Garden Blog - Top Tropicals

Its a miracle: Miracle Fruit messes with your tongue, makes lemon sweet!

Synsepalum dulcificum - Miracle Fruit

🍭 It's a miracle: Miracle Fruit messes with your tongue, makes lemon sweet!

🍋🍬Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum) Miracle Fruit - is a tidy, productive pot plant with a magical surprise.
🍋🍬 Ever wish lemons tasted like candy? This little berry makes sour foods taste sweet - lemon turns into a lemon candy, vinegar into syrup, and the effect can last for hours. The secret is a natural compound that masks the sour taste buds on your tongue.
🍋🍬 Miracle fruit isn’t just a fun trick - it’s also a perfect plant for your garden. A compact, slow-growing shrub, it actually prefers pots since it likes acidic soil. Indoors or out, it can fruit almost year-round, staying a neat 3-5 ft tall in a container.
🍋🍬 Best part? You can surprise your friends with a slice of lemon before and after trying it - and just wait for their reaction!
🍋🍬 What foods did you try with Miracle fruit? How did it change the taste?

🛒 Plant your own Miracle Fruit

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Black Bat Lily (Tacca chantrieri)

When plants cross into the Gothic: the Darker Bat Lily

🖤 Here’s a striking look at the Black Bat Lily (Tacca chantrieri) - its dramatic dark bracts resembling bat wings, trailing whiskers, and tropical elegance all in one. If you met its cousin, the White Bat Head Lily (Tacca nivea) in earlier video, you'll notice the family resemblance - same dramatic whiskers and wing-like bracts, but this one leans fully into the dark side.
🖤 The Black Bat Flower isn’t just a bloom - it's a full performance. Giant black-maroon"wings" stretch out like a bat in flight, while long, drooping filaments dangle like eerie whiskers or jungle jewelry - some over a foot long!
🖤 Those weird, wild whiskers aren't just for show either. They're thought to mimic the look (and no, not the smell!) of decaying matter, luring in pollinators like flies. Creepy? Yes. Clever? Absolutely.
🖤 The Black Bat Flower blooms best when it feels pampered: filtered light, steady warmth, and spa-level humidity. It’s a smart exotic for a greenhouse or even a bright bathroom with a skylight.
🖤 It grows from a rhizome, and while Tacca chantrieri is prized for its gothic looks, its green cousin Tacca leontopetaloides is actually used in the tropics to make arrowroot starch.
🖤 Patience is part of the package - sometimes it takes months to bloom. But when it does, it becomes the crown jewel of the collection. People will ask if it's real. You'll just smile and say, "Yes - and it lives here."

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White Bat Head Lily (Tacca nivea)

👻 The mystery of the White Bat Lily - the plant with wings and whiskers

Here's a cool shot of the White Bat Head Lily (Tacca nivea) - its dramatic white bracts that flare like wings and those wild, trailing whiskers are impossible to ignore. And it is in full bloom again at Top Tropicals - in the middle of August.
This plant that pulls off gothic elegance with two crisp, wing‑like white bracts hovering over a cluster of deep maroon‑black "bat‑face" flowers, complete with long, draping whiskers. Beneath it all lie crinkled, olive‑green leaves that only add to its moody charm.
This tropical understory native thrives in humid, shaded spaces - whether that's a greenhouse or a mossy, misty corner indoors. It's an evergreen perennial, endlessly intriguing. When it does bloom, the dark little flowers eventually yield heavy berries - just one more twist in its curious tale.
Looking to grow one? You'll need:

✔️High humidity, indirect light, and good air circulation

✔️Rich, orchid‑style soil (think adding bark, peat, perlite to your potting mix)
✔️Consistently moist - but not waterlogged - conditions
✔️And to be patient: flowering often requires a couple of leaves before it even sets stems

It's not just a plant - it's a conversation starter, a living gothic sculpture that grows. Maybe a bit finicky? Sure. Totally worth it? Absolutely!

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⭐️ Nature’s weirdest flower? This one’s in the running

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#Nature_Wonders #Container_Garden

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