A Walk Through The Tropics, Inc. in Los Angeles
I hope you've seen the January/February 2022 issue of our magazine "Living" - it's on newsstands right now! You can't miss it - my beautiful heart-shaped raspberry and coconut topped cake is on the cover. Inside, there are lots of great ideas, tips, and stories for the New Year including heart-healthy recipes, two of my own favorite Valentine's treats, and a tour of a one-of-a-kind botanical showroom in Hollywood, California called The Tropics, Inc.
The Tropics, Inc. has become one of my favorite stops whenever I am in the Los Angeles area. During a recent business trip, I paid a visit to Ron Horziencik, CEO and President of the 20,000 square foot gallery filled with tropical plants, trees, orchids, and other vintage and decorative accessories. The family-owned company, which turns 50 this year, offers plants for both residential and corporate use, real estate staging, and television and film projects. I always find something interesting and inspiring whenever I walk through the space and look at the many unusual cultivars, containers, and outdoor garden ornaments.
Here are some of my photos, enjoy - and please pick up an issue of "Living" to see many, many more.
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- There is something beautiful to see as soon as one enters The Tropics, Inc. In the center is an aged Elephant Foot Tree. Also pictured here is a specimen Nolina and variegated Veronica bushes. Ryan’s father, Ronald J. Hroziencik, started the business selling junk at a swap meet with his college roommate. Occasionally, they would have plants to sell, and customers loved them. Now, it’s a successful establishment with a large inventory of unique and beautiful horticultural specimens. Read all about it in the current issue of “Living.”
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- These are aged Aloe polyphyllas – also known as the spiral aloe, kroonaalwyn, lekhala kharetsa, or many-leaved aloe. It is a species of flowering plant in the genus Aloe that is endemic to the Kingdom of Lesotho in the Drakensberg mountains. These are at least 35-years old and feature compact evergreen succulent foliage arranged in a perfect spiral pattern.
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- Here is a closer look from the top of one. Its fleshy gray-green leaves form a tight rosette forming clockwise or counterclockwise as it ages.
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- This is a large specimen aged Abromeitiella brevifolia mound in a low charcoal gray concrete disk planter. Look in the January/February issue of “Living” for a beautiful overhead view of these gorgeous plants.
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- This is another Abromeitiella brevifolia mound in a low iron ceramic bowl planter. It is a dwarf, succulent bromeliad that grows terrestrially. It forms small rosettes of lance-shaped to triangular stiff, fleshy, leaves that proliferate from offsets to form a compact rounded mound that could grow up to 70-inches in diameter. From a distance, the entire plant looks soft and moss-like but they are anything but – instead they are very, very sharp!
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- Nearby is a specimen Dioscorea elephantipes sitting in a handmade planter. This is also referred to as a turtleback, elephant’s foot or Hottentot bread – a species of flowering plant in the genus Dioscorea of the family Dioscoreaceae, native to the dry interior of South Africa. It has a deeply fissured surface and a large, corky caudex that can grow up to six feet in nature.
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- Caudiciform plants form a caudex, or a fat, swollen stem, trunk, or aboveground roots. This one is also in a handmade artist planter.
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- Adenia glauca is a caudiciform succulent that starts forming a fat green trunk almost after seed germination and continues to grow fatter as it ages. The leaves are pale gray-green to glaucous green and are largest at the base of the stem and smaller at the tips.
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- I saw these assorted Haworthia plants and remembered my own in my greenhouse in Bedford, New York. Haworthias are succulents native to South Africa and are small, low-growing plants that form rosettes of fleshy green leaves generously covered with white pearly warts or bands.
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- This is a giant staghorn fern cluster on an aged burled tree stump from Bali. It is massive in size. I love staghorns and also have a beautiful collection of my own. Staghorn ferns look very much like deer or elk antlers and are native to Asia and Australia. The plants are part of the Polypodiaceae family. They grow slowly, but end up quite large and impressive when mature.
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- This is the old burled tree stump below – so very rare and interesting.
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- In the front is a specimen Pseudobombax ellipticum bonsai in a low rustic planter. This caudex forms a fat base, resembling a turtle shell. It is a very rare succulent.
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- I am a big fan of faux bois planters and saw these extra large faux bois planters right away. Faux bois is from the French meaning “false wood” and refers to the artistic imitation of wood or wood grains in a variety of mediums. It was probably first crafted with concrete using an iron armature by garden craftsmen in France called “rocailleurs” using common iron materials such as rods, barrel bands, and even chicken wire.
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- In another corner, more large faux bois planters – I admired them all.
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- This is a vintage Willy Guhl planter. Willy Guhl was a pioneering Swiss furniture designer and one of the first industrial designers in Switzerland. He designed a wide range of objects and furnishings, from chairs to door handles, church pews, and vases. He is probably best known for his chairs, especially the Loop Chair. In 1951, the Swiss company Eternit commissioned Guhl—along with his students at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich—to create a line of attractive and durable planters for use indoors or out. These planters were made using concrete.
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- Here’s another assortment of vintage items – a large French work table, and more faux bois planters in various sizes.
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- In this photo – a vintage French sunburst mirror on the wall, club chairs, and a specimen black olive tree on the left. Black olive trees reach heights ranging from 20 to 80 feet, and develop strong, sturdy trunks covered by a thick, dense gray, deeply fissured bark. The tree canopy is also dense and tight, with most branching spreading outward and horizontally when mature.
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- Here’s another staghorn. Staghorn ferns, Platycerium, are epiphytic, which means they grow mounted on plaques like this one or other substrates. They have two distinct leaf forms—small, flat leaves that cover the root ball structure and take up water and nutrients and the green, pronged antler fronds that emerge from the base.
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- This is called Dion spinulosum, giant dioon, or gum palm – a cycad endemic to limestone cliffs and rocky hillsides in the tropical rainforests of Veracruz and Oaxaca, Mexico. At maturity, it is among the tallest cycads in the world – elegant, palm-like, and evergreen with an open rosette of perfectly arranged long fronds.
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- Here is a large Furcraea macdougallii, or MacDougall’s Century Plant. It is a large rosette forming succulent that has six-foot long dark-green stiffly-upright leaves with regularly-spaced hooked teeth growing at the top of an unbranched trunk that can be eight-feet tall or more. In its natural habitat, it can grow to more than 20 feet and is considered the tallest of the Agave relatives.
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- This is an “ancient” and very large Encephalartos tree. Encephalartos woodii, Wood’s cycad, is a rare cycad in the genus Encephalartos, and is endemic to the oNgoye Forest of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is one of the rarest plants in the world.
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- And here is Ryan, standing in front of an enormous vintage French wine barrel. The Tropics Inc. is an amazing gallery of botanical specimens and interesting decor. Wait until you see what I bought there! Please go to The Tropics web site for more information and be sure to pick up a copy of “Living” to learn how this family-owned business began – its story is interesting, informative, and inspiring.
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