Large white petunia

An old garden-favorite annual native to Mexico, grown for showy daisy-like flowers in nearly every color but true blue - red, yellow, orange, pink, rose, lavender, green, and white. Bushy, leafy plants rise on upright, hairy, branching stems and bloom continuously from early summer to frost. A magnet for butterflies and hummingbirds, and one of the most reliable cut-and-come-again cutting-garden flowers.

Jasmine tobacco, also sold as flowering tobacco, sweet tobacco, or winged tobacco, is a tender perennial in the nightshade family (Solanaceae) native to southern and southeastern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and northeastern Argentina. The true species grows 3 to 5 feet tall from a low rosette of large, hairy basal leaves with winged stalks, and from early summer to frost it carries long-tubed, star-faced flowers, white to greenish-yellow, that open in the evening and pour out a sweet scent through the night for moths. It is perennial only in USDA zones 10a-11b, so most gardeners grow it as a summer annual. Many plants sold as 'flowering tobacco' are compact hybrids (Nicotiana × sanderae and similar strains) up to 24 inches tall whose flowers open by day and are mostly unscented; for the night fragrance, grow the species from seed. Be aware that it is poisonous: every part of the plant contains nicotine, it is harmful if eaten, and the RHS advises gloves when handling it.

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.

Globe amaranth is a warm-season annual in the amaranth family (Amaranthaceae), grown for its round, clover-like flower heads of papery, long-lasting bracts: bright magenta in the species (Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder), with cultivars in purple, pink, red, lilac, violet, and white. The true flowers are tiny white to yellow trumpets tucked among the bracts. Kew's WCVP gives its native range as Mexico, Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama), and tropical South America (Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Bolivia, and Brazil). NC State Extension and Missouri Botanical Garden describe a compact, upright plant 6 to 24 inches tall and 6 to 12 inches wide that flowers from June until frost, takes heat and drought once established, and makes a classic everlasting: the heads keep their color when cut and dried. It is frost-tender. NC State Extension rates it winter hardy only in USDA zones 9 to 11, where it can be grown as a perennial; everywhere else it is sown or planted after the last frost and grown for a single summer, which is why both sources list it as an annual for zones 2 to 11. It is a Gomphrena, not an Amaranthus: the amaranth in its name is the family it shares with love-lies-bleeding and the grain amaranths. It also shares the name bachelor's button with the cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), a different plant.