Rann of Kutch seasonal salt marsh

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 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).

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.

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.

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.

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 frost-tender broadleaf evergreen tree of the laurel family, native to Mexico and Central America and grown across the tropics and subtropics for its buttery, pear-shaped fruit. Glossy dark-green elliptic leaves 4 to 8 inches long clothe a tree that reaches 30 to 60 feet, hung with greenish-yellow flower panicles that give way to large single-seeded berries. Hardy only in USDA zones 10-12 - north of that it is an indoor curiosity easily sprouted from a pit, but one that rarely fruits.

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.

Gerbera jamesonii, the Barberton daisy (also Transvaal daisy), is a tufted evergreen perennial herb in the daisy family (Asteraceae) native to the summer-rainfall grasslands and rocky woodland of north-eastern South Africa and Eswatini. It forms a basal rosette of lobed leaves from which leafless flowering scapes rise, each topped by a single large daisy-style flowerhead in orange-red, yellow, pink, or white. It is the wild ancestor of the thousands of florist gerbera cultivars and earns its place as a long-blooming focal point in borders and patio containers, attractive to bees and other insects. The load-bearing caution is frost-tenderness: RHS rates it H1C, meaning it survives outdoors only in summer or the very mildest, frost-free spots and must be overwintered under glass elsewhere (roughly USDA 9-11). It is non-toxic, with no reported poisoning hazard to people or pets, making it a safe choice where toxicity is a concern.

The premier true mahogany and one of the most commercially important tropical hardwoods on Earth: a very large neotropical timber tree that reaches roughly 100 to 150 feet with a broad, spreading, rounded crown, pinnately compound leaves, and reddish-brown heartwood prized for fine furniture and instruments. Honesty first: this is a knowledge and conservation entry, not a plant most people can or should grow. It is a frost-tender tropical giant hardy only in USDA zones 10b-12b, native to the neotropics from southern Mexico through Central America into Amazonian South America, with no role as a temperate-garden ornamental. More important than any landscape use is its conservation status - decades of overharvest for that famous mahogany timber have made it conservation-sensitive, and it is listed on CITES Appendix II, meaning international trade is regulated to keep harvest from driving the species toward extinction. Include it for its story and its scale, and source any wood or plant material only through legal, certified, sustainable channels.

Scadoxus multiflorus, the blood lily (also fireball lily, ball lily, powderpuff lily), is a summer-growing bulbous geophyte in the Amaryllidaceae, native across tropical and southern Africa to the southwestern Arabian Peninsula. Each bulb sends up a leafless stem topped by a dramatic globe-shaped umbel of scarlet flowers with protruding stamens, often before or alongside the foliage. It is a focal-point container and bedding bulb prized for its bold flower head, but it is decidedly tender - RHS rates it H1B (minimum 50 to 59°F), so outside roughly USDA zones 9b–11 it must be grown under glass or as a houseplant and dried off / overwintered frost-free. CRITICAL CAUTION: every part is toxic - Scadoxus contains poisonous alkaloids and has been used as a component of arrow and fishing poisons; the bulbs are ornamental, not edible, and the plant is harmful to people, pets, and grazing animals if ingested. Handle with gloves and keep away from children and animals.

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.

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.

Anise-scented sage is a tall, upright perennial in the mint family (Lamiaceae), native to Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. NC State Extension and Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder describe a bushy, square-stemmed plant 2 to 5 feet tall and wide that carries spikes of deep blue, two-lipped flowers with purple-blue calyxes from July into fall; NC State calls it a reliable nectar source for hummingbirds and butterflies, and notes that carpenter bees rob its nectar by biting a hole in the floral tube. The 'anise-scented' name is only partly earned: Wikipedia describes 'an anise scent when crushed,' but Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder says the bruised foliage has a very mild aroma with 'very little if any anise scent.' It spreads by tuberous roots that let it reproduce vegetatively (NC State Extension), so it fills a space rather than staying in a tidy clump. It is winter hardy only to about USDA zone 8a: farther north, grow it as an annual or overwinter cuttings indoors, though NC State notes the 'Black and Blue' cultivar is hardier and will survive milder zone 7 winters if well mulched. Neither NC State nor Missouri Botanical Garden documents an edible use or a toxicity hazard. NC State records, as ethnobotanical history, that the Guarani people of Brazil used it as a sedative; that is not a recommendation to take it, so treat it as a non-food ornamental. It has also naturalized outside South America (Wikipedia records it in New Zealand and Chile), so where winters are mild enough for it to persist outdoors, check your local weed or invasive-plant list before planting it.

