One of the world's great culinary trees and the source of the tangy tamarind pulp used in drinks, sauces, sweets, and chutneys worldwide: a large, long-lived, slow-growing tropical tree with a dense, spreading, evergreen crown of fine feathery leaflets, small yellow-and-red flowers, and curved brown pods filled with a sticky, sweet-sour pulp. Honesty first about origin: tamarind is most likely African in origin (GBIF), but it has been carried, cultivated, and naturalised across India and South-East Asia so anciently and so widely that its exact native range is debated and many sources call it Indian — describe it as probably African and pantropical in cultivation, not as a North American or European native. It is frost-tender (USDA 10b-11), wanting full sun, plenty of space, and good drainage, and it is drought-tolerant once established. In cold-winter climates it cannot grow outdoors and is kept only as a tender frost-free container or bonsai specimen that rarely fruits. The sweet-sour fruit pulp is the prize, so it earns its place as an edible tree where the climate allows.

The African baobab (Adansonia digitata) is the legendary "upside-down tree" of the African savanna — a massive, swollen, water-storing bottle-trunk topped by a sparse crown of stout branches that look like roots flung up into the air. GBIF gives its native range as the hot, dry savannas of mainland sub-Saharan Africa, from the Sahel south, where it is among the slowest-growing and longest-lived trees on Earth, standing for many centuries and even millennia. It bears big, pendulous, white night flowers — bat-pollinated in the wild — and large, velvety, hanging "monkey-bread" fruits whose dry pulp (very high in vitamin C, sold as "baobab powder") and young leaves are both eaten. It is a frost-tender, extremely drought-adapted tree that wants full sun, very sharp drainage, and enormous space, hardy outdoors only in roughly USDA zones 10b-11. RHS lists it as a tender, very slow-growing succulent-trunked tree: outside the tropics it is grown only as a slow potted curiosity or caudex bonsai, kept nearly dry and frost-free through the winter, when it drops its leaves.

A spreading, round-crowned savanna tree from sub-Saharan Africa, famous as the marula — the source of the Amarula liqueur and a fruit beloved of elephants. Honesty first: where it is hardy (USDA zones 10a-11) it becomes a large 18-35 foot tree with grey bark and compound leaves, bearing heavy crops of plum-sized yellow fruit with a tart, vitamin-C-rich pulp around a hard nut of oil-rich kernels. It is a frost-tender, drought-deciduous tree for full sun and open space, and it is dioecious: male and female flowers are carried on separate trees, so you need a female (with a male nearby) to get any fruit. Outside the warm tropics it is grown only as a tender container or tub specimen kept frost-free, never as a temperate-garden tree. The fruit pulp — eaten fresh, juiced, or fermented into marula beer and the Amarula liqueur — and the oily kernels are both eaten, so it is grown as much for food and culture as for shade.

A fast, easy, productive evergreen large shrub or small tree from tropical America, grown across warm Brazil as the goiaba. It carries smooth, mottled, peeling bark, prominently veined leaves, and white flowers followed by the fragrant, vitamin-C-rich edible fruit. In frost-free climates (roughly USDA zones 9b-11b) it begins bearing within a few years and crops heavily and reliably, which is exactly why it has become a serious invasive weed in many tropical regions outside its native range. It is frost-tender and grown in the ground only where winters stay mild; bees do the pollinating.

A fast-growing tropical woody shrub grown for its swollen, starchy storage roots — cassava, the mandioca of Brazil and one of the great staple foods of the tropical world. POWO (Kew) and Flora e Funga do Brasil record Manihot esculenta as native to and first domesticated in Brazil and the southern Amazon, the homeland of mandioca, manioc and tapioca. It forms a slender, upright shrub of palmately-lobed leaves on often red-tinged, jointed stems, and below ground it swells a cluster of long tuberous roots that are harvested, peeled and cooked. HONESTY (load-bearing): cassava is one of the most important food crops of the tropics, but the raw roots AND leaves contain cyanogenic glycosides (linamarin) and are TOXIC if eaten raw or under-processed — they must be peeled and properly cooked, and bitter varieties soaked and/or fermented, to drive off the cyanide before they are safe to eat. It is frost-tender (roughly USDA zone 9b and up) and drought-tolerant once established, which is exactly why it is such a dependable famine-insurance crop across the warm tropics.

An upright, frost-tender warm-season annual mallow domesticated in West Africa and now grown throughout the tropics for its edible calyces (GBIF). It carries red stems, lobed leaves, and pale-yellow hibiscus flowers, but the prize is the fleshy, deep-red CALYCES that swell around the seed pod after each flower fades — the source of the famous ruby "hibiscus" / roselle / bissap tea, syrups, and jam. The young leaves are also eaten as a sour potherb. It needs a long hot season and full sun to flower and set its calyces, and because it is short-day it flowers only as the nights lengthen in autumn, so in cool-summer climates it may run out of season before the harvest matures.