This Los Angeles Horticultural Center Is Home to a Myriad of Rare Plants—Discover Some of Our Favorites

Ryan Hroziencik wasn't always interested in plants. In fact, the Los Angeles native remembers being totally uninterested in them as a child. "We'd be on our way to Disneyland, and suddenly my dad would turn off the road to scope out a nursery," he says. "It was cruel torture for a kid." But plant procurement was part of the family business. His father, Ronald J. Hroziencik, had become enamored of all things green back in the late 1960s, while selling junk at swap meets with his college roommate. Now and again, they'd offer a fern or a cactus, and customers scooped them up, so Ronald was always on the lookout.

By 1972, the elder Hroziencik was fully focused on horticulture, and opened The Tropics Inc. Ryan spent plenty of time in the Hollywood storefront, though he stuck mostly to the giant heap of dirt they kept in the back for repotting. It was 10 feet tall by 15 feet wide, and was perfect for building tunnels and bunkers for his favorite G.I. Joe action figures.

After high school, Ryan enrolled in art school in Chicago, but decided that formal training wasn't for him and started working at the family shop. This time around, he saw the inventory through a new lens: as art. Following no one's rules but his own, he began "sculpting" plants. He exposed an African cabbage tree's root system to see if it could survive (it did). He overwatered a $10,000 boojum tree (it didn't, dying one heck of an expensive death). He picked up botanical names, and his acquisitions grew increasingly unique. Though he became co-owner in 1998 and is now managing the business, he firmly believes he's fulfilled his original destiny. "One thousand percent, I make art," he says. "All day long."

The Tropics' showroom, now 20,000 square feet, envelops you in another world. It teems with thousands of varieties, including trees and succulents, as well as singular decorative pieces ranging from vintage European planters to a whale skull. Landscape and interior designers and celebrities, including Martha, come to explore and pluck rare finds for their homes and for movie sets (just one example: Jurassic Park). "This isn't the place you come to with a shopping list," Ryan says.

The store turns 50 this year, and he is grateful that his dad, still co-owner, stops by every few weeks. He chuckles as he 'fesses up to the scouting detours he now takes with his four kids in tow—though never on their way to Disneyland, he swears. "History sure repeats itself," he says with a grin. None of his children are interested in the family business, but he's quick to add a "yet!" to the end of that thought.

Here, mounds of Abromeitiella brevifolia, a terrestrial bromeliad native to South America, share the floor with pots of leafless Dioscorea elephantipes, a species from South Africa. The bromeliad's foliage will eventually creep over the containers, obscuring them. "I'm obsessed with this plant," says shop co-owner Ryan Hroziencik. "Obsessed!" The D. elephantipes will soon leaf out, but he almost prefers the stark geometry of its dormant form.

The Hroziencik family has a lot to be proud of these days, including half a century in business and three generations of "shopkeepers." Here, Ryan and his wife, Carita, stand with their four children, Paul (standing), Naomi (seated, left), Laila, and Benjamin. To the right are Ryan's father, Ronald, and sister, Melanie.

A thicket of container plantings, some weighing as much as eight tons, fills the space inside the store's front gate. On the left, multiple spiky-trunked Ceiba speciosa trees grow together in an antique sugar kettle. In the center, a sculptural Kalanchoe beharensis twists out of a concrete pot.

An aged fockea edulis, native to South Africa and Namibia, flaunts its bulbous root in a handcrafted ceramic pot. It does best in indirect sunlight and well-draining soil. During the growing season, let the soil dry out between waterings. When it's dormant in winter, water only occasionally.

Sometimes a plant makes a mutation that can't be beat. Here, an aeonium, usually a rosette-shaped succulent, has instead formed a crest packed with miniature variegated leaves.

Ryan can pot up a plant composition on the spot for a client, while other plantings take several months or a year of growing before he considers them finished. Here, he densely planted approximately 20 pilea peperomiodes, aka Chinese money plants, in a low bowl. The grouping reminds him of a pond filled with lily pads.

Native to Botswana and South Africa, this rare trochomeria macrocarpa (dormant here) is actually in the same family as cucumbers and melons. It will produce long vines during its growing season.

Ryan refers to this South African adenia glauca, also shown in its dormant state, as his "Jack and the Beanstalk" plant for its ability to rapidly shoot out vines up to 12 feet long when it begins growing in spring and summer.

A group of f. edulis huddle in an iron bowl. "This species is crazy-hardy," says Ryan. "I can hack it down to practically nothing, and it still grows."A customer once remarked that this arrangement looks like five dancing ladies, and now that's all Ryan sees.

Mounted staghorn ferns cover the back wall of one area in the shop. A most unusual Ficus microcarpa sits center stage in a shallow ceramic bowl. Ryan has been keeping its size contained, as with a bonsai, by pruning and shaping it for months. It has a tangle of lateral roots that form out of the branches and drape downward. The bulbous specimens around it are dormant F. edulis.