And, the choice of varieties has never been richer, or, in the Internet age, easier to obtain. One grower, Glasshouse Works, lists 120 different varieties of coleus alone on its Web site. Airplanes and telecommunications may have shrunk the globe since Washington's day, but it's still a thrill to grow and admire the flora of lush and romantic places that most of us know only secondhand or in our imaginations. Palms are native to virtually every hot region, including the Americas, Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia. Plants in these hot, steamy jungles, where light is scarce, have learned to grow rapidly to gigantic proportions.
Some bamboos can grow inches in a single day.
It's this very oversized quality that has helped foster the revival in tropicals. They're also easy to grow in containers, and people are moving to containers because they don't have much land. The range of tropical plants is boundless because you don't have to limit yourself to plants that make it through the winter outdoors. None of them will. In addition to bananas and cannas you can grow such enchanting specimens as coleus, caladiums, taro, various palms and bamboos, tender ferns, calla lilies, castor bean, papyrus or common houseplants, including dracaenas, begonias and hibiscus.