Junggar Basin semi-desert

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.

A native eastern + central North American thicket-forming shrub producing arching thorny canes + clusters of large sweet black berries in mid-to-late summer. Among the most important wildlife fruit producers in eastern forests - birds, mammals, + insects all depend on the fruit. Like raspberry, biennial-caned (primocane year 1, fruits in year 2 as floricane, then dies back). Spreads via root suckers + tip-rooting cane tips; manage with annual pruning.

A medium-to-large native shade tree of central and eastern North America, reaching 50 to 80 feet with an ovate-rounded crown and large, asymmetric heart-shaped leaves. In June it carries pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers on pendulous cymes - each cluster hung from a distinctive strap-like leafy bract - that ripen into pea-sized nutlets. The fragrant June bloom is a premier nectar source: Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as attracting bees and butterflies, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as having special value to both native and honey bees.

The American elm is the great vase-shaped shade tree that once arched over Main Streets and town commons across eastern North America - a fast, extremely cold-hardy deciduous tree of 60 to 80 feet whose upright trunk divides into a fountain of high, spreading limbs that meet overhead to form a living cathedral ceiling. That iconic form, and the species' tolerance of wet soil and tough urban conditions, made it the default American street tree for a century. Then Dutch elm disease (DED) - an introduced fungal disease carried by elm bark beetles - swept through in the 20th century and killed the vast majority of mature street and shade elms across the continent. The honest reality for a gardener today is blunt: do not plant the unselected wild species expecting it to survive. If you want the American-elm form, plant a DED-tolerant cultivar bred and selected for resistance - 'Princeton', 'Valley Forge', 'New Harmony', or 'Jefferson' - and say so plainly. Where it does grow, it is fast, hardy to USDA zone 3, and remarkably forgiving of wet ground and city stress.

A small-to-medium understory tree of dry, rocky eastern-North-American woods, named for its drooping clusters of papery, sac-like seed pods that resemble the fruit of hops. The birch-like, sharply-serrated leaves turn an undistinguished yellow in fall, and reddish-brown male catkins persist on the bare branches through winter. Also called ironwood for its extremely hard, dense wood; tough, low-maintenance, and drought-tolerant once established.

A small native deciduous tree (or thicket-forming, suckering shrub) of eastern and central North America, grown for clouds of fragrant white 5-petaled flowers that open in March before the leaves and for the edible red plums that follow in early summer. It forms a broad, spreading crown with attractive dark reddish-brown twigs that sometimes carry thorny lateral branchlets. A documented larval host for swallowtails and other butterflies, with flowers of special value to native, bumble, and honey bees.

Amur maple (Acer ginnala, accepted by Kew's Plants of the World Online as Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala) is a small, fast-growing deciduous tree or large multi-stemmed shrub from northeastern Asia - the Russian Far East, northeastern China, and Korea. At 15 to 20 feet it fits where a full-size maple cannot, and it earns that place with three seasons of interest: fragrant greenish-yellow flowers in spring, which is an unusual scent for a maple and an early nectar source for bees; small glossy three-lobed leaves through summer; and reliable, often brilliant red-to-orange fall color that arrives early. It is also one of the hardiest maples, tolerant of cold, wind, dry soil, and a wide range of pH. The honest catch, and it is a serious one for North American gardeners, is that it self-sows prolifically and has escaped cultivation to become invasive across parts of the US Midwest and Northeast, where its shade-tolerant seedlings crowd native shrubs and understory trees in open woods, savannas, and prairies. Several states list it as invasive or a noxious weed. Check your local invasive-species list before planting, and be prepared to remove seedlings if you do.

A native central + eastern US perennial with intensely aromatic foliage when crushed and dense clouds of small blue-purple flowers in late fall - often the latest-blooming aster in the eastern flora. Drought + clay tolerant; among the toughest native fall pollinator plants.

A native eastern + central North American multi-stemmed deciduous shrub with dentate (toothed) foliage, white spring flower clusters, blue-black drupes, and reliable fall color. Especially valued for wildlife - among the most-cited native shrubs for fall-migration bird forage.

