Central American pine-oak forests

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.

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.

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 fast cool-season annual of the mustard family grown for its peppery, mustard-like salad greens - irregular, pinnately-lobed basal leaves in a low rosette, each with 4 to 10 small lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe (Missouri Botanical Garden). First cultivated by the ancient Greeks and Romans and still widely grown across Europe, it is best grown in the cooler spring and fall months rather than summer heat; leaves are harvested young and tender before they turn strong and bitter. Pale-yellow four-petalled flowers with dark brown or purple veins appear in corymbs if plants are left to bloom.

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.

A long-lived herbaceous perennial vegetable grown for the tender young spears harvested in April and May before they unfurl. Native to Europe and temperate Asia, it grows from a crown that takes 2-3 years to come into production but then yields for fifteen years or more. Spears left uncut grow into airy 3-4 foot summer ferns; the plants are dioecious, and female plants ripen ornamental red berries in late summer.

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 bushy, semi-evergreen small shrub (subshrub) grown for an exceptionally long succession of two-lipped flowers - classically bright red or magenta-pink, with many named cultivars such as the bicolour 'Hot Lips' - borne from early summer right up to the first frosts. Its small aromatic leaves are often said to smell of blackcurrant when crushed. One of the very best garden plants for pollinators in a hot, dry, sunny spot, it is tough and free-flowering but only borderline hardy (RHS H4): in cold-winter climates it needs a warm, sheltered position and sharp drainage and is often grown as a tender perennial. It is an ORNAMENTAL salvia and is NOT the culinary sage (that is Salvia officinalis) - it is grown for flowers and pollinators, not for food.

A low, ground-hugging warm-season annual legume domesticated in West Africa (around present-day Mali and Nigeria) and grown across the continent as a hardy indigenous pulse (GBIF). Trifoliate leaves rise on short, creeping stems, and after the tiny flowers are pollinated their stalks bend down and push the developing pods into the soil, so the crop ripens UNDERGROUND like a peanut. The round, hard seeds are remarkably rich in both protein and carbohydrate, making bambara groundnut a near-complete food and a staple where harsher conditions defeat other beans. It is famously DROUGHT-tolerant and productive on hot, poor, sandy soils, fixing its own nitrogen, but it is a FROST-TENDER, warm-season annual that needs a long, warm season for the underground pods to fill. RHS lists it as a tender, drought-tolerant warm-season annual pulse for full sun, its pods ripening underground (RHS). Outside the tropics it is grown as a summer annual, sown after the last frost once the soil is warm.

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 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.

The classic German or common-flag iris - the presumed parent of most modern bearded-iris cultivars, probably native to southern Europe and the Mediterranean and naturalized widely. Each stalk carries up to six large, usually fragrant flowers in spring: three erect lilac standards above three purple falls marked with brown veins, white bases, and the signature yellow "beard." It has no bulb, spreading instead by creeping rhizomes that form large clumps, with sword-shaped basal foliage to about two feet.

Protea neriifolia, the bearded protea, is a tall, robust evergreen fynbos shrub from the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, grown for its large goblet-shaped flower heads of soft pink-to-cream bracts - each one rimmed with a distinctive 'beard' of black or white fur at the bract tips. Narrow, oleander-like leaves clothe the stems, and the long-lasting blooms are a staple of the cut-flower trade. It is one of the easiest, longest-flowering, and most widely grown proteas, but it is FROST-TENDER (RHS H3, hardy to only about 25°F briefly) and belongs in a warm-temperate or Mediterranean climate, USDA zones 9a-11, or under glass. Like all of its family it is PHOSPHORUS-SENSITIVE: ordinary phosphate fertiliser or bone meal will kill it, and it demands acidic, sharply-drained soil, full sun, and good air circulation. In its homeland the nectar-rich heads are bird-pollinated by sunbirds and sugarbirds.

Amaryllis belladonna, the belladonna lily (also Jersey lily, naked-lady, or March lily), is a bulbous perennial geophyte from the Western Cape of South Africa. It is grown for its dramatic autumn display: leafless stems carry umbels of 6-12 fragrant, funnel-shaped pink to rose flowers that appear before the strap-shaped leaves emerge (a hysteranthous "naked lady" habit). It suits the front-to-mid border, gravel and Mediterranean-style plantings, and large containers in a hot, sheltered, sun-baked spot. Be plain about two cautions: the bulb is only modestly frost-hardy (roughly USDA 8/9-11; RHS H4) and is best given the warmest, driest position available in cooler areas, and ALL parts of the plant are TOXIC, containing lycorine and related Amaryllidaceae alkaloids that cause vomiting and diarrhea if eaten by people or pets. It also naturalizes readily in mild Mediterranean climates, so site it where self-sown spread is welcome.

