Top Tropicals

Top Tropicals Rare plants for home and garden WE GROW HAPPINESS! Top Tropicals is more than an online plant store. Some supervise plants. Some inspect boxes.
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We are a tropical plant encyclopedia, a garden blog, a certified nursery, and a real place you can visit in Florida. Our online store ships tropical plants nationwide and worldwide, including fruit trees, flowering plants, rare cultivars, spices, and fragrant plants. Our Plant Encyclopedia features over 5,000 tropical and subtropical plants with 50,000+ photos, helping gardeners identify plants an

d learn how to grow them. Our Garden Blog shares practical tips, plant stories, and nursery life. Visit us in person:
- Garden Center in Fort Myers, Florida
- Plant Farm in Sebring, Florida
Yes, we have cats. Some lead cat-guided tours. Subscribe for rare plants, news, and sales:
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Pitaya David Bowie: Dragon Fruit Beyond Pink and White - A Collector's Guide 🍉Most people know dragon fruit as a bright ...
06/02/2026

Pitaya David Bowie: Dragon Fruit Beyond Pink and White - A Collector's Guide 🍉

Most people know dragon fruit as a bright pink fruit with white flesh from the grocery store. But that's only the beginning. The world of dragon fruits is surprisingly diverse, with varieties ranging from white to deep purple, giant fruit to compact producers, and flavors that can remind you of kiwi, pear, melon, berries, or even lemonade. In this series, we'll explore some of the most interesting dragon fruit varieties, highlighting their appearance, flavor, growth habits, and what makes each one special.

🔸 At first glance
▪️David Bowie (Hylocereus undatus x monacanthuis) looks like a classic dragon fruit - bright red skin, white flesh, and a familiar appearance. But spend a little time with this variety and you'll discover why collectors actively seek it out. David Bowie is one of the most popular white-fleshed dragon fruit varieties, prized for its large fruit, reliable production, and refreshing flavor.

🔸 A classic dragon fruit done right
▪️This self-pollinating variety produces medium to large fruit, often approaching a pound in weight. The bright red skin is decorated with numerous green-tipped fins, giving the fruit an especially dramatic appearance.
✅️Among white-fleshed dragon fruits, David Bowie is known for producing larger-than-average fruit while maintaining excellent eating quality.

🔸 Refreshing flavor with a citrus twist
▪️Unlike some dragon fruits that are valued mainly for appearance, David Bowie delivers a flavor that keeps people coming back.
✅️The flesh is mildly sweet and refreshing, often compared to a cross between kiwi and pear. What makes it memorable is a pleasant tangy character and subtle lemony finish that brightens the flavor and makes it especially enjoyable chilled.
✅️The fruit is excellent eaten fresh and is also popular for smoothies, fruit salads, and garnishes.

🔸 Easy to grow and rewarding
▪️David Bowie is self-pollinating, making it an excellent choice for home gardeners who want reliable fruit production from a single plant.
✅️Like other dragon fruits, it is a vigorous climbing cactus that produces spectacular night-blooming white flowers before setting fruit. The blooms are large, fragrant, and beautiful enough to make the plant worth growing even before the harvest arrives.

🔸 Why collectors love it
▪️Not every dragon fruit has to be purple, yellow, or unusually exotic to earn a place in a collection.
✅️David Bowie remains popular because it combines everything growers want - attractive fruit, dependable production, large size, refreshing flavor, and self-pollinating flowers. Sometimes the classics become classics for a reason.

🛒 Explore and collect Dragon Fruit varieties:
Link is in the comment 👇



⛳️ It takes a lot of balls"It takes a lot of balls to golf the way I do." - Bob Hope -🐈📸 Cat Jim II has some balls at To...
06/01/2026

⛳️ It takes a lot of balls

"It takes a lot of balls to golf the way I do."
- Bob Hope -

🐈📸 Cat Jim II has some balls at TopTropicals PeopleCats.Garden:
Link is in the comment 👇



06/01/2026

Why white-flesh Dragon fruits deserve more attention? 🏆

✔️Fast growers, heavy producers.
White-fleshed Dragon fruits are often overlooked, but they are the real workhorses of the Pitaya world. These varieties tend to be more vigorous, faster growing, and less demanding than red-fleshed types. They establish quickly, handle a wider range of conditions, and are usually heavier producers.

