The Tropical Plant International Expo (TPIE), held last week in Ft. Lauderdale and put on by the hard-working folks at FNGLA, just may be my favorite trade show in the industry—and the reason is only partially due to visiting Florida in January. No, the main reasons it's one of my favorite shows are because 1) the show is filled with plants (and even some products) that are just so very different from what you see at most other trade shows, and 2) the trend-forward presentations are consistently the best I hear throughout the year. And this year, FNGLA did an outstanding job on both fronts. Kudos to you!

This year’s presentations (the ones I caught, anyway) were no exception, and I’ll talk more about them near the bottom. But let me start off with what really thrills everyone in the industry most of all: the plants.

I’ll begin with the officially cool new plants, or rather, those plants that were voted to be the cats’ meows. Let’s start with the plant the TPIE Show Judges voted as the Most Unusual Plant Specimen, the new-ish Dracaena marginata called Ray of Sunshine exhibited by The Jungle Nursery.

The Jungle Nursery's Dracaena marginata Ray of Sunshine

They’ve had it a few years but now they have Ray of Sunshine in good numbers. And they need to—people are going to want this! Its yellow strip of variegation is wide, giving the foliage plant lots of bright color contrasting with green.

Show attendees got a chance to pick their favorite plants too, from those exhibited in the New Plant/Product Showcase. The winner of the Favorite New Foliage Plant is the new ZZ plant (zamioculcas) called Raven from Costa Farms.

ZZ plant Raven from Costa Farms

It’s called Raven for a good reason. Look at that dark color! Interestingly, the leaves start off a greenish color and turn dark. What a great color not just for the home but also in interiorscape projects.

The Favorite New Flowering Plant goes to Suntory Flowers' new Brindabella shrub roses, specifically Purple Prince. But they are all quite lovely!

Brindabella Purple Prince from Suntory

Big, bushy roses, gorgeous double flowers, excellent disease resistance—plus such a wonderful fragrance I haven’t encountered in new roses in quite some time. The other selling points are its vigorous growth on a bush that remains under 4-ft. tall, and its suitability in both the home and commercial landscape. Colleague Jen Zurko, who saw them at MANTS the week before, notes that Brindabella has fewer thorns up toward the top of the stem. That is great news for home gardeners, for sure!  

Sure, those are some great plants but there were a lot more tropical-type plants to be found that made my personal list of favorites.

Let’s head back to The Jungle Nursery booth for another item that was real neat. It’s a dwarf jade (Portulacaria afra) that makes a wonderful bonsai. I got to thinking: With this houseplant trend picking up speed, some newbie indoor gardeners may want to start exploring with bonsai, and this jade plant is a nice way to start.

The Jungle Nursery's dwarf jade makes a real nice bonsai

For a punch of just-right color (not all green, not too gaudy) I really liked the Cherries Jubilee aglaonema from Costa Farms. Costa is certainly on an aglaonema roll lately, aren’t they? They also had a lemony-lime variety called Lemonade. Can’t wait to see what else they have in their back room.

Costa Farms' Cherries Jubilee aglaeonema

A flowering tropical plant I can picture sitting on my window sill (hint, hint) is an anthurium called Zizou from Anthura BV. This small-statured item has small purple flowers. In my opinion, it’s a nice impulse buy for garden centers and groceries.

Anthurium Zizou from Anthura

Lastly, I should have listened to my trendspotting colleague Adriana months ago when she told me that something called Pilea peperomioides was the next “it” plant. A few companies had it on display (Harster Greenhouses and Costa, to name two), but apparently you can’t not see it all over appropriately tagged Instagram posts. I love it! If you’re a retailer, get yourself a bunch of it. Why not try it for St. Patrick’s Day?

Pilea peperomioides  

Back to the topic of top-notch presentations—and presenters! The opening keynote presentation was given by Max Luthy, who works for Trendwatching, a global company that searches for trends, well, globally. While his overall presentation gave the SRO crowd five trends to pay close attention to in 2018, I want to mention two items that came up briefly at the beginning of his talk.

First, all the key trends can be summed up in one key word, and that word is change. If you think things have changed—clothes, music, interior design, language and everything you can name—just wait for what’s coming. What we know of the world today is so very different from what will come. What exactly is that? Well, he—none of us, actually—have an operational crystal ball, darn it.

But that is where the second item I want to mention comes in. If we look at trends, we can get a good idea of what’s ahead. And he’s not talking “trend” as in there will be a preponderance of purple or stripes or glazed pots. No. What Max uses as a definition for trend is this: A new manifestation among people—in behavior, attitude, expectations—of a fundamental human need. Humans have needs for love, security, human connection, well-being and self-improvement, just to name a few.

So, instead of Max’s global posse searching for what colors they see most often and where, they look for innovations—usually from companies offering products or services—that raise expectations and create those “new manifestations among people of a fundamental human need.” You compete in an expectation economy, Max says.

More on the five general trends Max described in the next Tropical Topics. Meanwhile, I highly encourage you to head over to Trendwatching.com to sign up for his group’s highly insightful e-newsletter.  

So important, in fact, that I am saving my other tropicals-related TPIE information for next time. This free Comprehending the New Tax Law webinar—co-hosted by AmericanHort and K-Coe Isom—will take place on Wednesday, January 31 at 3 p.m. EST. The 1-hour seminar will give hort industry members the facts about how the tax laws have changed and ways to make the tax laws work to business owners’ benefit.

What is K-Coe Isom? Well, they are a national tax consulting business for ag- and food-related industries. K-Coe Isom’s Ryan Stroschein and Doug Claussen will help your business’s decision makers determine how and what to write off, how estate tax exemptions should be managed, whether to change the company’s operating model and other important concerns. Why muddle through figuring out what the tax changes mean yourself when you can hear from folks who both know and love diving into the numbers.

AmericanHort’s Craig Regelbrugge and Tal Coley will also be on the line and help guide the conversation to where it can aid you best. Did I mention it’s FREE? But you must pre-register. Do so at AmericanHort.org. And, if you are an AmericanHort Premium member who joins the webinar, you’ll get a chance for a future one-on-one free consult with K-Coe Isom.