About Rainforest Flora

Rainforest Flora, Inc. was formed in 1974 by Paul T. Isley III, Jerrold A. Robinson, and William Harris.

Paul Isley was introduced to Tillandsias while a student at UCLA in the 1960’s. He was fascinated by these incredibly unique looking plants that grow with no soil. A few years after he graduated from UCLA with a degree in Economics, he and a friend traveled through Mexico and Guatemala collecting some plants. Paul flew back up to Los Angeles from Guatemala City in the summer of 1974 and a few months later he began gluing them onto pieces of grapewood and offering them at swap meets and arts and crafts fairs.

After two years of doing this he invited his friend Jerry Robinson to join him. He had met Jerry while on a diving expedition in the Caribbean that was searching for Spanish Galleons. Jerry graduated from UCLA with a degree in Geology and had been managing a K-Mart store in Sacramento. He came down for a few weeks and made the commitment to the business and he has been an integral part of the operation ever since. The two have built Rainforest Flora, Inc. into a respected nursery concern.

Self-Sufficiency in Tillandsia Production

The goal of Rainforest Flora, Inc. has always been to provide the best quality plants at the best prices to the most markets and people.

Our plants are produced at two facilities in North San Diego County, California. The total horizontal growing space for the plants is almost 300,000 square feet and the Tillandsias in the various stages of growth number in the millions making Rainforest Flora, Inc. the largest producer of Tillandsias in North America and one of the largest in the world. If one subtracts plants that are collected from the environment, that are a major part of Latin American nursery trade, and considers only nurseries that distribute mature “home grown” specimens, then Rainforest Flora, Inc. is perhaps the largest.