Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands

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.

A virtually stemless, broadleaf-evergreen native of central and eastern North America: a basal rosette of rigid, sword-shaped, spine-tipped leaves up to 30 inches long, fringed along the margins with the curly white threads that give the species its name. In early summer a flowering stalk shoots from the center to 5 to 8 feet, carrying nodding, bell-shaped, creamy-white flowers. Tough enough for poor sandy soil, heat, drought, and salt spray, it earns its keep as architectural structure in dry and seaside gardens.

A tall, summer-growing cormous perennial from across sub-Saharan Africa, grown for arching spikes of large, hooded, orange-to-red-and-yellow flowers in summer over fans of sword-shaped leaves. This is the widespread wild African gladiolus and a key ancestor of the big garden gladioli. Unlike the winter-growing Cape bulbs, it is a SUMMER-GROWING corm: plant in spring, grow and flower through summer, then it dies back to a dormant corm for winter. It wants full sun, well-drained soil, and summer moisture, and is one of the hardier species gladioli - surviving to about USDA zone 7 with a deep winter mulch or by lifting the corms in cold-winter areas. The corms are toxic and irritant if eaten and have been used in traditional medicine, never as food. In the wild the hooded flowers are pollinated by sunbirds and long-tongued insects.

A bold, clump-forming evergreen perennial from South Africa, grown for big rounded umbels of trumpet-shaped blue (or white) flowers held on tall bare stalks above arching, strap-shaped leaves in mid-to-late summer. It is widely sold as "lily of the Nile," but that is a misnomer - the plant is South African (the Cape provinces and KwaZulu-Natal), not from the Nile. Spectacular and easy in warm climates, this evergreen Agapanthus is frost-tender, so in cold-winter areas it is grown in a container and overwintered under cover. The RHS has given several Agapanthus praecox forms its Award of Garden Merit and rates this evergreen species half-hardy (H3 - needs winter protection).

A tall, bold warm-season annual from Mexico and Guatemala (the "African" name is a misnomer of its European garden history) grown for large, fully double, pompon-like flowerheads in saturated yellow, gold, and orange over strongly aromatic, finely divided foliage. Plants reach 1 to 4 feet and bloom from early summer to frost in full sun. The petals are edible and used as a culinary garnish and natural dye, and the flowers are the iconic "flor de muerto" of Mexican Day of the Dead. Despite the wide listed zone range it is frost-tender and grown for a single warm season.

One of the world's most spectacular flowering trees and, in the same breath, one of its most dangerous invaders. Spathodea campanulata is a large, fast-growing tropical tree native to the moist forests of West and Central Africa (GBIF), carrying a dense crown of glossy compound leaves topped by showy, upturned clusters of big, frilly, scarlet-to-orange, tulip-shaped flowers (the boat-shaped buds hold water). It is glorious - and it is a serious invasive. The African tulip tree is listed among the IUCN "100 of the world's worst invasive species"; outside its native range it has overrun wet-tropical forests across the Pacific, Hawaii, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia and Australia, and its flowers can be lethal to native bees. Plant it ONLY where it is genuinely native or where it cannot escape, and first check that it is not prohibited locally - do not plant it in any tropical region where it can naturalise. It is frost-tender (USDA 10a-11), fast, and wants full sun and moisture; in cold-winter climates it is grown only as a tender container specimen kept frost-free. It is an ornamental, not a food plant.

Aji pepper is the South American chili species behind aji amarillo, Lemon Drop, Bishop's crown and Brazil's dedo-de-moça - one of the five domesticated chili peppers, and a different plant from the familiar garden pepper (Capsicum annuum) and the habanero (Capsicum chinense). It is a perennial shrub native from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru through Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, northern Argentina and central and southern Brazil, and where it can live for years it grows taller than most garden peppers, up to about 6.6 feet. Its white to cream flowers are typically marked with green or gold, and its fruits, which usually hang down in cultivated forms, come in an unusually wide range of shapes, from long tapered pods to the crown-shaped Bishop's crown. Heat runs from nearly heatless types to hot ones; aji amarillo is rated around 30,000-50,000 Scoville units. It is frost tender, so outside nearly frost-free climates it is grown as a warm-weather annual.

