky, making it a particularly beautiful moon
to watch as dusk settles in.
🌓 Moon Gardening, an Old and Honest Tradition
For generations, gardeners across Europe and beyond timed their
planting, pruning, and harvesting to the phases of the moon. Plant root
crops during
a waning moon, some traditions say, and leafy crops during a waxing one.
Prune during certain phases to slow regrowth, harvest herbs at others for
better
potency. These calendars were passed down through generations of careful
observers who paid close attention to their land and their results, and many
still follow them today.
Modern science has found little evidence that lunar gravity or moonlight
significantly affects plant growth. Yet the tradition persists, and plenty
of growers still find real value in the rhythm it brings to the gardening
year.
💡What We Know For Sure
Here's the practical truth, and it's the same one Smokey arrived at
after thinking it over. Whether or not the moon influences your plants, the
act
of walking through your garden definitely does. A moon-phase calendar that
gets you outside to check on your plants, pull a few weeds, prune back
something
leggy, top off the mulch, or water a thirsty pot is helping your garden,
regardless of what's happening overhead.
The benefit isn't necessarily lunar. It's attention.
A garden rarely thrives because of a single grand effort. It thrives
because of dozens of small ones: a little pruning, a little watering, a few
weeds pulled before they become many.
Gardens reward the gardeners who show up, and if a full moon is your
reminder to show up, that's a perfectly good reason to keep watching the
sky.
📅 Beyond the Harvest
Not everything in a garden needs to produce a yield to be worthwhile.
Marking the seasons the way our ancestors did, a strawberry moon in June, a
harvest moon in fall, a snow moon in February, gives us small, recurring
reasons
to notice what's changing around us. It's a rhythm, not a requirement.
Think of the Strawberry Moon as a good excuse to take a walk through the
garden.
The Strawberry Moon doesn't have to improve anything to be worth
celebrating. It only needs to get you outside on a warm June evening, which,
honestly, isn't a high bar to clear.
A Strawberry Moon Collection, Just for
Fun
Sunshine immediately concluded that any moon named after strawberries
deserved a few strawberry-themed plants. We couldn't argue with that logic,
so
we pulled together a few Top Tropicals favorites that fit the theme.
🍓 Strawberry Tree
The Strawberry Tree (Muntingia calabura) often carries flowers and
fruit at the same time. Sweet red berries, delicate white blossoms, and lush
foliage make this fast-growing tropical tree both ornamental and productive
throughout much of the year.
A rare yellow-fruited
form of Muntingia calabura (Strawberry Tree), displaying
sweet golden berries, delicate white flowers, and immature green fruit all
at the same time. This unusual selection offers the same fast growth and
continuous fruiting as the red type, but with attractive yellow fruit that
is
seldom seen in cultivation.
Strawberry Tree (Muntingia calabura), also known as Jamaican
Cherry, grows quickly and produces dainty white flowers resembling
strawberry
flowers, followed by an abundance of small cotton-candy-sweet berries that
birds, wildlife, gardeners and their kids all appreciate.
Strawberry Guava (Psidium littorale) brings glossy foliage and
sweet, perfumed fruit that tastes something like its namesake crossed with a
guava.
Strawberry Guava (Psidium littorale, or cattleianum) often
carries fruit in multiple stages of ripening at once, creating a colorful
display
of green, golden, and ruby-red berries. The sweet, aromatic fruit is prized
for fresh eating and attracts birds and wildlife to the garden.
🍓 Strawberry Dragon Fruit
Dragon Fruit Vietnamese Jaina Strawberry White (Hylocereus
undatus
) produces bright pink fruit with refreshing white flesh and a flavor often
described as a blend of strawberry, melon, and kiwi. Its enormous
night-blooming flowers are every bit as impressive as the fruit, turning
this vigorous
climbing cactus into a spectacular summer showpiece.
Vietnamese Jaina Strawberry White Dragon Fruit is prized for its
refreshing
white flesh and mild sweet flavor with hints of strawberry, melon, and kiwi.
The vivid pink skin and striking black-speckled interior make it as
beautiful
on the table as it is delicious to eat.
🍓 Strawberry Ginger
Coral Ginger Borneo Strawberry Pink (Riedelia coralina) is one of
the rarest gingers in cultivation, producing unusual strawberry-pink flower
spikes that seem almost too exotic to be real. The edible blooms have a
pleasant spicy fragrance and flavor, making this New Guinea treasure as
interesting
to taste as it is to admire.
