Hello! My name is Surin Kumar and I am the owner of Black Toe Tropicals. I've been a keen grower and collector of lowland Nepenthes, Orchids (mostly Bulbophyllum species) and understorey/jungle plants since 2012.
So, why the name Black Toe Tropicals? Without context and backstory it's tricky to make sense of it, so here's why!
It all started with my time - almost 5 years to be exact - as an ecology researcher in the pristine peat swamp forests of Brunei Darussalam. In the many arduous and sometimes just downright dangerous hours I spent conducting field work, I had the fortune of observing dozens upon dozens of genera in-situ, many of which are cultivated as ornamental plants worldwide.
Though topographically relatively flat to other forest types, a short 1km hike can take up to an hour! The soft, unstable peat does not hold traction and often obscures the hard, unforgiving ends of buttress and stilt roots jutting out into the trail. Not a good place to avoid stubbing your toe, which I did too many times to count in my first few months there. That, coupled with inconspicuous waist-deep pitfalls between the enormous buttress roots of the dominant tree species Shorea albida, and mounting over neck-high deadfall often left me battered and bruised after each field trip. It was like learning to walk again and the reward, for me at least, was seeing all the amazing plants I had learnt about in books and online, up close and in person. I'd often come back from a field trip with a horror show in my shoes - cuts, grazes and bruised toes. I even had toenails fall off after turning completely black from all the stubbing in the field.
In parallel at that phase in my life, I was toying with the idea of naming my nursery just for the heck of it, but I also always dreamt of running it as my own business some day. So, on a whim, I named it Black Toe Tropicals, as homage to my rich, revered and unforgettable experiences in the peat swamp.