Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

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

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🗂 Index of TopTropicals Telegram Channel

Follow these tags to find your interests:

#Butterfly_Plants - Butterfly attracting plants.

#Container_Garden - Plants suitable for container garden and indoor culture.

#Fertilizers - All the truth about fertilizers, plant food supplements, and our recommendations for different types of plants.

#Food_Forest - Fruit trees, Spice plants, and Edibles.
Including: #Avocado, #Mango, #Papaya, #Guava, #Jackfruit, #Loquat

📖 #Fun_Facts - interesting plant facts and legends.

🌳 #Hedges_with_benefits - Practical approach to your landscape and how to properly select showy and useful plants for your yard.

♍️ #Horoscope - Plant Horoscopes and Cat Horoscopes. Did you know that cats also have their Zodiac signs?

🛠 #How_to - Q&A about growing plants, tropical garden lifehacks.

👀 #Nature_Wonders - Unusual, amusing, outrageous, bizarre plants...

🐈 #PeopleCats - our Favorite PeopleCats (and some PeopleDogs, too).

🌸 #Perfume_Plants - Fragrant plants and perfume trees.

✍️ #Quotes - Interesting quotes.

#Recipes - Exotic recipes for tropical fruit and edibles.

💊 #Remedies - Medicinal plants.

☁️ #Shade_Garden - Plants suitable for low light conditions.

🌼 #Trees - Spectacular flowering tropical trees.

🏆 #Win - Contests, Sweepstakes, and other specials.

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TopTropicals

What was discovered in the Pyramids: Pigeon Pea - an Ancient Superfood...

• Cajanus cajan - Pigeon Pea - existed for more than 4800 year! It's been widely consumed in South Asia, South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Documented in India since 2,800 BC; reached Ancient Egypt around 2,200 BC.
• Provides flavorful, nutritious, and healthy food, with potential to become widely popular like Japanese sushi 🍱
• It is a showy perennial woody shrub or small tree, 4-8 ft tall, with soft leaves. Can be grown in container
• Pretty flowers are yellow, with purple or red streaks, pods containing oval to round seeds.
• Many culinary uses: the tasty and healthy beans used in rice dishes, soups, stews, tempeh, tofu. Unripe pods eaten in curries, leaves and young shoots cooked as a vegetable.
• Rich source of fiber, protein, vitamins (B, C, E, K), and minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, zinc).
• Medicinal value: various folk medicinal uses for sores, bladderstones, jaundice, skin irritations, bronchitis, coughs, pneumonia, toothache, dysentery, and more.
• Everyone can grow it! The plant is super easy, tolerates poor soils, drought tolerant, improves soil quality like many other beans.

📚 Learn more about Pigeon Pea

🛒Grow your own Pigeon Pea Superfood

#Food_Forest #Remedies #Container_Garden #Fun_Facts

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👾 How to get rid of a bad luck with the Garlic Vine?

• 🟣 Garlic vine (Mansoa alliacea) is one of the most wanted flowering tropical vines.
• 🟣 When in full bloom, it looks like a cascade of blue-purple over a fence or trellis.
• 🟣 The fun part is, crushed leaves smell like garlic, which will keep away the vampires and bad luck!
• 🟣 Deep lavender flowers with white throat fading to a paler lavender within a few days, and you can see all three colors on the plant at the same time.
• 🟣 Garlic vine has moderate growth rate and can stay compact in a pot as a specimen, and even can be grown as a house plant.

📚 Garlic vine: how to get rid of bad luck

🎥 Video: Garlic vine keeps away the vampires.

🛒 Get rid of bad luck by getting the Garlic Vine

#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #Fun_Facts #How_to #Nature_Wonders

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Why Dutchman's Pipe is the best butterfly attracting vine? Smell it!

Without any doubt, Aristolochia, or Dutchman's Pipe, is one of the best butterfly plants.

• 🍃 Aristolochia trilobata - Birthwort Dutchman's Pipe is celebrated for its unique and intricate flowers that resemble Dutch smoking pipes, hence its name.
• 🍃Dutchman's Pipe flowers emit a scent mimicking decaying matter, which certain butterfly species, like the Pipevine Swallowtail, find irresistible 💩🙄
• 🍃The butterflies lay their eggs on the plant, as it serves as a suitable host for their larvae, contributing to the plant's ecological significance by promoting pollination and biodiversity.
• 🍃 As a result, it not only beautifies gardens but also supports local butterfly populations, enriching the ecosystem.
• 🍃 Beyond its distinctive appearance, it's valued for its historical use in traditional medicine, particularly for its alleged healing properties.

🛒 Bring butterflies to your garden!

#Butterfly_Plants #Hedges_with_benefits #Fun_Facts

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🍊 Why exotic Mamey fruit is so much wanted?

Pouteria sapota, or Mamey Sapote - is Cuban favorite. It is considered by Cubans to produce the best fruit in the world.

🍹 The fruit has delicious bright orange soft flesh, sweet and pumpkin-like in flavor. The Mamey fruit is eaten fresh, in milk shakes and ice cream.

👀 Mamey has a curious growth habit: flowers emerge in clusters in the axils of fallen leaves along the branches, followed by the showy fruit. This is called cauliflorous - plants that flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks. Other examples are Cucumber tree and Jaboticaba.

🌳 Mamey is a slow growing, compact tree, but needs some space to spread the branches. It normally grows 20 ft in height and 20 ft wide.

🛒 Order Mamey Tree

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts #Nature_Wonders

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🌳 What is the best time to plant a tree?

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." - Chinese Proverb

📷 Koelreuteria paniculata - Golden Rain Tree, one of the most spectacular trees of subtopics that is actually very cold hardy and drought resistant.

• 🔰 Cascading clusters of bright yellow flowers in summer are followed by bright pink, papery, lantern-like seed pods that gracefully dangle through autumn.
• 🔰 Its elegant foliage and attractive form make it a captivating centerpiece in any garden or landscape.
• 🔰 Very fast growing, nice solution for a shade tree.
• 🔰 According to ancient Chinese manuscripts, the Golden Rain Tree is crucial for Dragons, as it is believed to be connected to their existence, guarding and complementing each other. Growing these plants is considered auspicious and is believed to safeguard the Dragon family.

2024 is a year of Dragon! 🐉

🛒 Order Golden Rain Tree

#Quotes #Fun_Facts #Trees

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📖 Fun Fact: Papayas contain an enzyme called papain, which is commonly used as a meat tenderizer, now you know what the secret is!

Papaya (Carica papaya) is a delicious fruit that is good for you as a dessert or as a digestive aid. We eat it after every meal!

🛒 Shop Papaya trees

#Food_Forest #Fun_Facts

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📖 Fun Fact: Bleeding Heart Vine (Clerodendrum thomsoniae) is named for its unique red and white flowers that resemble... bleeding hearts! 😍

• ❣️Native to tropical West Africa
• ❣️ Spectacular, dramatic flowers look like a line of dangling hearts, each emerging from the other.
• ❣️ It's a climbing vine often grown as a houseplant or in gardens with a trellis for support.
• ❣️Winder heavy bloomer, but as long as you provide lots of light to it, it'll bloom most of the time.

🛒Get your own Bleeding Heart

#Fun_Facts #Hedges_with_benefits

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