Whether you came for the moon or the plants, we hope you discovered
something interesting.
They just happen to share a name with the moon overhead this June, and that
felt like reason enough to give them a little spotlight.
Riedelia coralina, known as Coral
Ginger or Borneo Strawberry Pink, produces one of the most
unusual flower displays in the ginger family. Its striking strawberry-pink
blooms
rise above lush foliage, creating a tropical focal point rarely seen outside
specialized collections.
🍓🌱 How to Grow Them
If you live in a frost-free climate (USDA Zones 10+), simply plant these
strawberry gems in the ground and enjoy. Strawberry Guava can tolerate
occasional frosts down to about 28F once established.
Not so lucky? Many gardeners successfully grow Strawberry Guava, Strawberry
Dragon Fruit, and Strawberry Tree in containers, moving them indoors or to a
protected location during winter. You don't need a tropical climate to enjoy
tropical fruit.
🏡 See You Outside
Whether you believe in moon gardening or not, June 29 is a good night to
step outside, find an open view of the southeastern sky, and watch the
Strawberry Moon rise. Bring a cup of tea, walk the garden beds while there's
still
light, pull a few weeds, and let the evening settle in around you.
And that may be the real lesson of the Strawberry Moon.
Sunshine: The Strawberry Moon is out. Time for
gardening. Smokey: What does the moon calendar recommend? Sunshine: I have no idea. I left it on the kitchen table.
Both hands are full. Smokey: Of course they are. Coffee and donuts. Let's start
with the weeds.
Go Bananas!
10 good reasons to plant bananas in your garden
Adding bananaplants to your subtropical garden or plant
collection can enhance the aesthetics of your outdoor and indoor space, provide fresh and nutritious fruits, and offer a fun gardening experience with
relatively low maintenance requirements. It's a delightful way to connect with nature and enjoy the benefits of homegrown
produce.
1. Tropical Ambiance: Banana plants bring a touch of the tropics
to your subtropical garden. Their large, lush leaves create a lush and exotic atmosphere that can transform your garden into a
tropical paradise.
2. Homegrown Flavor: Growing your own banana trees allows you to
enjoy the freshest, most flavorful bananas right from your garden. Homegrown bananas often have a superior
taste compared to store-bought varieties.
3. Nutritional Benefits: Bananas are packed with essential vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber. By
cultivating your own banana trees, you gain access to a nutritious and healthy snack option right in your backyard.
4. Quick Results: Banana plants are known for their fast growth. In subtropical climates, they can produce fruit in as little as one to two years. This means you don't have to wait long to savor the fruits of your labor!
5. Low Maintenance: Banana trees are relatively low-maintenance
once established. They require regular watering, but their hardy nature makes
them a relatively easy addition to your garden. They are not messy in a
landscape.
6. Versatility: Bananas offer versatility in your garden. You can choose from dessert bananas for snacking, cooking bananas like plantains for culinary experiments,
or even ornamental banana varieties to enhance your garden's aesthetics.
There are so many varieties to enjoy! You can't find this big selection in a
grocery store.
7. Sustainable Living: Growing your own bananas reduces your reliance on
store-bought produce, contributing to a more sustainable lifestyle. It also
minimizes the carbon footprint associated with transporting fruits to market.
8. Educational Value: Cultivating banana plants can be an
educational experience for both adults and children. It offers insights into
tropical horticulture and can foster an appreciation for gardening and botany.
9. Landscaping Appeal: Beyond their fruit-bearing potential, banana plants add visual
interest to your garden. Their unique form and striking leaves make them an excellent choice for
landscaping and providing shade in your outdoor space.
10. Resilience: While bananas thrive in tropical conditions, many banana varieties are hardy enough to withstand cooler
climates, making them a durable addition to your garden.
...Who doesn't like tropical beauty? Everyone wants tropical plants. But not everyone lives in a warm climate. Is it possible to grow tropicals outside of Tropics?
Top Tropicals horticulturist Mark Hooten, who is well known to many
gardeners as the Garden Doc with his
Saturday Plant Clinic, is answering gardeners' questions about how to prepare and protect tropical plants during winter...
Growing Tips
