Quinoa

Lemon verbena is a woody South American shrub grown as a kitchen herb for its glossy, lance-shaped leaves, which carry a strong lemon scent and flavor for teas, desserts, and cooking. Aloysia citrodora (also spelled citriodora) is the accepted name, but nurseries often still label it Aloysia triphylla, and older books call it Lippia citriodora. Despite the common name it is not a true verbena of the genus Verbena: it is grown for its fragrant leaves, not its flowers, which are small sprays of white to pale lilac from midsummer into early fall. In the ground it reaches 6 to 8 feet tall and wide, but only 2 to 4 feet in a pot. It is frost-tender, hardy outdoors only in USDA zones 8-10, where it loses its leaves when it freezes; in colder climates it is grown in a container and overwintered indoors, or replaced each spring as an annual. The leaves are a culinary and tea herb, but the European Medicines Agency does not recommend the medicinal tea during pregnancy or breastfeeding or for children, and NC State flags the plant as a problem for cats, dogs, and horses.

French tarragon is the culinary clone of Artemisia dracunculus, grown for the pungent anise-like flavor and aroma of its narrow, glossy green leaves - the defining herb of béarnaise sauce and classic French fines herbes. It is a shrubby, rhizome-spreading perennial that rarely flowers and sets effectively sterile seed, so it is propagated only by cuttings or division rather than from seed. Unlike its wild parent species and the inferior Russian tarragon, this 'Sativa' selection holds the true tarragon flavor.

A bold, upright warm-season annual from the Andes, grown in gardens for its long, rope-like tassels of tiny blood-red flowers that hang straight down from the stem tips and leaf axils from July until frost. The same species is kiwicha, an Andean grain and leaf crop cultivated for thousands of years, including by the Incas, and it is also called Inca wheat. Garden plants usually reach 3 to 5 feet, with drooping tassels typically to 12 inches long and occasionally to 24 inches; selections with yellow-green tassels exist, and grain types carry heads in white, red or black. The tiny seeds are eaten cooked, popped or ground into flour, and the leaves are eaten like spinach, but grow it without chemical fertilizers if you plan to eat it, because the leaves concentrate nitrates on nitrogen-rich soil. It is frost-tender and grown for a single warm season in every zone.

Shiso is a fast-growing Asian culinary herb in the mint family (Lamiaceae), native across a wide arc from the Himalayas through China, Japan, and Korea to Southeast Asia (Wikipedia; GBIF). In temperate gardens it is grown as a tender annual reaching 24 to 35 inches, prized for its aromatic, serrated leaves used in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese cooking. The honest catch is its aggressive self-seeding: shiso sets abundant seed in late summer and is designated a weed in parts of the United States, so deadheading before seed set is essential unless you want a permanent colony - and all parts are toxic to grazing livestock (perilla ketone).

Aji pepper is the South American chili species behind aji amarillo, Lemon Drop, Bishop's crown and Brazil's dedo-de-moça - one of the five domesticated chili peppers, and a different plant from the familiar garden pepper (Capsicum annuum) and the habanero (Capsicum chinense). It is a perennial shrub native from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru through Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, northern Argentina and central and southern Brazil, and where it can live for years it grows taller than most garden peppers, up to about 6.6 feet. Its white to cream flowers are typically marked with green or gold, and its fruits, which usually hang down in cultivated forms, come in an unusually wide range of shapes, from long tapered pods to the crown-shaped Bishop's crown. Heat runs from nearly heatless types to hot ones; aji amarillo is rated around 30,000-50,000 Scoville units. It is frost tender, so outside nearly frost-free climates it is grown as a warm-weather annual.

A lax, branching nightshade from South America grown for tart-sweet golden berries, each wrapped in a papery, lantern-like husk. Despite the name it is unrelated to true gooseberries: the "Cape" is usually traced to its early cultivation at South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and it is also known as goldenberry, Peruvian groundcherry, and poha. Taller and longer-lived than the ground cherry, it reaches 3.3 to 4.9 feet with velvety heart-shaped leaves and nodding yellow flowers marked with chocolate-brown centers. It is a reliable perennial only where frost is absent and is grown as a summer annual or a greenhouse plant everywhere colder. Only the fully ripe fruit is eaten - the husk, leaves, stems, flowers, and unripe fruit are poisonous - and it has become invasive in Hawaii and on other Pacific islands.