Aloe vera is a succulent perennial grown almost everywhere as an easy houseplant: a low rosette of thick, fleshy, toothed, grey-green leaves filled with the clear gel it is famous for. POWO (Kew) gives its native range as the Arabian Peninsula, though the exact wild origin is uncertain after millennia of cultivation, and it is now grown worldwide as the familiar medicinal aloe. Indoors it wants bright light or a sunny windowsill and very infrequent watering - it is highly drought-tolerant and rots if overwatered, which is the single most common way to kill it. Its uses are genuinely nuanced: the clear inner leaf gel is widely applied to skin (minor burns) and is consumed in aloe juices and drinks, but the yellow latex just beneath the rind is a powerful laxative and irritant that should not be casually eaten (and is best avoided in pregnancy), and the whole plant is toxic to cats and dogs. It is frost-tender and hardy outdoors only in roughly USDA zones 9b-11; everywhere colder it lives in a pot. RHS gives it the Award of Garden Merit as an easy succulent houseplant and rates it H1C. Its air-purifying reputation, drawn from a single 1989 NASA chamber study, is negligible at realistic room densities - grow it for the plant itself, not to clean your air.

Hippeastrum x hybridum is a complex garden hybrid derived from six or more wild Hippeastrum species native to tropical and subtropical South America, developed through intensive breeding since the late 18th century and now the dominant "amaryllis" sold worldwide as a holiday bulb. It produces spectacular trumpet-shaped flowers - 5 to 8 inches across - on stout leafless scapes in red, pink, white, orange, salmon, or bicolour, making it one of the most dramatic winter-flowering houseplants available. The honest catch is toxicity: the entire plant, especially the bulb, contains lycorine and related alkaloids at concentrations that cause vomiting, salivation, tremors, and hypotension in pets and children, so it must be placed out of reach and handled with care.

American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is a loose, open, arching deciduous shrub of the southeastern and south-central United States, grown almost entirely for one spectacular autumn trick. Through summer it is a quiet green background plant, carrying small clusters of pink-to-lilac flowers tucked into the leaf axils. Then, from late summer into fall, those clusters ripen into tight whorls of vivid magenta-purple berries that wrap right around the stems at every leaf joint, so the arching branches look strung with beads. Songbirds strip them through fall and early winter. It is an easy, fast-growing, forgiving native that asks for little: full sun to part shade, ordinary well-drained soil, and room to arch. Site it where the fall berry show can be seen, because in leaf and flower it is plain, and in fruit it is one of the most distinctive shrubs you can grow.

Dierama pulcherrimum, angel's fishing rod, is an arching, more-or-less evergreen cormous perennial in the iris family (Iridaceae), endemic to the open summer-rainfall grasslands of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It forms grassy tufts of long, narrow leaves from which tall, wiry, arching flower stems rise to about 4.9 feet (occasionally to 5.9 feet), each hung with pendulous, bell-shaped rosy-pink to purple flowers in summer - the namesake "fishing rod" silhouette over a pond or in a gravel garden. It is the load-bearing caution to note that this is only a borderline-hardy plant: RHS rates it H4 (hardy to roughly 14 to 23°F / USDA ~8b-9), so in colder zones it needs a sheltered, sunny, sharply drained spot, a winter mulch, or container/glasshouse protection, and it resents disturbance once established. It is not recorded as toxic - though it is grown purely as an ornamental and is not a food plant, so treat it as inedible. It is well-behaved (Least Concern in the wild, no recorded weediness) and suits borders, pond margins, and containers in mild-temperate gardens.