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 clump-forming herbaceous perennial grown for its showy late-season flower heads: masses of tiny star-like flowers borne in flattened cymes 3 to 6 inches across that emerge rosy pink, deepen to rose-red, and fade to coppery-rust as they die. Gray-green, fleshy, succulent-like leaves form upright clumps to about 24 inches. Easily grown in dry-to-medium, well-drained soil in full sun, it is drought tolerant and attracts butterflies, and its foliage and dead inflorescences persist into winter for added interest.

Balloon flower is a long-lived East Asian perennial grown for its inflated, balloon-like buds that pop open into wide, five-petalled violet-blue (or white or pink) stars in mid- to late summer - one of the most distinctive bloom shapes in the border. Native to China, Korea, Japan, and the Russian Far East, it is bone-hardy (USDA zones 3a-9b) and largely trouble-free once established. The honest catch is its very late spring emergence: balloon flower is among the last perennials to surface, reappearing in late spring when other beds are already full, and its fleshy tap-like roots resent disturbance - mark it clearly, never move it, and resist the urge to poke around the crown before the shoots appear.

A low, densely branching coastal shrub of northeastern dunes, smothered in white spring blossom and prized for the tart blue-purple plums that follow. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center documents it native from New Brunswick down the Atlantic seaboard to New Jersey, growing in sand and gravel near the sea, where it is both salt tolerant and drought tolerant. It carries Special Value to Native Bees, feeds birds with its fruit, and is self-incompatible - a second seedling is needed to set a real crop.

A circumboreal evergreen groundcover with small white-pink urn-shaped flowers, glossy leathery leaves, and bright-red bear-edible berries. One of the most reliable native evergreen groundcovers for cold sandy sites; widely used in northern landscapes for slope stabilization + low-maintenance native plantings.

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.

The largest native cherry of eastern North America - a medium-to-large deciduous shade tree that hangs elongated racemes of small white flowers in spring, then ripens drooping strings of pea-sized fruit from red to near-black in late summer. The fragrant white bloom feeds bees while the fruit is eaten by 33 species of birds and many mammals; it is also a workhorse larval host, supporting the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a string of giant silk and sphinx moths. Every part except the ripe fruit is cyanide-bearing and toxic.

A drought-and-flood-tolerant native shrub of eastern North America with brilliant three-season interest - spring white-pink flowers, glossy black antioxidant-rich late-summer berries, and brilliant wine-red fall foliage - plus an extraordinarily wide cold-hardiness range (USDA 3a-8b). The berries are astringent fresh but the basis of a small but growing commercial industry (juices, wines, jams, supplements) for their exceptionally high anthocyanin content. Spreads by suckers; site where colony formation is welcome.

Black oak (Quercus velutina) is the dry-ridge oak of eastern North America - a red-group tree of 50 to 60 feet that colonises the upland hills, slopes and gravelly ridges where richer oaks give up. Two things identify it and both are worth knowing, because the leaf alone is unreliable: the mature bark is hard and blocky, broken into deep furrows, and dark grey to nearly black on shaded and older trunks - though a sunlit trunk often reads plain grey-brown, so the name oversells the colour. Cut into that bark and the inner layer is a startling yellow-orange. That inner bark is the historical point of the tree - it was the source of quercitron, a commercial yellow dye traded out of North America from the 1770s onward, and it is why the species carries an economic history that its plain garden reputation does not suggest. As a garden tree it is an honest, undemanding, long-lived shade oak with good russet-red autumn colour and heavy wildlife value, hardy across an unusually wide zone 3 to 9 range. The catch is the taproot: black oak resents transplanting more than most oaks, so it is a tree to plant small and leave alone rather than to move in as a specimen.

The original black-eyed Susan - a bristly-stemmed, short-lived meadow daisy that behaves as an annual, biennial, or brief perennial depending on where it grows. It blooms hard and early from seed, then carries itself forward by reseeding rather than by spreading into a permanent clump.

A native eastern North American multi-stemmed deciduous shrub or small tree with white spring flower clusters, edible dark-blue drupes, and red-purple fall foliage. Among the most adaptable native viburnums; tolerates a wide range of soil + light conditions.

An old-fashioned woodland-garden perennial from East Asia (Siberia, Japan, northern China, and Korea) grown for arching sprays of nodding, puffy, heart-shaped rose-pink flowers, each with a protruding white inner petal that gives the "bleeding heart" its name. Blooms in spring in part-to-full shade above ferny blue-green foliage, then goes summer-dormant - best interplanted with hostas and ferns that fill the gap. All parts are poisonous if eaten, and the foliage can cause skin dermatitis.

