Prickly pear (Indian fig)

The Mediterranean evergreen whose leathery, glossy dark-green leaves are the bay leaf of the kitchen. Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder describes it as a pyramidal, aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub that can reach 60 feet but is usually seen at 10 to 30 feet and is often pruned to 8 feet or less for garden use. Trees are dioecious: small yellowish-green spring flowers on female plants, if pollinated, give way to single-seeded purple-black berries. Winter hardy only to USDA Zone 8, so it is grown as a clipped container houseplant farther north.

Feijoa, also called pineapple guava, is an evergreen shrub or small tree from southern and southeastern Brazil, Uruguay, and northeastern Argentina. It was long sold as Acca sellowiana, the name many gardeners and nurseries still use, though Kew's WCVP now accepts Feijoa sellowiana. A myrtle-family relative of the tropical guava, it is a distinctly different and much hardier plant. It grows 10 to 15 feet tall with thick, leathery, gray-green leaves that are silvery-white beneath, and in late spring and early summer it carries striking flowers of fleshy white petals flushed purple around a tuft of dark red stamens. The petals are sweet and edible, and the egg-sized, waxy blue-gray-green fruit that ripens in fall has an aromatic flavor often compared to pineapple and strawberry. A cold-hardy subtropical fruit, it generally survives 18°F and is grown in USDA zones 8a-10b, but it needs some winter chill to fruit well and crops poorly in hot, frost-free climates. Many plants are self-incompatible, so plant two cultivars for a reliable crop; even the self-pollinating cultivars bear more with a partner. Plants For A Future lists no known hazards, and UF/IFAS reports it is not invasive in Florida.

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.

Camellia sinensis is the evergreen shrub whose leaves, buds, and stems yield every style of tea - white, green, oolong, and black - and it is native to the monsoon-forest borderlands of SW China, Myanmar, northeast India, and mainland Southeast Asia. In gardens outside zones 7–9 it is too frost-tender to grow unprotected outdoors, and the honest catch is its unyielding demand for reliably moist, acid soil (pH 4.5–6.5): on anything alkaline or prone to summer drought it yellows, stalls, and refuses to thrive no matter how warm the climate.

A giant herbaceous perennial from Southeast Asia and the principal wild ancestor of most cultivated dessert bananas. What looks like a trunk is a 'pseudostem' - tightly rolled leaf sheaths - topped by a fountain of huge, paddle-shaped leaves that can run 6 to 10 feet long, giving an instant tropical effect. In frost-free climates (USDA zones 10a-11b) an established clump produces a drooping flower spike and a hanging bunch of edible fruit, then that pseudostem dies and is replaced by a sucker from the base. It is frost-tender: everywhere colder it is grown as a bold container or greenhouse foliage plant that is overwintered indoors and rarely, if ever, fruits.

A broadleaf-evergreen citrus tree reaching 15 to 30 feet tall and wide, with glossy foliage, sharp thorns on its twigs, and highly fragrant white four-petaled flowers. The large fruit (over 3 inches across) ripens pale yellow, often patched with pink, over juicy flesh that ranges from near-white to deep red by cultivar. A subtropical tree hardy only to USDA zone 9a, it is grown outdoors across the citrus belt and as an overwintered container plant farther north.