A vigorous evergreen woody climber from Brazil — called primavera or buganvilia in its homeland — grown across the warm world for its long-lasting, brilliant papery bracts in magenta, purple, white, or pink. The vivid color is not from petals: it comes from those papery BRACTS (modified leaves), which surround the small, tubular, cream-colored true flowers tucked at their centers. POWO (Kew) and Flora e Funga do Brasil both record Bougainvillea glabra as native to Brazil. Left to climb it hauls itself up walls, fences, and pergolas to 10-30 feet, but kept pruned it makes a dense, mounding shrub; it is armed with sharp thorns and flowers hardest when grown lean, hot, and a little dry in blazing full sun. It is frost-tender and hardy in the ground only in USDA zones 9b-11b; everywhere colder it is grown as a greenhouse, conservatory, or container plant and overwintered indoors.

A tender tropical evergreen shrub grown for its enormous, flamboyant flowers — broad funnels of red, pink, orange, yellow, or white, single or double, each with a long protruding column of fused stamens. Native to tropical Asia (a cultigen of such ancient cultivation that no certain wild origin survives), Hibiscus rosa-sinensis blooms continuously in warmth above glossy, dark green, evergreen leaves. Each flower typically lasts only a day, but a healthy plant opens fresh blooms in steady succession from spring through fall — and year-round in frost-free climates. It is the classic hibiscus of warm-climate landscapes and patio containers: heat- and humidity-loving, frost-tender, and hardy in the ground only in USDA zones 9a-11b.

The quintessential African thorn tree: a tough, fast-growing, drought-tolerant tree with a rounded crown of fine, feathery bipinnate leaves, conspicuous paired WHITE THORNS along the branches, and a midsummer haze of sweetly fragrant, golden, puff-ball flowers. Recently moved from Acacia to Vachellia (it is the species formerly known as Acacia karroo), it is native widely across southern Africa, from the Cape north (GBIF). Honesty first: this is one of the hardier and most adaptable African trees — but it is still frost-tender, hardy only to about USDA zone 9 once established (zones 9a-11 here), and it grows into a real tree, roughly 10-25 feet tall and wide, that needs full sun and open space. RHS lists it as a tender-to-borderline, drought-tolerant, nitrogen-fixing thorn tree for full sun and a good bee plant (RHS). It is genuinely undemanding once established — drought-hardy, fast, an excellent shade and fodder tree, and a superb bee plant and noted honey source — but the long, sharp, paired white spines are real, so it is a tree to site away from paths and play areas, and in cold-winter climates it is grown only as a tender container or conservatory specimen kept frost-free.

Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis, Bignoniaceae) is a vigorous, evergreen scrambling shrub from southern and south-central Africa, valued for tubular orange-to-apricot flowers borne erratically across much of the year. It reaches about 2-3 m tall and wide as a free-standing shrub, or can be trained much taller on a trellis or wall, and is widely used for informal hedging and as a hot-color border or container plant. It is frost-tender (RHS H1C; roughly USDA 9b-11) — in cooler climates it is grown under glass or as a summer container plant and overwintered indoors. In frost-free, mild climates it can become weedy: it has naturalised and is treated as invasive in parts of Australia and on islands such as the Azores, so site it where suckering and self-layering can be managed. It is not a recognised edible and is not flagged as notably toxic, though several plant parts feature in traditional southern-African medicine; treat it as ornamental rather than for consumption. Note the accepted binomial here is Tecomaria capensis (POWO/GBIF); the widely-seen Tecoma capensis is a synonym.

Leonotis leonurus, the lion's ear or wild dagga, is a fast-growing, soft-woody evergreen shrub in the mint family (Lamiaceae) native to South Africa, reaching about 1.5–3 m tall with square stems carrying tiered whorls of brilliant orange, tubular two-lipped flowers. In the garden it works as a striking late-season focal shrub or large border plant for hot, dry, full-sun positions and pairs naturally with other South African and Mediterranean-climate planting. It is frost-tender — RHS rates it H2, meaning it tolerates cool conditions down to about 1–5°C but is killed by hard freezes — so outside roughly USDA zone 9b–11 it is grown in containers, as a cut-back tender perennial, or under glass. Note that the dried leaves are mildly psychoactive (containing leonurine and labdane diterpenes) and the plant is regulated in some countries, and high-dose animal studies have shown organ toxicity, so it should not be treated as a food or casually ingested. It can also naturalize and become weedy in frost-free Mediterranean climates such as parts of California, Hawaii and Australia.

A vigorous, scrambling, semi-climbing tender shrub that flowers almost without pause through the warm months, carrying broad clusters of soft sky-blue (or, in the white form, pure white) phlox-like flowers. Known as the Cape plumbago or Cape leadwort, it is native to South Africa (POWO, Kew) and is grown worldwide as an easy, long-flowering ornamental. The honest catch is its frost-tenderness: it is hardy only in USDA zones 9a-11, so in cold climates it is grown as a conservatory or large-container plant, or treated as a summer annual. Left to its own devices it climbs or sprawls 6 to 10 feet and needs support, or hard pruning, to keep its shape; the flower calyces are sticky and glandular and cling to clothing and animal fur (its own seed-dispersal trick), and it suckers. In return it is one of the best blue-flowered butterfly plants for a warm garden.