A long-lived native perennial of central and eastern US woodland borders and prairie meadows with deep blue pea-shaped flowers in late spring, blue-green leguminous foliage, attractive black seed pods for winter interest, and a nitrogen-fixing root system (Fabaceae). Larval host for 6 documented butterfly species per NC State (orange sulphur, clouded sulphur, frosted elfin, eastern tailed-blue, hoary edge, wild indigo duskywing) - among the highest Lep-host-count perennials in the eastern flora.

A tough, fine-textured warm-season bunchgrass of the North American shortgrass prairie, named for its distinctive seed spikes that hang from one side of the arching stem like a comb or an eyebrow. Bluish-gray summer foliage forms dense low clumps that turn golden brown - sometimes orange and red - in autumn, while reddish-purple flowers rise above on slender culms in summer. Exceptionally drought- and heat-tolerant once established, it is a larval host for several prairie skipper butterflies and a seed source for granivorous birds.

A rough, sprawling Mediterranean annual grown for showy, open racemes of drooping, star-shaped bright blue flowers in summer. Branched stems and wrinkled, dull gray-green leaves are clad in bristly hairs and carry the taste and fragrance of cucumber. Easy in poor, dry soils, drought-tolerant, a magnet for bees, and a self-seeder that returns to the garden year after year.

A rounded, multi-stemmed deciduous shrub native across eastern and central North America, grown for its edible nuts and its season-opening catkins. Showy 2-3 inch yellowish-brown male catkins dangle from bare branches in early spring before the ovate, double-toothed leaves emerge; small egg-shaped edible nuts ripen inside leafy husks by mid- to late summer. Easygoing in average soil and tolerant of clay and black walnut, it suckers into thickets that screen and shelter wildlife.

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.

A native bramble (cane) producing red aromatic edible fruit in summer or fall (depending on summer-bearing vs everbearing cultivar). Self-pollinating; spreads vigorously by root suckers + tip-rooting canes. NC State documents extensive Lepidoptera + small mammal + bird wildlife value alongside the edible fruit role. Site where the spreading habit is welcome - naturalized colonies form in sun-exposed open ground.

An upright, clump-forming perennial of the mint family native to the upper Midwest, Great Plains, and into central Canada, named for its anise-scented foliage. From June through September it carries dense terminal spikes of lavender-to-purple two-lipped flowers above square stems and opposite, toothed leaves. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as a nectar source with special value to native bees, bumble bees, and honey bees, and it also draws butterflies and hummingbirds.

Asiatic hybrids are the easiest lilies to grow and among the first to bloom - rigid, unbranched 3-4 foot stems carry large, mostly upward- and outward-facing flowers 4 to 6 inches wide in nearly every color but blue, often with dark basal spotting. The flowers are showy and good for cutting but, unlike most other lily groups, usually have little or no fragrance. Every part of the plant is dangerously toxic to cats.

Aubrieta (Aubrieta deltoidea) is a low, mat-forming evergreen perennial in the mustard family (Brassicaceae), native to the rocky hillsides of southeastern Europe - primarily Greece, the Aegean Islands, Crete, and adjacent Mediterranean coasts. It is one of the most reliable spring-flowering ground covers for sunny, well-drained spots: cascading sheets of violet to deep pink four-petalled blooms from March through May, attractive to bees and bee flies. The honest catch is that without a hard cut-back immediately after flowering, plants become woody and bare in the centre within two or three years, collapsing from a tight carpet into a tired, gappy mat.

Austrian pine (Pinus nigra), also called European black pine, is a dense, dark, 40-to-60-foot conifer from central and southern Europe into western Asia, with stiff dark green needles three to six inches long in bundles of two and bark that darkens to nearly black on mature trunks. For most of the twentieth century it was the default tough conifer of North American landscapes: it takes clay, drought, salt and city air, and Missouri Botanical Garden still lists urban tolerance among its attributes. That reputation is now out of date, and the reason is a disease. Sphaeropsis - Diplodia - tip blight kills the new shoots from the bottom of the tree upward, hollowing out the crown over years, and it is severe enough that Missouri Botanical Garden explicitly no longer recommends planting Austrian pine in the St. Louis area or the wider Midwest. Dothistroma needle blight and pine wilt nematode compound it. It remains a legitimate choice on the drier, cooler, less humid end of its range; specifying it into a humid continental summer is planting a tree with a known ending.

