Pawpaw

A tough, medium-sized native tree of the eastern and midwestern United States, grown as much for its showy edible orange fruit as for its distinctive thick, dark gray bark broken into rectangular blocks. Small urn-shaped white-to-greenish-yellow flowers open in May and June, and the sweet fruit ripens after frost. Largely dioecious - a female tree needs a male pollinizer nearby to set fruit - and notably drought- and walnut-tolerant once established.

A small native tree with white spring flowers, edible summer berries, and copper to red fall color.

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 to 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.

The original quince - a deciduous, often multi-stemmed small tree or large shrub of the rose family from the Caucasus and western Asia, grown for its aromatic golden-yellow fruit rather than as an ornamental. Solitary, five-petaled pale-pink-to-white flowers open on the current season’s growth in mid to late spring, followed by showy round-to-pear-shaped fruit that ripens from gray-green to bright yellow in fall. Raw the fruit is hard, bitter, and astringent, but it sweetens and perfumes a kitchen once cooked into jellies, tarts, and cider. Not to be confused with the ornamental flowering quince (Chaenomeles).

The largest of the hickories and the most valuable nut tree native to North America - a deciduous lowland giant that Missouri Botanical Garden lists at 75 to 100 feet (occasionally to 150 feet) with a broad rounded crown. Odd-pinnate compound leaves carry 9-17 falcate, finely toothed leaflets, and the sweet edible nuts ripen in fall inside a thin four-sectioned husk. Monoecious and wind-pollinated, it needs at least two varieties nearby for reliable nut set, and 8-10 years from seed before it bears.

A dense, conical-to-narrow-pyramidal evergreen tree native to eastern and central North America, prized as a screening and foundation conifer. Flat, fan-like sprays of scale-like, aromatic yellow-green foliage clothe the tree from the ground up, and red-brown bark exfoliates on mature trunks. Wild trees can reach 40 to 60 feet but cultivated plants typically stay near 20 to 30 feet; small urn-shaped cones and dense evergreen cover make it valuable food and shelter for birds.

A vertically stacked edible polyculture: nut-bearing canopy, fruit-bearing understory, berry shrub layer, herbaceous layer, and groundcover for temperate eastern North America.