Angel's trumpet (Brugmansia suaveolens) is a large, soft-wooded shrub or small tree hung with enormous pendulous trumpet flowers - up to 12 inches long, white aging to soft blush, and intensely fragrant in the evening and at night. Native to the Atlantic Forest of south-eastern Brazil (POWO, Kew; Flora e Funga do Brasil), it is now classified Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN and survives only in cultivation, which makes a familiar garden plant quietly remarkable. It grows fast and thirsty in warmth (USDA zones 9b-11b) and is frost-tender, so in cold-winter areas it is grown in a large container and overwintered under cover. The load-bearing warning is its toxicity: EVERY PART IS HIGHLY TOXIC, loaded with tropane alkaloids (scopolamine, atropine, hyoscyamine), and poisonings can be severe or fatal - never plant it where children or pets could reach it.

Felicia amelloides is an evergreen, woody-based perennial subshrub native to a narrow coastal strip of South Africa's Western and Eastern Cape, where it colonises stabilising sand dunes, sandy flats, and rocky outcrops at 0 to 3,280.8 feet. In the garden it delivers a near-continuous flush of sky-blue, yellow-centred daisy flowers on neat mounding growth, typically 12 to 24 inches but capable of reaching about 3.3 feet, making it one of the few true blue-flowered plants for sunny pots and borders. The honest catch is frost-tenderness: it survives only light frost in sharply drained soil and collapses below about 23°F, so outside USDA zones 9-11 it must be overwintered under glass or replaced annually - a real commitment in cool-temperate gardens.

A slender, soft, ferny-leaved evergreen fynbos shrub from the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, treasured for its nodding flower heads ringed with delicate, papery bracts flushed white-to-pink - the traditional Cape "blushing bride" wedding flower. HONESTY (load-bearing): Serruria florida carries a conservation story. It is very rare in the wild, native to only a tiny area of the Cape Provinces (the Franschhoek mountains) and long thought nearly extinct, and it survives largely through cultivation per POWO (Kew). It is also the most demanding member of the protea family in this group and is short-lived, often lasting only 3-5 years. Like all Proteaceae it has cluster (proteoid) roots adapted to nutrient-poor fynbos soils, so it is PHOSPHORUS-SENSITIVE: ordinary phosphate fertiliser or BONE MEAL will KILL it. It needs acidic, extremely sharply drained, sandy soil, full sun, and excellent air movement, and is best grown in a pot or a perfectly drained Mediterranean bed. RHS rates it tender (H3): it is FROST-TENDER and is drought-tolerant once established but resents wet feet. It is grown ornamentally and as a cut flower; it is not edible. Bird and insect visitors work the heads, and in cultivation honey bees forage the nectar.

An Old World cottage-garden annual grown for daisy- to chrysanthemum-like flowerheads (3 to 4 inches across) in bright yellow through deep orange, often with a contrasting darker center disk. In cool climates it blooms over a long summer-to-fall window; in hot summers it tends to languish and may need a midseason cutback to rebloom. The somewhat bitter flowers and lance-shaped aromatic leaves are edible, and the petals lend color to soups, rice, and baked goods.

A cool-weather leafy cabbage relative grown for its broad, leathery, blue-green leaves that grow in a loose upright rosette on a thick stem - never forming a head ("acephala" is Greek for headless). A biennial almost always grown as an annual, it sweetens after a fall frost and, in mild-winter regions, keeps producing leaves through winter until it bolts in spring. One of the most cold-tolerant vegetables in the cabbage family.

A graceful, long-blooming shrub grown for its hanging, lantern-like flowers - a vivid red tube and sepals around a deep violet-purple skirt of inner petals, dangling on thread-fine stems from early summer until frost. Native to the cool, moist temperate forests and roadsides of southern South America (the Andes of Chile and Argentina south to Tierra del Fuego, and north into Peru), Fuchsia magellanica is the hardiest of the common fuchsias. In its mildest range it builds into an arching, rounded woody shrub 5 to 10 feet tall and wide; in cold-winter gardens it dies back to the ground each year and regrows as a smaller subshrub. The pendant flowers are built for hummingbirds, and small blue-black berries follow. It is the fuchsia to reach for where ordinary basket fuchsias would never survive the winter.