A deciduous Eastern-Asian fruit tree with a rounded, spreading crown that the Missouri Botanical Garden lists at 20 to 30 feet tall and wide. Oval leaves emerge yellowish-green, mature to glossy green, and turn gold to red in fall; fragrant but insignificant late-spring flowers give way to showy orange persimmons (3 to 4 inches) that ripen in late fall and may persist on bare branches into winter. Winter hardy to USDA Zones 7-10 and drought tolerant once established.

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.

Bear's breeches is a bold Mediterranean perennial whose dramatically lobed, glossy leaves inspired the Corinthian column capital of classical architecture. Its wild native range spans the central and eastern Mediterranean - Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, the Balkans, Greece, the Aegean, Anatolia and the Levant, plus NW Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia); it is naturalised (not native) further west into Iberia. In gardens it serves as an architectural statement plant, producing tall white-and-purple flower spikes in summer on established clumps. The honest catch is its root system: fleshy, deep-running tuberous roots regenerate readily from the smallest fragment, making Acanthus mollis genuinely difficult to eradicate once established and a declared invasive in Australia and New Zealand, so site selection is a permanent decision.

A bold, clumping rhizomatous perennial grown for its elegant, pure-white funnel-shaped flowers - actually a curved spathe wrapped around a yellow finger-like spadix - held on tall stems above large, glossy, arrow-shaped deep-green leaves from late winter into summer. Native to the wetlands and seeps of southern Africa, Zantedeschia aethiopica is the classic florist's calla and a striking water-margin and container plant, thriving in consistently moist to wet rich soil in full sun to part shade. It is tender (hardy in zones 8a-10b), where it overwinters in the ground and can be near-evergreen; colder gardeners grow it from lifted rhizomes or under heavy mulch. Two cautions are load-bearing: every part is toxic if eaten (calcium-oxalate raphides), and in mild, wet climates it can escape and naturalize into an invasive weed.

A tall, statuesque, winter-growing cormous perennial from the winter-rainfall fynbos of South Africa's Western Cape, grown for its bold fans of upright sword leaves and branched spikes of pink (to white) tubular flowers in late spring. Known as the Cape bugle-lily, it is a striking fynbos geophyte that flowers profusely the season after a fire. Honesty (load-bearing): it is a TALL plant, 4 to 6 feet in flower, and it is WINTER-GROWING and SUMMER-DORMANT - it grows through autumn and winter, flowers in late spring, then dies back and rests dry through summer, so you water it from autumn to spring and keep it dry and at rest in summer; watering it through a hot summer rots the corm. It is FROST-TENDER to borderline (RHS rates it about H3-H4): in cold-winter areas grow it in a warm, sheltered, sharply-drained spot or a large pot, or lift and store the dormant corms. It wants FULL SUN and well-drained soil and the room its height needs. In the wild it is FIRE-ADAPTED, flowering en masse the season after a fynbos fire. The corms are inedible. It is bird-pollinated, worked by sunbirds (and butterflies) along with long-tongued flies - described in the prose, since it is grown as an ornamental rather than for any crop.

Cider gum is a fast-growing evergreen tree from the woodlands of Tasmania's central plateau and one of the most cold-hardy eucalypts: Trees and Shrubs Online calls it the hardiest of the tree-form eucalypts planted widely enough to judge, and the RHS rates it H5, hardy in most of the UK even in severe winters. Plants For A Future gives it long spells down to 7°F and short ones down to -0°F. Left unpruned it grows into a tree of 40 to 100 feet with peeling cream and brown bark and grey-green, sickle-shaped adult leaves, but many gardeners cut it back hard every spring to keep it in the rounded, glaucous-blue juvenile foliage it is best known for. Small white flowers in clusters of three appear on trees allowed to mature, usually in summer or autumn in British gardens. The name refers to its sweet sap, which the Aboriginal people of Tasmania fermented into a drink called way-a-linah. The leaves hold eucalyptus oil, which is poisonous if swallowed (Plants For A Future reports deaths after ingestion of 4-24 ml of eucalyptus oils), so keep foliage, prunings and any oil away from children and pets. Outside its range it has naturalized in woodland and on roadsides in south-eastern England, where it occasionally regenerates from seed, while in the wild it is assessed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

The classic Mediterranean evergreen - one of the first trees ever cultivated (Crete, ~2500 B.C.) and the source of eating olives and olive oil. It grows 20 to 30 feet with a rounded crown, smooth gray bark that gnarls picturesquely with age, and opposite lance-shaped leaves that are gray-green above and silver beneath. Fragrant white summer flowers give way to oval green drupes that ripen to black. Drought tolerant once established, but winter-hardy only to USDA Zone 8.

