Morning glory

Achiote, also sold as annatto or lipstick tree, is a fast-growing evergreen shrub or small tree native from Mexico through Central America to Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina, and planted across the tropics for its seeds. Clusters of pink or white flowers about 2 inches across, like single wild roses, open at the branch tips and are followed by clusters of red to red-brown capsules covered in soft bristles, which split open to show seeds coated in a waxy red-orange layer. That coating is annatto: the coloring and mild seasoning behind achiote paste and sazón, the yellow-orange of many cheeses, butters, and margarines, and the red body paint and lipstick that gave the plant its English name. In a garden it usually stays 6 to 12 feet tall and wide as a specimen or informal hedge, though as a tree it can reach 20 to 30 feet. It is frost-tender and needs a frost-free climate: it is hardy outdoors in USDA zones 10a-12b and grown elsewhere in a large container or conservatory that comes indoors before frost. Outside its native range it has naturalized on many Pacific islands, sparingly so in Hawaii, and in the Galapagos, where the Charles Darwin Foundation rates it potentially invasive.

Cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis, Bignoniaceae) is a vigorous, evergreen scrambling shrub from southern and south-central Africa, valued for tubular orange-to-apricot flowers borne erratically across much of the year. It reaches about 6.6 to 9.8 feet tall and wide as a free-standing shrub, or can be trained much taller on a trellis or wall, and is widely used for informal hedging and as a hot-color border or container plant. It is frost-tender (RHS H1C; roughly USDA 9b-11) - in cooler climates it is grown under glass or as a summer container plant and overwintered indoors. In frost-free, mild climates it can become weedy: it has naturalised and is treated as invasive in parts of Australia and on islands such as the Azores, so site it where suckering and self-layering can be managed. It is not a recognised edible and is not flagged as notably toxic, though several plant parts feature in traditional southern-African medicine; treat it as ornamental rather than for consumption. Note the accepted binomial here is Tecomaria capensis (POWO/GBIF); the widely-seen Tecoma capensis is a synonym.

Loropetalum chinense is an evergreen shrub native to woodlands and thickets across southern China, Japan, Taiwan, and adjacent parts of Southeast Asia, valued in gardens for its distinctive ribbon-like flowers and, in the popular purple-leaved forms, year-round burgundy foliage. It thrives in zones 7-9 as a bold structural shrub or hedging plant, blooming most heavily in late winter to early spring. The honest catch is its absolute dependence on acidic soil: even slightly alkaline pH triggers iron chlorosis, and in the Southeastern US a bacterial crown gall disease can cause rapid branch dieback and plant death, making site preparation and soil testing non-negotiable before planting.

A tender tropical evergreen shrub grown for its enormous, flamboyant flowers - broad funnels of red, pink, orange, yellow, or white, single or double, each with a long protruding column of fused stamens. Native to tropical Asia (a cultigen of such ancient cultivation that no certain wild origin survives), Hibiscus rosa-sinensis blooms continuously in warmth above glossy, dark green, evergreen leaves. Each flower typically lasts only a day, but a healthy plant opens fresh blooms in steady succession from spring through fall - and year-round in frost-free climates. It is the classic hibiscus of warm-climate landscapes and patio containers: heat- and humidity-loving, frost-tender, and hardy in the ground only in USDA zones 9a-11b.

Copperleaf (also called Jacob's coat or fire dragon plant) is a fast-growing tropical evergreen shrub from Fiji and neighboring islands of the South Pacific (Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, and Tuvalu), grown almost everywhere else for its foliage. The species has large, broad, coarsely toothed leaves mottled coppery green and red; the pink, cream, gold, and ebony-purple leaf patterns sold in the trade belong to named cultivars such as 'Blackie', 'Bronze Pink', 'Java White', and 'Tricolor', not to the plain species described here. The flowers are tiny and insignificant, carried in slender catkin-like spikes on the same plant: long hanging male spikes and short female spikes that are often hidden among the leaves. It is frost-tender and reliably hardy only in USDA zones 10a-11b; everywhere colder it is grown as a warm-season annual or as a container plant brought indoors for winter. In a frost-free landscape it can reach 8 to 12 feet tall and 6 to 8 feet wide, though as a container or bedding plant it usually stays around 3 to 4 feet. Treat it as an irritant: the RHS lists the cultivar 'Obovata' as a skin and eye irritant and harmful if eaten. It is listed as introduced in Florida, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, but UF/IFAS does not consider it a problem species in Florida at this time.

Firebush (also called scarlet bush, hummingbird bush, and Mexican firecracker) is a fast-growing, evergreen, soft-stemmed shrub in the coffee family (Rubiaceae) and a Florida native: it grows wild from central Florida south through the Florida Keys, and on through the Bahamas, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America into South America as far as Argentina. In a frost-free landscape it forms a dense, spreading shrub of 6 to 12 feet, occasionally to 15 feet, with whorls of oval leaves that are red-hairy when young and speckled red or purple at maturity, reddish stems, and terminal clusters of slender, tubular, orange-red flowers 0.5 to 1.5 inches long nearly all year. Hummingbirds and butterflies work the flowers, and birds eat the small berries, which ripen from red to black and are edible. It is frost-tender: a freeze can kill it to the ground, it regrows from the roots through zone 9, and farther north it is grown as a 2 to 3 feet summer annual or container plant. Buy with care, because several non-native firebushes are sold under the same name: plants labeled 'African', 'Dwarf', 'Compacta', or 'Firefly' are often Hamelia patens var. glabra, a variety from southern Mexico to northern South America with smooth leaves and mostly yellow flowers, and 'Bahama firebush' is a different species, Hamelia cuprea. Florida's native form is Hamelia patens var. patens, the plant this record describes.