Dear Master Gardener: I was given a small plant as a gift last spring. It grew into a gigantic plant with striking leaves and spiky pink seed pods. I've learned it is a castor bean plant. I'd like to ...

Sweltering heat and bright sunlight do not a tropical garden make, even if many common garden plants, from marigolds to okra, do hail from the tropics. That tropical look comes from lush, bold foliage ...

Pretty to look at but beware of the poisonous nature of these two tropical beauties. Castor beans grow 6 to 10 feet tall and produce large star shaped leaves up to 2 ½ feet across. The spiny red ...

Q: I want to grow the huge, gorgeous red-leafed plants I've seen on my neighbors' stoops. But I've been told they are ricinus, the plant that was used to assassinate the Bulgarian dissident Georgi I.