Japanese aralia is a bold, glossy-leaved evergreen shrub native to southern Japan and southern Korea, grown for its dramatic tropical appearance in shade gardens and mild-climate borders. It thrives in part-shade to deep shade with consistent moisture and is reliably hardy only in USDA zones 8-10, making it a tender choice that demands frost-free or near-frost-free winters. The honest catch is two-fold: in mild climates it spreads aggressively by root suckers and prolific self-seeding -- it has naturalised invasively in New Zealand -- and its sap is a confirmed skin sensitiser that causes contact dermatitis in sensitive individuals.

The classic garden nasturtium - a fast, easy annual grown for showy, long-spurred, funnel-shaped flowers in red, orange, yellow, and cream above round, shield-shaped (peltate) leaves with radiating veins. Dwarf-bushy types sprawl through beds and containers while climbing types scramble up a trellis. Every part except the roots - leaves, buds, flowers, pods, and seeds - is edible with a peppery, watercress-like bite, and the flowers draw hummingbirds and butterflies.

A tallgrass-prairie coneflower with long, narrow, pale purple rays that hang like a loose fringe below the cone, carried on stiff stems above sparse narrow leaves from June into July. Fragrant, a fine cut flower, and hardy across a wider band than its purple cousin.

The classic cool-season bedding plant, grown for 2-4 inch flattened "face" flowers in nearly every color, usually marked with a contrasting dark blotch and central whiskering. A garden-origin hybrid (not a wild species) treated as a short-lived perennial run as a cool-weather annual or biennial - it blooms hardest in spring and fall and inevitably succumbs to summer heat. The Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as the top-selling winter bedding plant in the deep South.

The Paraná pine (Araucaria angustifolia), known in Brazil as the pinheiro-do-paraná, is a huge evergreen conifer with an unmistakable candelabra silhouette - a tall, bare trunk topped by upswept whorls of branches and stiff, sharply pointed leaves. It is native to the highlands of southern Brazil, reaching just into Argentina and Paraguay, where it is the keystone tree of the Araucaria moist forest (POWO, Kew; native status per Flora e Funga do Brasil). HONESTY: it is Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List - its southern-Brazilian forest has been reduced by well over 90% by logging and land conversion, so this is a genuinely conservation-notable tree, not just an ornamental. It is dioecious, with separate male and female trees, so two are needed to set seed. Its large seeds, the pinhão, are a traditional and prized food, edible when cooked. Slow-growing, very long-lived, wind-pollinated, and needing real space and a cool-subtropical highland climate, it is a specimen for large gardens and conservation plantings rather than small yards.

Red escallonia is an evergreen shrub native to the slopes of the Andes in southern Chile and neighboring Argentina, where it grows in scrub and open forest from central Chile south to Tierra del Fuego. In gardens it earns its place as a fast-growing, salt-tolerant hedge or windbreak with masses of crimson tubular flowers from midsummer into autumn. The honest catch is frost-tenderness: below USDA zone 8 (or without a sheltered coastal microclimate) hard freezes kill stems to the ground, and in mild, humid climates such as the Pacific Northwest and New Zealand the plant has naturalized aggressively and should be sited with invasive-escape in mind.

The classic cottage-garden snapdragon - named for its hinged, two-lipped "dragon-mouth" blooms that snap open when pinched at the sides. A tender perennial native to southwestern Europe, hardy in USDA Zones 7-10 but grown almost everywhere as a cool-season annual, carrying tall spikes of white, yellow, pink, red, orange, peach, or purple flowers from spring to frost. Hummingbirds and butterflies work the blooms, and the cut spikes are a cutting-garden staple.