Tropical Plant Conference, Ft. Lauderdale

We took in the TPIE (Tropical Plant Conference) in Ft. Lauderdale this week. It's where lots of new plants are introduced to the retail nurseries. New products, hot new plants and what's for sale this year. For example, last year when I attended this conference, the exciting new plant was the introduction of the blue orchids.

This time, the same company introduced two new colors, lavender and maroon along with a deeper blue. You can see these, below. At the beginning of the year no one knew much about these, but by fall of 2011, you could find blue orchids in Home Depot and lots of other stores. I assume these new colors will be available in the same places. They are, however, not naturally colored. They are white orchids that have had color injected into the base, so when the re-bloom, they will be white or near white.

New orchid colors for this year.

Rachael Hopkins, from Hopkins Nursery won best of 10 x 10 nursery displays.

Hopkins Nursery, a wholesale nursery, is a place I've written about before as I try to visit just about every time I get to Florida. They're growers of things like allspice, cinnamon, bay rum and similar rare and hard to find plants. To see what they grow, here's their website.

Notice, it's a plant watering container, but also a sprayer at the top.

I thought this was a good new product this year. It's a container for watering plants and also has a mister on top for plants that need more humidity.

Medillina Magnifica

One of the winners of the cool new plant category was this Medillina Magnifica - sorry, there's no common name. It stays in bloom form 4-6 months, is tough with long clusters of bright flowers and large buds (which are about the size of an orange, the flowers hang down about 15 inches or more).

I liked the garden feet planters - they're almost 30 inches long and come in 6 colors. And this little planter, below of a bromeliad and a cat in a basket.

Bromeliad in bloom with "cat."

While this looks like a real cat in a basket, it's not. The basket is about 1 1/2 inches across, the bromeliad that's in bloom is only about the size of 2 postage stamps and the cat is made of rabbit fur. Still, it's one of those too-cute items there will probably be a market for.

That's the news from South Florida. Wish you could all be here and smell the flowers!

Florida Sunshine

Flower of the sausage tree. Flowers hang on long "ropes" then become "sausages."

It's hard to leave home when the daytime temperatures get up in the 40s and 50s, but it's easier when nights are still in the 20s. I hopped down to Florida over the weekend. Thailand had flooding problems, so I didn't go there and south India just wasn't working out, so to gather up some warmth and inspiration, I'm back to Florida for a week or so. The pull - besides days in the middle 70s and nights as low as 55, is the Tropical Plant Conference in Ft. Lauderdale.

Austin, telling his parents about the banyan tree. Yes, that's just one tree behind him.

I met up with a friend, Austin Jones (see his blog), in Central Florida a couple of days ago. He's a farm worker from Bear Creek Farm near Osceola, MO (you'll find stories about Bear Creek Farm in my older blog posts). So we met up and are heading to the plant conference tomorrow.

Oranges of all kinds are ripening right now, sweet and juicy from the trees.

Today we visited friends, Tom and Roxana Collins who winter in Bradenton. They took us to a fun little citrus orchard to check out the hundreds of varieties of citrus trees grown there. Austin is intensely interested in fruit, especially apples, but found lots of things to see and ask about in the orange trees.

Austin quizzing the orange guy about citrus varieties.

We also visited the Barnum Bailey Mansion and Gardens, and checked out the variety of trees there.

You may recall I came this way south last year and nearly froze. I'm enjoying the warm breezes and palm trees - this is what Florida should feel like. And food? Check out this - soft shell crabs are in season and here's what you get when you order a crab sandwich.

Yes, you get the whole crab, deep-fried and you eat it all.

More news soon about the tropical plant conference tomorrow.