Cockscomb

Persian buttercup is a tuberous herbaceous perennial native to the eastern Mediterranean - from Cyprus, Crete, and Turkey across to Iran, Iraq, and the Levant - where it blooms in rocky scrub and meadows in late winter through spring. In gardens it is prized for its luminous, poppy-like flowers in red, orange, pink, yellow, and white (wild single forms) or the dense, multi-layered doubles of commercial 'Tecolote' and 'Bloomingdale' strains beloved by florists. The honest catch is its frost-tenderness: the tubers are killed below roughly 14°F, so gardeners in USDA zones 7 and colder must lift and store them after foliage dies down each summer, and the whole plant contains protoanemonin, a skin and gut irritant toxic to humans and livestock on contact or ingestion.

Gentiana acaulis is a low, mat-forming alpine perennial native to the mountains of central and southern Europe - the Alps, Pyrenees, and Balkans - where it grows in short turf and rocky meadows from 2,625 to 9,843 feet elevation. In gardens it is prized for its astonishing, deep-blue trumpet flowers in late spring, and it has received the RHS Award of Garden Merit. The honest catch is its notorious habit of "sulking": well-established plants can refuse to flower for years with no apparent cause, and the gardener's only remedy is to dig and replant the mat a few inches away - a maddening behaviour that makes it a reliable showpiece in some gardens and a frustrating non-bloomer in others.

Hakonechloa macra is a slow-growing, clump-forming deciduous grass endemic to Japan, naturally found on rocky woodland slopes near Mount Hakone and across Honshu. It is prized in shaded gardens for its gracefully cascading, fountain-like mounds of thin, arching leaves and warm autumn tones of red and pink. The honest catch is pace and site sensitivity: it is among the slowest ornamental grasses to establish, struggles badly in hot dry summers without consistent moisture, and is prone to leaf scorch if sited in too much sun - it needs rich, reliably moist soil to earn its reputation.

A tender perennial from Madagascar grown across temperate North America as a heat-loving summer annual - a mounding 6-18 inch plant in the dogbane family covered in flat five-lobed phlox-like flowers from June to frost. The species blooms rosy-pink to red with a darker mauve throat, and it shrugs off the hot, humid weather that wilts most bedding plants. Every part of the plant is poisonous: it is the natural source of the vinca alkaloids used in chemotherapy.

A compact, frost-tender warm-season annual from Mexico and Central America grown for its dense, fuzzy, thread-like ("flossy") flower clusters - most famously in soft true blue and lavender-blue, the trait that sets it apart from almost every other bedding annual, plus pink and white forms. It mounds into a clumping cushion 6 to 12 inches tall and about as wide, blooming from early summer until frost over soft, heart-shaped, slightly hairy leaves. It is easy and rewarding bedding, edging, and container color in full sun to part shade with steady moisture, but it is strictly look-don't-eat: the foliage and stems contain hepatotoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids and are toxic if ingested.

A compact, fast warm-season annual from Mexico and Guatemala (despite the "French" name) grown as bedding, edging, and container color. It typically reaches 6 to 12 inches tall with single to fully double, 1-2 inch fragrant flowerheads in yellow, orange, red, and bicolor over aromatic, deeply pinnate toothed foliage. Blooms June to frost in full sun, is low-maintenance, and is one of the few annuals deer tend to leave alone. On the name: Kew and GBIF now both fold the French marigold into Tagetes erecta, the African marigold, and treat Tagetes patula as a synonym of it. The two are still sold and bred as distinct garden plants, so this page keeps the familiar name.