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

Ryan Hroziencikwasn'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.