A compact native warm-season grass — Perennial Plant Association 2022 Plant of the Year — with blue-green summer foliage that turns copper for fall and winter and serves as a larval host for many butterflies.

A native eastern + central North American thicket-forming shrub producing arching thorny canes + clusters of large sweet black berries in mid-to-late summer. Among the most important wildlife fruit producers in eastern forests — birds, mammals, + insects all depend on the fruit. Like raspberry, biennial-caned (primocane year 1, fruits in year 2 as floricane, then dies back). Spreads via root suckers + tip-rooting cane tips; manage with annual pruning.

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5-12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh — they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

A low, densely branching coastal shrub of northeastern dunes, smothered in white spring blossom and prized for the tart blue-purple plums that follow. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center documents it native from New Brunswick down the Atlantic seaboard to New Jersey, growing in sand and gravel near the sea, where it is both salt tolerant and drought tolerant. It carries Special Value to Native Bees, feeds birds with its fruit, and is self-incompatible — a second seedling is needed to set a real crop.

A drought-and-flood-tolerant native shrub of eastern North America with brilliant three-season interest — spring white-pink flowers, glossy black antioxidant-rich late-summer berries, and brilliant wine-red fall foliage — plus an extraordinarily wide cold-hardiness range (USDA 3a-8b). The berries are astringent fresh but the basis of a small but growing commercial industry (juices, wines, jams, supplements) for their exceptionally high anthocyanin content. Spreads by suckers; site where colony formation is welcome.

A large, hairy, clump-forming North American native perennial of wet meadows, low woods, stream banks, and prairies. Its most distinctive feature is the perfoliate foliage — pairs of wrinkled, opposite, lance-shaped leaves whose bases fuse around the hairy stem, so the stem appears to pass through the leaf. From July to September, flat-topped clusters of small, fluffy white flowers feed a wide range of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, while all parts of the plant are toxic and bitter.