Tropicals & Tender Perennials: A Tacca Tale..., 1 by gothqueen

gothqueen wrote:
...not for the faint of heart!
This is my Tacca integrifolia. This specimen is fairly old, it has been in the ground in this position in the greenhouse for 6 years and has grown pretty huge. I have divided many plants off of it to try to keep in with the limits of this space. Most I traded away, but, last season, I decided to take some and plant them outside and see what would happen over the winter.

They did beautifully in temps as low as 27-28F, had little or no leaf damage, one even bloomed! But as you know, we had a pretty hard late winter here in FL, temps dropped to at least 20F a couple of nights if not into the 18-19 range. When this happened, the Tacca I had planted out froze to the ground. I was pretty certain they were goners and was ready to chalk the experiment up to 'do not repeat this misadventure'...

Today, when I was working out in the yard, I was astounded to see every one that I had planted out is sending up new leaves! They are going to grow back! This pretty much blows me away. They are apparently a lot hardier than I thought.

I will try to take a photo tomorrow of the plants returning.