Sour cherry

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.

Date plum (Diospyros lotus) is a deciduous tree native from northeastern and south-central Turkey east through Iran, the Himalayas, and Central Asia to China and Korea, with a history of cultivation reaching back to antiquity - possibly the "lotus" of Homer's Odyssey. In gardens it offers glossy foliage, small greenish-cream flowers in summer, and ornamental fruit ripening to yellow then blue-black. The honest catch is twofold: the tree is dioecious, so a male is needed near a female for a proper seeded crop (a lone female sets only sparse, often seedless fruit), and the fruit is intensely astringent until fully ripe or frost-softened, so it is messy and unpalatable if picked early.

Japanese apricot (Prunus mume) is a small to medium deciduous tree native to southern China and long cultivated across East Asia for its intensely fragrant late-winter blossoms and processed fruit (ume). In a Western garden it earns a focal-point role as one of the few trees that flowers in the heart of winter, ahead of forsythia and weeks before cherries. The honest catch is timing: flower buds open in January through February and are routinely killed by even a single night below 23°F, making the display unreliable in USDA zone 6 and northward without a sheltered south-facing wall; the raw seeds also contain amygdalin and must never be eaten unprocessed.

Japanese plum (Prunus salicina) is a deciduous fruit tree native to central and southern China, Taiwan, and mainland Southeast Asia, grown worldwide for its showy early-spring white blossom and juicy summer drupes. It reaches 30 to 39 feet at maturity and rewards a full-sun site with fertile, well-drained soil. The honest catch is threefold: most cultivars are self-incompatible and require a cross-pollinator to set fruit; the tree blooms very early and flowers are routinely destroyed by late frost; and while the ripe fruit is edible, the pits and leaves contain amygdalin that breaks down to hydrogen cyanide, making them toxic.

Loquat is a medium evergreen tree in the rose family, native to the cooler hill regions of south-central China and cultivated for centuries across subtropical and mild-temperate climates worldwide. In the garden it offers year-round glossy foliage, sweetly fragrant autumn-to-winter flowers, and edible spring fruit - a rare sequence that fills an otherwise quiet ornamental gap. The honest catch is threefold: the seeds and young leaves contain cyanogenic glycosides (amygdalin) and must be kept away from children and pets; ripe fruit drop creates a slippery, fermenting mess beneath the canopy; and in zone 7 or the cooler edge of zone 8, an open-ground tree is likely to be defoliated or killed in a hard winter, and its autumn-winter flower buds lost, unless given wall shelter or reliable microclimate protection.

Snowy mespilus is a naturally occurring hybrid (Amelanchier arborea × A. laevis) that originated in eastern Canada and became one of Europe's most popular small ornamental trees after widespread cultivation from the 18th century onward. It earns its keep three times over: clouds of white star-shaped flowers in spring, sweet edible dark-purple berries in summer that birds strip within days, and reliable orange-red autumn colour. The honest catch is its behaviour outside the garden: in the Netherlands, Belgium, and parts of Germany it has escaped cultivation so thoroughly that it is classified as an invasive on heathlands and acidic dune grasslands, where it shades out specialist low-growing flora - a consequence worth knowing before planting near conservation land.