Just a heads up, I was at HD today to get some paint, and of course I always go through the Garden Center to enter the store. And I saw HUGE (either 5 or 7) gallon containers of ALocasia tigrina/zebrina there for sale. They were $29.99 of course, but these are truly huge plants. I did not partake, as I already have this plant, but if anyone has been thinking of mail ordering a small start you might consider this option instead

Never anything like that around here unfortunately.

Oooh, Alocasia (Alocasia zebrina) is a beauty! I'm going to HD tomorrow for paint supplies and I know that I will go through the garden department as usual but since we're moving in a couple of weeks, I'm really, really, really trying NOT to buy anymore plants, especially really large ones.

We never get big plants like that. I'm envious!

I think they test market them here in Florida. We get big containers of different alocasias and colocasias, palms in anything from 5-20 gallon containers (but they are all landscape palms, not cool palms), big Philodendrons and all sorts of stuff....once several years ago at Lowes they had 15 gallon containers of blooming Heliconia rostrata. Fortunately I was able to say no because I already had a big stand in my greenhouse. I actually don't think its really ethical for them to stock some of the plants they do because they will not generally make it through a freeze, and the people working in the outdoor garden department usually have no idea of what is hardy and not hardy unless its in the perennial section. You see people loading up carts with crotons, Ti leaves, sea grapes, fishtail palms and I cringe when I hear them say they are going to put them out in the yard. Maybe they can afford to treat them like annuals. I can't LOL. For a while, they were stocking all these different hoyas. I got a nice Hoya retusa at a box store a few years ago, they are really hard to find now even at specialty Hoya websites.

Gina, Your's is the only state they can unload those large houseplants that didn't sell.

LOL I guess so! South Florida can have all this stuff outside but unless you are wealthy you don't usually have a huge yard in So Fl that you can turn into the tropics. I have a friend in Ft Lauderdale who lives on a canal, he wanted to turn his grass yard into a tropical yard and had to buy sledge hammers and pick axes to break up the coral layer right under the soil and make little islands and hammocks of store bought soil in which to plant. It was a long process took a few years to get what he wanted but eventually it looked great. Plumeria, heliconias, palms, Ravenella (travelers palms), bromeliads, all sorts of stuff, I gave him all the heliconias as starts from my collection.

We here can grow heliconia in most areas, but we had only only one local suppler, but recently it stopped selling the plant to local nurseries (no idea why), so I cannot find it locally , only ordering a rhizome fro outside.

Anyway we have only limited variety of plants that are not native to the region, and import some plant from outside (at least legally ) is almost impossible.

Sangel where exactly do you live?

Gina, previously I lived in zone 9a in coastal SC and had Cordylines in the ground there for years. If it had been a cold winter and they died down they reliably came back each spring - even last year when we had a rare blizzard and a week of ice. Here in the Jacksonville area, also 9a, I see many tropicals in landscapes that seem well established, must be the proximity of the water.

Gina1960 said:Sangel where exactly do you live?

Israel

Alice, yes, I think the water makes the difference. We are landlocked here in Gainesville. It gets so terribly blazing hot and humid in summer...the only time we get a breeze really is when the east coast and west coast seabreeze meet and then we get a thunderstorms. Otherwise, once it gets dry and clear here in the winter, radiational cooling can drop us down quick. We usually get a few nights of 20's every year, rarely get any ice, I have NEVER seen snow. Have seen sleet once, on a day when I was doing a 5K race we looked like polar bears. It depends here if Ti and other tropicals will stay up and come back totally on where in your yard they are planted....if you have a really protected spot they will come through if covered. But all the alocasias, brugmansias, colocasias, clerodendrons etc go down. They always come back but I have lost Ti and Crotons more than once so stopped planting them

I noticed the climate in Gainesville, that is one of the towns we considered when we were moving and I did not want to go colder than had been in SC. We were on a sea island which is why we were a good 9a. We wound up in Ponte Vedra where all sorts of interesting things grow. Today I saw a tall palm and the bottom 20' of the trunk was covered in ferns but not the usual ferns you see on a palm. The fronds were large, more like a Nephrolepis biseratta 'Macho' but I was not aware they would climb. Any ideas on which large ferns climb?

I don't grow a lot of ferns, only small unusual ones like the Metallic fern and the tassel ferns.

@ardisia Alice, We have the Old World Climbing Ferns (Lygodium microphyllum) in parts of the state, it's considered a noxious invasive and will takes over everything! https://www.freshfromflorida.c...

Another non-native invasive that is often found on palm trees is Southern Sword Fern (Nephrolepis cordifolia)


A native fern found on Palms here in the state is Cabbage Palm Fern (Phlebodium aureum)

I don't think I have ever seen a Cabbage Fern, interesting! It may well be one but the plant I saw appeared to be different, the fronds seemed to be larger and they did not have that crinkled appearance the ones in your photos have. We had been riding around looking at different neighborhoods when I saw it. If I can find the street again I will try and get a picture.

What an interesting Alocasia, I've never seen that one before. I don't see things like that at our Home Depot or Lowe's. I've not been to the garden centers since the beginning of October, and for me that is a record.

Sherri, the leaves are nothing to write home about...interesting triangular shape but that's about it, but the stems are really cool, striped and very eye-catching en masse

Gina, I remember 2010 when it was 18F for a few nights in Gainesville. There was a thick leyer of ice all over the car. We had to warm it up before going anywhere. I said to my husband, "I thought we are living in Florida?" We are in Gainesville often and I see many tropicals are planted in backyards. I am always thinking, how do they survive the winter there? I saw these zebra alocasia at HD. Didn't buy it though. I have too many plants to protect but it sure looks cool.

It was a 'plant of the moment' about 10 years ago. eBay sellers made a killing selling tiny starter plants for $20 a pop. You know the routine LOL. This plant comes from a single island (Luzon) in the Philippine rainforest. But now of course it has in the intervening years been placed into tissue culture and can thus be mass produced by large commercial growers. It has several names....Alocasia Tigrina, Alocasia reticulata, Alocasia zebrina, and because it has leaves that are spuriously reticulated in the presence of normal leaves on the same plant, ALocasia zebrina reticulata. Plants fall in and out of favor, I guess Zebrina is IN again at the moment.

The only accepted botanic name is Alocasia zebrina.

Halyna, we have had a few cold days here over the years LOL. But each winter it seems to get warmer and warmer, and frost less and less, and actual freezes much more intermittent. I think we only had 2 nights last winter below 30F