The familiar lawn dandelion: a low, ground-hugging rosette of jagged, deeply toothed leaves over a thick, deep taproot, throwing up hollow stalks topped by bright golden flower heads that close into the iconic white seed puffball. Here is the honest framing, because it is the whole story of this plant: Taraxacum officinale is an INTRODUCED Eurasian species, not a North American native - it has naturalized across virtually the entire continent and is treated almost everywhere as a lawn and garden weed. It spreads aggressively, scattering wind-borne seed from every puffball and regrowing from a taproot that snaps off and resprouts when you try to pull it, so it self-seeds and returns freely whether you want it to or not. But it also has real, underrated value: dandelions are one of the most important EARLY-SEASON sources of both nectar and pollen for emerging bees and other pollinators, blooming in late winter and early spring when very little else is open. And the whole plant is edible, with a long culinary and folk-medicinal history. So this is less a plant you design IN than one you decide how to live WITH - tolerate it for the pollinators, harvest it for the table, or manage it where you truly cannot have it, but know going in that you will not easily be rid of it. One more honest note, this time about the name. Taraxacum has been divided into hundreds of near-identical microspecies, which makes a single name hard to pin down, and the two botanical authorities cited on this page handle that differently: Kew's World Checklist treats Taraxacum officinale as a name for the whole group, Taraxacum sect. Taraxacum, rather than for one species, while GBIF still lists Taraxacum officinale as an accepted species in its own right. Either way, the plant in the lawn is the one people mean.

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.

Cacao is the chocolate tree - a small evergreen understory tree of the lowland tropical rainforest, famous for being cauliflorous: its tiny pink-and-white flowers, and then the large ridged football-shaped pods, are borne directly on the trunk and oldest branches rather than out among the leaves. Reaching roughly 15 to 25 feet, it carries glossy oblong leaves that flush bronze when young. Each pod holds 30-40 seeds embedded in sweet white pulp; those seeds become chocolate only after fermenting, drying, and roasting (the cacau of Brazil). It is genuinely demanding - a true tropical, needing deep humid warmth and overhead shade and failing below about 50°F - so outside the wet tropics it is a greenhouse or conservatory plant only. Its flowers are pollinated not by bees but by tiny midges.

Snowflower (also called peace lily, a name used across its genus) is a wild tropical aroid that Kew's WCVP places native to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. It is a clump-forming evergreen perennial whose oval to lance-shaped leaves are 5 to 8 inches long, at the small end of a genus whose leaves run 5 to 26 inches, and its spathe is greenish- or yellowish-white rather than pure white, 4 to 8 inches long around the flowering spadix. Many peace lilies in the houseplant trade are cultivars and hybrids, so a plant sold simply as a peace lily is not necessarily this species. Like the rest of its genus it contains calcium-oxalate crystals, a genus-level finding that makes it mildly toxic to people and pets if chewed, and it is frost-tender: hardy outdoors only in frost-free USDA zones 11-12 and grown as a houseplant everywhere else.

Tree thorn-apple (Brugmansia arborea), also known as angel's trumpet, horn of plenty or maikoa (RHS), is an evergreen to semi-evergreen shrub or small tree of the Andes, first described by Linnaeus as Datura arborea. Kew records it as native to Bolivia, northern Chile, Ecuador and Peru, and Wikipedia describes it from drier valleys at 6,562 to 9,843 feet that often see light frost. In gardens RHS gives it an ultimate size of 8.2 to 13.1 feet tall and 4.9 to 8.2 feet wide; in its home valleys it can reach 23 feet. Its strongly fragrant, nodding white to cream trumpets are only 5 to 7 inches long, the shortest in the genus, and each sits in a very long green calyx that reaches almost to the mouth of the flower - the quickest way to tell it from the many other white angel's trumpets sold under its name. It flowers almost continuously in small numbers rather than in big flushes. The load-bearing warning is its toxicity: RHS lists it as TOXIC if eaten, a skin irritant and toxic to pets, and every part of a Brugmansia is potentially poisonous, carrying tropane alkaloids (scopolamine, hyoscyamine, atropine), with the seeds and leaves especially dangerous - never plant it where children or pets could reach it. The IUCN Red List classes it as Extinct in the Wild, yet it is listed as invasive in New Caledonia. Wikipedia calls it the hardiest Brugmansia to both cold and drought, but RHS rates it H1c, wanting a winter minimum of about 41°F, so Plotwright publishes USDA zone 11 only and treats it as a container plant to bring under cover anywhere colder.