Golden trumpet

The Mediterranean evergreen whose leathery, glossy dark-green leaves are the bay leaf of the kitchen. Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder describes it as a pyramidal, aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub that can reach 60 feet but is usually seen at 10 to 30 feet and is often pruned to 8 feet or less for garden use. Trees are dioecious: small yellowish-green spring flowers on female plants, if pollinated, give way to single-seeded purple-black berries. Winter hardy only to USDA Zone 8, so it is grown as a clipped container houseplant farther north.

A vigorous, thorny tropical woody vine from Brazil, grown across the warm world for one of the most spectacular floral displays in horticulture - sheets of magenta, purple, red, orange, pink, or white that can smother a wall, fence, or pergola. The vivid color, though, is not from petals: it comes from papery BRACTS (modified leaves) that surround the true flowers, which are small, slender, and white to cream. Bougainvillea spectabilis is a sprawling, climbing scrambler armed with sharp, woody thorns; in frost-free climates it reaches 15 to 40 feet, hauling itself up supports and over rooftops, but it can also be kept hard-pruned as a shrub, a hedge, or a container plant. 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 seasonal container plant and overwintered indoors. It blooms most heavily when grown lean and a little dry in blazing full sun, which is why the showiest bougainvilleas are often the ones that look slightly neglected. The quickest way to tell it from the near-identical B. glabra is touch: B. spectabilis has softly hairy (pubescent) young stems, leaf undersides, and flower-tubes and broader, more rounded bracts, where B. glabra is smooth and hairless.

Brazilian jasmine is an evergreen, woody twining vine endemic to the state of Rio de Janeiro in southeastern Brazil, and one of the species from which many of the garden mandevilla hybrids sold for patios, porches, and hanging baskets have been developed. Despite the name it is not a true jasmine: it belongs to the dogbane family (Apocynaceae), and its flowers are funnel-shaped trumpets 2 to 3 inches across, pink-red in the species and red, pink, white, or cream in its many cultivars, carried over a long season from spring into autumn. Its leaves are thick, leathery, and glossy dark green, to about 2 inches long, and it builds large starchy tuberous roots that help it ride out dry spells. It was first described as Dipladenia sanderi, and its garden forms are still generally sold as 'Dipladenia'. It is frost-tender: a frost kills it, so it lives outdoors year-round only in USDA zones 10a-11b, the range published for mandevillas, and is grown as a summer annual or an overwintered container plant everywhere colder. Its milky sap irritates skin and may be toxic if swallowed.

Feijoa, also called pineapple guava, is an evergreen shrub or small tree from southern and southeastern Brazil, Uruguay, and northeastern Argentina. It was long sold as Acca sellowiana, the name many gardeners and nurseries still use, though Kew's WCVP now accepts Feijoa sellowiana. A myrtle-family relative of the tropical guava, it is a distinctly different and much hardier plant. It grows 10 to 15 feet tall with thick, leathery, gray-green leaves that are silvery-white beneath, and in late spring and early summer it carries striking flowers of fleshy white petals flushed purple around a tuft of dark red stamens. The petals are sweet and edible, and the egg-sized, waxy blue-gray-green fruit that ripens in fall has an aromatic flavor often compared to pineapple and strawberry. A cold-hardy subtropical fruit, it generally survives 18°F and is grown in USDA zones 8a-10b, but it needs some winter chill to fruit well and crops poorly in hot, frost-free climates. Many plants are self-incompatible, so plant two cultivars for a reliable crop; even the self-pollinating cultivars bear more with a partner. Plants For A Future lists no known hazards, and UF/IFAS reports it is not invasive in Florida.

Tree thorn-apple (Brugmansia arborea), also known as angel's trumpet, horn of plenty or maikoa (RHS), is an evergreen to semi-evergreen shrub or small tree of the Andes, first described by Linnaeus as Datura arborea. Kew records it as native to Bolivia, northern Chile, Ecuador and Peru, and Wikipedia describes it from drier valleys at 6,562 to 9,843 feet that often see light frost. In gardens RHS gives it an ultimate size of 8.2 to 13.1 feet tall and 4.9 to 8.2 feet wide; in its home valleys it can reach 23 feet. Its strongly fragrant, nodding white to cream trumpets are only 5 to 7 inches long, the shortest in the genus, and each sits in a very long green calyx that reaches almost to the mouth of the flower - the quickest way to tell it from the many other white angel's trumpets sold under its name. It flowers almost continuously in small numbers rather than in big flushes. The load-bearing warning is its toxicity: RHS lists it as TOXIC if eaten, a skin irritant and toxic to pets, and every part of a Brugmansia is potentially poisonous, carrying tropane alkaloids (scopolamine, hyoscyamine, atropine), with the seeds and leaves especially dangerous - never plant it where children or pets could reach it. The IUCN Red List classes it as Extinct in the Wild, yet it is listed as invasive in New Caledonia. Wikipedia calls it the hardiest Brugmansia to both cold and drought, but RHS rates it H1c, wanting a winter minimum of about 41°F, so Plotwright publishes USDA zone 11 only and treats it as a container plant to bring under cover anywhere colder.

Achiote, also sold as annatto or lipstick tree, is a fast-growing evergreen shrub or small tree native from Mexico through Central America to Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina, and planted across the tropics for its seeds. Clusters of pink or white flowers about 2 inches across, like single wild roses, open at the branch tips and are followed by clusters of red to red-brown capsules covered in soft bristles, which split open to show seeds coated in a waxy red-orange layer. That coating is annatto: the coloring and mild seasoning behind achiote paste and sazón, the yellow-orange of many cheeses, butters, and margarines, and the red body paint and lipstick that gave the plant its English name. In a garden it usually stays 6 to 12 feet tall and wide as a specimen or informal hedge, though as a tree it can reach 20 to 30 feet. It is frost-tender and needs a frost-free climate: it is hardy outdoors in USDA zones 10a-12b and grown elsewhere in a large container or conservatory that comes indoors before frost. Outside its native range it has naturalized on many Pacific islands, sparingly so in Hawaii, and in the Galapagos, where the Charles Darwin Foundation rates it potentially invasive.