Medinilla magnifica

Medinilla magnifica, known as the showy medinilla or rose grape, is an epiphytic flowering plant of the family Melastomataceae that is native to the Philippines. In the wild it grows in the forks of large trees, where seed lands in accumulated leaf litter, moss and other plant debris, sprouts, roots and anchors itself and draws its nutrition from the decaying material around its base rather than from the host tree. The plant can reach about three metres in height and bears opposite, firm, leathery, ovate leaves of 20 to 30 centimetres. Its flowers are carried in panicles up to 50 centimetres long beneath pink bracts; the individual flowers are pink, red or violet, and the fleshy fruits are violet berries about one centimetre wide. It is grown as a perennial in the tropics and as a houseplant elsewhere, needing high humidity, bright indirect light and temperatures above about 15 degrees Celsius. It has won the Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit, and King Baudouin of Belgium grew it in the royal conservatories.