TPIE isn’t the only place new tropicals and houseplants are being introduced to the market nowadays. Many more breeders with diversified portfolios are getting into the gig as this category continues its upward trajectory.

Dümmen Orange is the latest of those big breeders to enter the market. My Ball Publishing colleagues Chris Beytes, Bill Calkins, Jen Zurko and Osvaldo Cuevas traveled to California for this year’s California Spring Trials, where they had a first-hand look at Dümmen’s foray into flowering tropicals, specifically with hibiscus and Dipladenia.

The Caribbean Collection of hibiscus are bred in Spain and the Netherlands, which they say has resulted in varieties that can handle a broad range of environments. And apparently this line, which includes six different colors, is less susceptible to bacterial leaf spot. More colors are coming! More than 30 varieties are in quarantine awaiting the selection process. Stock will be produced domestically.

As for the Dipladenia, it’s still fresh enough to not have a name! One will be forthcoming soon. They have two types of Dipladenias—one type is a bushy form and one is a more vining style. I’m a fan of Dipladenias and am excited to see them.

But Dümmen didn’t stop at just flowering tropicals. They introduced their new indoor foliage program called Welcome to the Jungle during CAST, too. The program has 50 varieties of popular houseplant categories such as peperomia, tradescantia, crassula and what I call “strings of things,” all of which are available as unrooted cuttings. At least part of the stock source is from Antigua (in Guatemala, not the island), where they’ve built up some stock over the last few years. So, they’ve got some supply!

The Sprouts program is a new way to offer certain varieties with the cost savings of a cutting but the benefits of a liner. They are essentially tiny baby plants, sans roots, that are multi-stemmed and multi-leaved, pre-callused and ready to stick. Three peperomia varieties are available as sprouts—Leap Frog, Raisinet and Rosso. I am told more Sprouts will be added as they continue to test more varieties in this form.

Meanwhile, Dummen’s Head of Marketing and Retail, Marta Maria Garcia, who clarified some of the Sprouts info for me, also sent along the Welcome to the Jungle program catalog. Warning: You will drool. Flip through it HERE. I want a Mount Blanc!

Here’s the VIDEO where Bill and Chris discuss these two lines from Dümmen Orange. If you’re not interested in bedding plants and annuals, cruise through the video to the 9:20 mark.

Speaking of tradescantia, Bill and Chris spotted a can’t-miss variety at Green Fuse Botanicals’ new operation in Carpenteria. It’s called Tradescantia Pistachio White, and as the name implies, its variegation is light green and white, rather than the cream-colored, which the green trads tend to be. It’s good for baskets, pots and as a groundcover in climates that allow that sort of thing. And by the way, back when I was a kid, all pistachios were red. I’d get a bag of them for Christmas, and if I was lucky, the red dye would be off my fingers by the time I got my next bag.

Green Fuse also introduced four new colors to their Ladyslippers line of streptocarpus. Look how lovely this Azure is! Green Fuse’s owner Steve Jones told Chris and Bill that sales of streptos have taken off along with the entire houseplant category.

There’s a VIDEO of Chris and Bill’s tour through Green Fuse. The Ladyslippers happen at the 3:15 minute mark and the tradescantia is at the 4:05 mark.

PlantHaven is no stranger to tropical offerings. They’ve had the Royal Hawaiian line of colocasias for several years now. Lovely stuff with breeding out of the University of Hawaii. Interesting note here: These came out of a breeding program for agricultural cultivation, as colocasias are also known as taro root, which is a starchy root used to make poi. And now you know.

Anyway, back to PlantHaven and its latest intro into the Royal Hawaiians. It’s called Waikiki and is an attention grabber with its vibrant flamingo-pink stripe down the middle of the leaf. That stripe begins as a white stripe and will turn pink as the leaf matures. Chris calls this “flamboyant foliage.” He’s 100% correct on that. In fact, one of my Buzz readers said that this variety was one of the standouts for his entire California Spring Trials.

PlantHaven also has a line of sempervivums, did you know? The Supervems are big beefy specimens. The latest in the line is Emerald, and I’ll let you figure out what color it is.

Here’s Bill and Chris’s VIDEO of their tour through the PlantHaven exhibit. Waikiki is at the beginning and Emerald and the Supervems appears at the 5:50 minute mark.

We are going from colocasias to alocasias for this item, and back to Florida, too. The folks at Nature’s Way Farms in Homestead are introducing a new, exotic and patent-pending alocasia variety from Nature’s Way called Dawn, named for the company’s founder Dawn Wilson. Dawn (the plant, not the person) is a rare item with marbled leaf patterns of light green and white tones. And they say each plant has a different pattern and ratio of color, so each plant is unique.

Wowza, look at that variegation! Your rare plant collectors are gonna love it! Orders are now only available via Amazon as availability is so limited, but once numbers are up, you’ll be able to get a bunch. Get yourselves a few, mark them up and wait for supply to ramp up.