✔️Juicy, light, and refreshing.
Flavor-wise, white-flesh types are milder and juicier, with higher water content and lower sugar. That makes them refreshing, hydrating, and a good choice for people watching sugar intake. Because they set fruit more reliably and produce larger crops, white-fleshed dragon fruits are often the best option for beginners and for anyone who wants dependable harvests without fuss.

✔️The sweetest of them all.
Yellow-skinned dragon fruit with white flesh takes things one step further. While the plant itself is a bit slower and more selective, the fruit is the sweetest and most flavorful of all dragon fruits, often described as honeyed or tropical with pineapple notes.

✍️The best white-fleshed Dragon fruit varieties:
🔴 ⚪️ Red skin, white flesh(Hylocereus undatus): the most common and productive group. These plants are vigorous, fast-growing, and known for large fruit size. Flavor is mildly sweet and very refreshing, often compared to kiwi or pear. Excellent choice for heavy production and easy care.

Varieties:David Bowie, Delight, Hana, Lake Atitlan, Seoul Kitchen, Vietnamese Jaina, Hana

🟡⚪️ Yellow skin, white flesh (Hylocereus, or Selenicereusmegalanthus) - Smaller fruit but unmatched sweetness. Crisp, juicy flesh with honey, pineapple, or tropical notes. Less productive than red-skin whites, but prized for flavor above all else.

Varieties:Amarilla (Kirin), Colimbiana, Godlen Dragon, Palora, Thai Gold (Hawaiian)

Quick Takeaway:

⚪️ White-flesh reds = most vigorous, most productive, easiest to grow
🟡 Yellow with white flesh = sweetest and most flavorful
🔴 Red-flesh types = richer flavor but usually slower and less productive

🛒 Explore and collect Dragon Fruit varieties:
Link is in the comment 👇



Avocado Florida Hass: the hidden world beyond green and black 🥑Florida Hass brings some of the flavor characteristics of...
06/01/2026

Avocado Florida Hass: the hidden world beyond green and black 🥑

Florida Hass brings some of the flavor characteristics of traditional Hass to Florida gardens while offering better adaptation to humid conditions. The fruit is smaller than many Florida avocados but rich, creamy, and ideal for fresh eating. It is often recommended for gardeners seeking a Hass-like experience in the Southeast.

▪️ Botanical name: Persea americana 'Florida Hass'
▪️ Origin: Mexican (Florida selection)
▪️ Cold hardiness: Tolerates temperatures around 30°F
▪️ USDA zones: 9b-11
▪️Flower type: A
▪️ Tree size: Approximately 30 ft x 20 ft
▪️Growth habit: Compact, upright, and well suited to home gardens
▪️ Foliage: Dense, glossy green foliage that provides an attractive evergreen canopy
▪️Fruit size: 4-12 oz
▪️Fruit shape: Pear-shaped to oval
▪️ Fruit color: Green when immature, turning dark purple-black at maturity
▪️ Skin: Thick, pebbly, Hass-like skin
▪️ Flesh: Creamy, smooth, and high in oil
▪️ Flavor: Rich, buttery, and similar to Hass, with excellent eating quality
▪️ Season: July-September
▪️ Best use: Fresh eating, guacamole, sandwiches, salads, and gourmet dishes
▪️ Special feature: Hass-like flavor and appearance combined with better adaptation to Florida's humid climate
▪️Why growers love it: Florida Hass offers the rich flavor and dark skin that avocado lovers associate with traditional Hass, but on a tree better adapted to the heat and humidity of the Southeast. Its compact size and excellent fruit quality make it a favorite for home gardens.

💡 Avocado tip: Let the leaves stay
Fallen avocado leaves make excellent mulch. As they break down, they return nutrients to the soil and help create the natural forest-floor conditions avocados love.

