The whole enchilada.

Beautiful colours in one plant.

Thank you. This plant like the Calatheas and Prayer Plant Maranta's are just too tropical for California. Mostly its the need for warm nights. Why they do great in homes.

It's definitely not too tropical for California. Like I said in the previous comment it does well outside for me...just need a lot of water and some direct sun to keep the coloring. My plant would flower every year except for the last couple of years in this severe drought.

I believe that San Francisco area has different climate than San Diego. It can dip in December , January to 5 deg C. or even below and I do not think San Diego does. Does it? And more rain and fog in the winter? I might be wrong but this is my perception of the climate between these two cities. What Stan should say : too tropical for Bay area, no?

Klahanie:

There's a definite difference between the climate of SF Bay Area and San Diego area. However, with this being said: there's a lot of banana belts there in the SF Bay and many tropical/subtropical plants/trees grow well there even though it's wetter and cooler than San Diego's warmer, drier subtropical climate.

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 35 years and you would be surprised how many subtropical and even tropical plants can grow there. Of course, the ultra-tropical plants cannot be grown there. We can grow some of the ultra-tropical plants/trees here in San Diego because our weather stays so mild in winter and the daytime high temps can be much higher than the SF Bay Area. Freezing temps are pretty much unknown in the urban areas of San Diego (where I live) and San Diego has not recorded a freezing temp in downtown since 1963. I believe in 165 years of weather records in San Diego, freezing temps have only been recorded 6 times. Freezing temps in San Francisco is very rare, also. However, in late December of 1990 the SF Bay Area had it's worst freeze recorded. It caused a tremendous amount of damage to tenders plants/trees. I remember it very well. I lost a lot of plants. You probably remember the 1990 freeze because it hit the whole west coast from Alaska to Los Angeles (San Diego was the only big city that was spared in California).