Finding the rare varieties involves legwork. "You have to learn all the names to identify the plants, and it takes a while to learn them because there are about 800 known named varieties," Lee says. "I've seen people get into arguments to the point where they'll lose friendships over names of crotons. I'm telling you, there is something really bizarre about this plant."

Melbourne horticulturist and educator Dr. Frank B. Brown, 86, who recently released an updated version of his 1960 book Crotons of the World, agrees "They're back like gangbusters." Crotons first drew Brown's interest in 1955 when he noticed one growing outside his office. When he contacted the local plant society to inquire about it, he was told that they didn't know anything about crotons. Brown contacted the University of Florida, horticultural groups around the country, even a botanical garden in London, and each time heard the same story. The only tidbit he was able to glean from all of these sources was that crotons grow well in the Bahamas.

"I kept searching, but nobody knew anything," he remembers. "I said, 'Well, somebody should know something,' so I began research for a book. That's when I met the Miami hybridizers."

Over the years, Brown has become a mentor to many croton enthusiasts. "Oh, Lord, they talk to me, they visit me, they're here all of the time," he reports with a chuckle. "Now that the book has been reissued we're getting orders from all over the world. There's great interest coming from Australia."

Bradenton's Reasoner family was exchanging plant material with botanical gardens all over the world by the late 1880s. They sold plants to Northern garden businesses via mail order and the railroads, and published horticultural catalogues continuously from 1883 until 1936. Those catalogues hold valuable clues.

"My father, Bud Reasoner, was a big croton enthusiast," says Andy Reasoner. "As a boy he was collecting and breeding crotons. At one time he had his own collection of 60 to 80 different named varieties of crotons."

Many croton varieties never made it to the catalogues, and many were unnamed. Others were named but not shared. And therein lies part of the croton's intrigue: Many of the plant enthusiasts who hybridized crotons in those early years were secretive about their work. "There was a certain amount of that, and I don't quite get it. But it doesn't surprise me, either, because, as an example, hibiscus people are like that," says Reasoner, whose grandfather, Norman Reasoner, was the founder of the American Hibiscus Society.

Andy Reasoner, who holds a degree in horticulture from the University of Florida, theorizes that many of the older varieties gradually died out because their coloration was more a result of unstable viruses than genetics. The Croton Society's Harold Lee has his own theory about the lost hybrids.

"The Reasoner catalogues document the popular hybrids of the time, and the Reasoners developed many of those hybrids," he says. "But they don't list everything. Most of the early hybridizers didn't have a nursery. They were just hybridizing in their back yards and they were not sharing. There was an ego thing going on."

Thomas Edison was such a fan of crotons that for a time his winter residence in Fort Myers was reported to have the largest collection in the country. During tours of the gardens, visitors can see three of Edison's original crotons, clustered in a shady spot near the entrance to his dock.

Edison's three remaining original crotons were purchased at Reasoner's Tropical Nursery, which had developed several popular hybrids, according to Bob Alonzo, a croton enthusiast who lives in Fort Myers with Robert Halgrim Sr., 99, a family friend and the original curator of Thomas Edison's winter home. Halgrim began hybridizing and collecting crotons in 1920, and he was friendly with several of the Miami hybridizers.

For several years now, Alonzo and other members of the Croton Society have been working with Halgrim, Brown, hybridizers and collectors to identify hybrids. "When I met Mr. Halgrim, I realized there was only a handful of people who could identify the old varieties and that we were running out of time," Alonzo explains. "We've had some successes."

Tapestry is one of those successes. Black with hot pink mottling, this croton had been described to Alonzo by Halgrim. One lone Tapestry was found in the east coast garden of the home once owned by the man who had originally produced it.