Mandarin orange

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 deciduous fruit tree of the rose family, native to Turkey and Europe and grown for its blue-to-black stone fruit. NC State describes it as a large shrub or small tree, 10 to 20 feet tall and wide, with an erect habit, smooth dark bark, and egg-shaped alternate leaves. Showy fragrant white flowers open in spring - it is the latest-blooming plum, which suits it to northern climates - and the fleshy 2-3 inch drupes ripen blue or black in September.

Amur maple (Acer ginnala, accepted by Kew's Plants of the World Online as Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala) is a small, fast-growing deciduous tree or large multi-stemmed shrub from northeastern Asia - the Russian Far East, northeastern China, and Korea. At 15 to 20 feet it fits where a full-size maple cannot, and it earns that place with three seasons of interest: fragrant greenish-yellow flowers in spring, which is an unusual scent for a maple and an early nectar source for bees; small glossy three-lobed leaves through summer; and reliable, often brilliant red-to-orange fall color that arrives early. It is also one of the hardiest maples, tolerant of cold, wind, dry soil, and a wide range of pH. The honest catch, and it is a serious one for North American gardeners, is that it self-sows prolifically and has escaped cultivation to become invasive across parts of the US Midwest and Northeast, where its shade-tolerant seedlings crowd native shrubs and understory trees in open woods, savannas, and prairies. Several states list it as invasive or a noxious weed. Check your local invasive-species list before planting, and be prepared to remove seedlings if you do.

The common pear of the produce aisle - a deciduous Rosaceae fruit tree from southern Europe and southwestern Asia that is the parent of most named pears, including Bartlett, Anjou, and Comice. Aromatic, five-petaled creamy-white spring flowers give way to the familiar pear-shaped edible fruit, ripening from mid summer to fall on glossy dark-green foliage that turns red and yellow before leaf drop. Grown almost entirely for its fruit rather than as an ornamental, and notoriously susceptible to fireblight.