🛒 Explore cold hardy Avocado varieties:
Link is in the comment 👇





🔮 The Search for Enchanted Incense. 👉 Part 4. Growing Tips Learn all growing details from our Garden Blog:https://topt...
05/31/2026

🔮 The Search for Enchanted Incense.
👉 Part 4. Growing Tips

Learn all growing details from our Garden Blog:
https://toptropicals.com/gardenblog/1780213564-1.htm

🫶 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.

📸 In the photo: 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.

🛒 Grow Enchanted Incense:
Link is in the comment 👇

Read all the Parts together:
https://toptropicals.com/gardenblog/1780213564-1.htm

Happy Gardening!


The Search for Enchanted Incense. 🔮👉 Part 3. Why We Grow It.🌸 The flowers of Cerbera x manghas - Enchanted Incense - lo...
05/31/2026

The Search for Enchanted Incense. 🔮
👉 Part 3. 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.

🌸 That is why we love growing it👇

▪️Common Name
✅️Enchanted Incense

▪️Botanical Name
✅️Cerbera x manghas

▪️Origin
✅️Thailand

▪️Flowers
✅️White to soft pink, deepening to red and pink

▪️Fragrance
✅️Exceptional, far-reaching

▪️Container Friendly
✅️Yes

▪️Cold Tolerance
✅️USDA Zones 9-11 (Low 30s°F with caution)

▪️Growth Habit
✅️Slow, compact, slightly weeping

🛒 Add Enchanted Incense to your collection:
Link is in the comment 👇

To be continued - Part 4 👉
or Read all Parts together from our Garden Blog:
https://toptropicals.com/gardenblog/1780213564-1.htm


The Search for Enchanted Incense. 🔮👉 Part 2. The Plant.🌿 Even when not in full bloom, Cerbera x manghas Enchanted Incens...
05/31/2026

The Search for Enchanted Incense. 🔮
👉 Part 2. 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.

🛒 Add Enchanted Incense to your collection:
Link is in the comment 👇

To be continued - Part 3. 👉
or Read all the Parts together from our Garden Blog:
https://toptropicals.com/gardenblog/1780213564-1.htm


The Search for Enchanted Incense. 🔮Part 1. Thailand fairytale.🌸 Some plants arrive with a label. Some arrive with a stor...
05/31/2026

The Search for Enchanted Incense. 🔮

Part 1. Thailand fairytale.

🌸 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.

🛒 Add Enchanted Incense to your collection:
Link is in the comment 👇

To be continued - Part 2. 👉
or Read all Parts together from our Garden Blog:
https://toptropicals.com/gardenblog/1780213564-1.htm


The Search for Enchanted Incense. 🔮🐈 Sunshine:John said it smelled like a thousand jasmines.🐈‍⬛ Smokey:And somehow that'...
05/31/2026

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 - Learn from our Garden Blog:
https://toptropicals.com/gardenblog/1780213564-1.htm

Learn more about Smokey_Sunshine_Cats Cats:
Link is in the comment 👇


05/30/2026

The "Fake" Bamboo That Blooms Like a Rare Orchid Year-Round 🥀

🌿 Bamboo Orchid (Arundina graminifolia): Ever seen a bamboo plant sprout stunning, pinkish-purple orchid flowers? It looks like a trick of nature, but it’s actually the Bird Ground Orchid! This exotic showstopper features tall, cane-like stems and long, alternating leaves that mimic real bamboo perfectly. But instead of just growing green, these towering plants - which easily reach hip height or taller - produce delicate, 3-inch blooms that look exactly like high-maintenance Cattleya orchids.

🌸Why it’s perfect for your yard:
✦ Continuous blooms: The flowers open one at a time at the top of the canes, keeping the colorful show going for weeks on end.
✦ Year-round color: While they peak in the summer, these tropical beauties can bloom almost all year long.
✦ Low maintenance: Unlike notoriously finicky orchids, the Bamboo Orchid is a hardy, easy-to-care-for addition that thrives beautifully in shade gardens.

If you want a unique, sky-reaching plant that brings instant tropical vibes to your landscape without the hassle, this is the one to plant.

🛒Shop Ground Orchids:
Learn more from our Garden Blog 👇

-shrubs

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