Tetrapanax, Giant Rice Paper Plant 'Steroidal Giant'

If you want a very tropical look outdoors, and you don't live in Florida, Hawaii, or a similar climate, this species/variety may be perfe...Read Morect for you. Quickly becomes the focal point of your garden with truly gargantuan leaves, unless you can also grow giant alocasias and gunneras in your garden nothing comes even close. And this plant grows much taller than either of them. It attains flowering size within 2 years and just keeps growing and growing. Neighbors and drivers ask me how can I manage growing so successfully such a beautiful tropical philodendron or jungle palm in our very hot dry summer climate without all the leaves burning (my biggest one stands proudly in full valley sun and still looks like a postcard plant from Tahiti) and are shocked to learn it does great outdoors here without any fuss. They all think it's strictly a greenhouse plant! Watching it develop is fascinating, the growing leaves are first covered with a thick white fuzz and it looks like an ancient plant from the age of the dinosaurs or a cross between a tropical palm and a tree fern or tree cycad, a truly marvelous eye-catching wonder. The gigantic leaves start out looking like closed upward turned fists emerging in neat order from the crown of the plant. They grow larger by leaps daily as they expand beyond measure. Each leaf is on a single arm-like stem whose massive scars form a very large thick trunk that eventually creates a tree-sized plant. Then the best part comes at the end of the year. As if the weird wonderful massive leaves weren't enough, at the end of Autumn unusual complicated white structures start forming on the crown where the leaves usually emerge from. If you enjoy glowing white humongous flower candelabras exploding from the top of a plant in November and December of all months, this beauty is for you. Love it so much I've now planted four outdoors.