Gardens Blog
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Origins: New World The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens prides itself on its living collection of epiphytic plants, the largest in the world, as well as its standing in the world of taxonomy and systematics. So you may have heard here before that we stress, when speaking...
Hoyas, known commonly as wax plants, are a mostly epiphytic genus consisting of about two hundred species found mostly in Asia, India, and the South Pacific. They exhibit an interesting flowering habit, involving an inflorescence with multiple flowers borne on short...
Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow (Potato Family) Origin: New World Tropics Brunfelsia is a genus of beautiful blooming shrubs and small trees. Many species have a peculiar habit of color-changing flowers. The most common of these are B. australis and B. grandiflora, which...
Lychee (Soapberry Family) Origin: China There are so many advantages to living in Florida, one of them is fresh tropical fruit. Just as many northerners have a summer tomato garden in the backyard, many people wouldn’t consider their home Floridian without their...
Chains of Glory (Verbena family) Origin: Thailand Our featured plant this time around is rare, even in cultivation. Clerodendrum schmidtii is a shrub to small tree, multi-stemmed, with a weeping habit. Each winter it grows long, pendent, dark red racemes, eighteen...
Medinilla cummingii (Melastomataceae) Chandelier Tree (Melastoma Family) Origin: Philippines Here at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, we are really proud of our Tropical Conservatory. It is the starting point for most guests’ tour of the garden, and many return to...
Coffea arabica (Rubiaceae) Arabica coffee, mountain coffee (Coffee family) Origin: Ethiopia, now cultivated worldwide Coffee, one of the leading cash crops and one of the most popular drug plants of the last few hundred years (along with tea and tobacco,) may be this...
Tacca integrifolia ‘Nivea’ (Dioscoreaceae) White Bat Plant (Yam family) Origin: Tropical Asia Florida’s human population is a lot like its plant population; there are a few natives, and a lot of transplanted exotics. It is always a joy to see someone who has just...
Helianthus spp. (Asteraceae) Sunflowers (Sunflower Family) Origin: North America What is a flower? A flower is a plant’s sexual organ, typically consisting of male and female parts and the calyx and corolla. Some blooms which we see and consider as a single flower are...
Powdery-strap air plant, lantern of the forest (Bromeliad family) Origin: Southern Florida to Brazil Our featured plant is an epiphytic bromeliad that is purported to be carnivorous. Catopsis berteroniana grows high up in the trees, often times in bare trees in...