The African baobab (Adansonia digitata) is the legendary "upside-down tree" of the African savanna - a massive, swollen, water-storing bottle-trunk topped by a sparse crown of stout branches that look like roots flung up into the air. GBIF gives its native range as the hot, dry savannas of mainland sub-Saharan Africa, from the Sahel south, where it is among the slowest-growing and longest-lived trees on Earth, standing for many centuries and even millennia. It bears big, pendulous, white night flowers - bat-pollinated in the wild - and large, velvety, hanging "monkey-bread" fruits whose dry pulp (very high in vitamin C, sold as "baobab powder") and young leaves are both eaten. It is a frost-tender, extremely drought-adapted tree that wants full sun, very sharp drainage, and enormous space, hardy outdoors only in roughly USDA zones 10b-11. RHS lists it as a tender, very slow-growing succulent-trunked tree: outside the tropics it is grown only as a slow potted curiosity or caudex bonsai, kept nearly dry and frost-free through the winter, when it drops its leaves.

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.

A vigorous tropical climbing and trailing vine grown almost everywhere as an easy-care houseplant, prized for glossy, heart-shaped leaves marbled and streaked with golden-yellow variegation. In the tropics it scrambles up tree trunks by aerial roots and can climb 13 to 40 feet, with juvenile leaves enlarging dramatically as it ascends; indoors, kept in a pot or trailing from a shelf, it stays only inches tall and a few feet long. It tolerates low light and infrequent watering better than almost any other foliage plant, which is why it is a beginner favorite. Native to the Society Islands of French Polynesia and now naturalized across the tropics, it is hardy outdoors only in frost-free climates (roughly USDA 10b-12b) and is an aggressive invasive weed where it escapes. All parts are toxic if chewed or eaten.

The jade plant is a long-lived succulent houseplant with thick, woody, branching stems and plump, glossy, jade-green oval leaves that flush red at the edges in bright light - the familiar "money plant" or "lucky plant". POWO (Kew) places it native to South Africa; it is grown worldwide in pots as one of the easiest and most forgiving of indoor succulents. RHS gives Crassula ovata the Award of Garden Merit (AGM) as an easy succulent houseplant for bright light and rates it frost-tender (H1C / H2). Honesty matters with this plant: it is killed far more often by kindness than by neglect - OVERWATERING and too little light cause soft, leggy, rot-prone growth, so let the soil dry out completely between waterings. It is TOXIC to cats and dogs (chewed leaves cause vomiting and lethargy). Mature plants can be trained as an indoor bonsai-like specimen and may, with age and a cool bright rest, bloom in clusters of small white-pink star flowers.

One of the most popular and forgiving foliage houseplants - an evergreen tropical perennial grown indoors for its glossy, dark-green, lance-shaped leaves and elegant white "flowers." Those flowers are not true showy blooms but a white leafy hood, the spathe, wrapped around a creamy spadix. POWO (Kew) places Spathiphyllum wallisii native to the tropical rainforests of Colombia and Venezuela; it is now grown worldwide as an indoor foliage plant. Honesty matters here. It is famously easy: it tolerates LOW light and conveniently droops when thirsty, then recovers after a watering. But every part contains insoluble calcium-oxalate crystals and is TOXIC to cats, dogs, and people if chewed, so keep it away from pets and small children. And its celebrated "air-purifying" reputation, from a 1989 NASA chamber study, is OVERSTATED - at realistic room densities the effect on indoor air quality is negligible. Grow it for its looks and easy care, not as an air purifier. RHS rates it frost-tender, H1B, a tender evergreen for shade and indoor culture under glass.

One of the world's great culinary trees and the source of the tangy tamarind pulp used in drinks, sauces, sweets, and chutneys worldwide: a large, long-lived, slow-growing tropical tree with a dense, spreading, evergreen crown of fine feathery leaflets, small yellow-and-red flowers, and curved brown pods filled with a sticky, sweet-sour pulp. Honesty first about origin: tamarind is most likely African in origin (GBIF), but it has been carried, cultivated, and naturalised across India and South-East Asia so anciently and so widely that its exact native range is debated and many sources call it Indian - describe it as probably African and pantropical in cultivation, not as a North American or European native. It is frost-tender (USDA 10b-11), wanting full sun, plenty of space, and good drainage, and it is drought-tolerant once established. In cold-winter climates it cannot grow outdoors and is kept only as a tender frost-free container or bonsai specimen that rarely fruits. The sweet-sour fruit pulp is the prize, so it earns its place as an edible tree where the climate allows.