A Couple of Cool Tropicals

I spent most of Saturday cruising around to some of the local garden centers and nurseries, and found a few very cool things. I picked up the "Twilight Prairie Blues" baptisia to round out the collection I've got going of different cultivars, a few new irises for the perennial bed, and a couple of other things.

While I was at Scottsdale Farm, I picked up a couple of cool tropicals. I'm going to keep them in the greenhouse at the Big House for the winter, then put them out into the shade next summer. The variegated tapioca (Manihot) is one I've looked for over the past couple of years, and have never been able to find any larger than a tiny four-inch pot. This was in a 3 gallon, and IN CLEARANCE, to boot!

The other cool tropical is Alocasia "Stingray," which has a very interesting leaf shape. According to the grower's website, it is believed to have been some sort of mutation on another plant, but stays true through multiple generations of propogation! Whether a mutant or not, I'm thinking it's going to be pretty awesome in the shade bed next year!