Colchicum autumnale is a corm-forming herbaceous perennial native to lowland grassy meadows across much of Europe, from Portugal and Great Britain east to Ukraine. In autumn it sends up naked goblet-shaped flowers of lilac-pink directly from the bare soil - leaves and seedpods follow in spring and die back by early summer. The honest catch is its extreme toxicity: every part of the plant contains colchicine, a compound lethal to humans and animals, and the broad strap-like spring leaves are routinely mistaken for edible wild garlic - a potentially fatal confusion. Despite the common name, it is not a true crocus (Crocus, Iridaceae) but a member of the Colchicaceae.

Epimedium grandiflorum (large-flowered barrenwort, bishop's hat) is a deciduous woodland perennial native to Japan and Korea, valued for its delicate long-spurred spring flowers in pink, white, purple, or yellow and its copper-flushed heart-shaped foliage. It thrives in dappled shade under trees and shrubs, tolerates dry shade once established, and is rarely browsed by deer or rabbits. The honest catch is patience: it is genuinely slow to establish, spreading only modestly from its shallow rhizomes, and the early spring flowers are vulnerable to late frost damage - gardeners expecting quick ground cover are regularly disappointed in the first two to three seasons.

A large, vigorous, fountain-shaped deciduous shrub that earns its common name in late spring, when its arching stems are smothered in masses of pale-pink, yellow-throated, bell-shaped flowers. Native to China, it is one of the great old-fashioned spring shrubs - spectacular in full bloom, much loved by bees, and offering peeling brown bark for quiet winter interest. It is also genuinely big: expect 6 to 10 feet tall and wide at maturity, so give it room rather than fighting its size with the shears. The form to seek out is the Award-winning "Pink Cloud", which carries a clearer, richer pink than the variable seed-grown species.

The signature grass of the North American tallgrass prairie - a tall, deep-rooted warm-season bunchgrass named "turkey-foot" for its three-parted purplish-red seedheads. Blue-green summer foliage rises 4 to 8 feet and turns maroon-tan for fall and winter. Deeply drought- and erosion-resistant once established; a larval host for skipper butterflies and cover for two dozen songbird species.

A vigorous, semi-evergreen, clump- and colony-forming hardy geranium grown as one of the best groundcovers for dry shade under trees and shrubs. Its soft, deeply lobed, strongly aromatic leaves form a dense, weed-smothering carpet, many of them flushing red and bronze in autumn, and above the foliage rise loose clusters of magenta-pink (or white) flowers with prominent protruding stamens in late spring and early summer. It spreads steadily by thick surface rhizomes into a tough, low-maintenance, weed-proof mat that is easy to pull back and is not aggressively invasive. The aromatic foliage makes it markedly deer- and rabbit-resistant, and it is genuinely drought-tolerant once established. It is grown purely as an ornamental and is not a food plant.

Black elder (Sambucus nigra) is a fast, tough, wildlife-rich deciduous shrub native across Europe, north Africa and western Asia (POWO). It earns its place twice a year: broad flat creamy-white flower umbels scent the garden in early summer, then drooping clusters of small black berries ripen in late summer to feed birds in quantity. RHS gives the ornamental forms (e.g. "Black Lace") the Award of Garden Merit and rates the species fully hardy (H6). It is also one of the classic foraging shrubs - the flowers and the COOKED ripe berries are much-used for elderflower cordial and for elderberry syrup, wine and jam. The honest catch is real: the raw berries, and the leaves, bark, stems and roots, are toxic (cyanogenic glycosides) and cause nausea and vomiting, so berries must always be cooked and never eaten raw or unripe. Vigorous to the point of suckering and seeding about, elder is a wildlife and hedgerow plant first, an ornamental second.

A long-lived native deciduous canopy tree of eastern North American bottomland and upland forests with brilliant scarlet-orange fall color (often considered among the finest fall colors of any North American tree) and small dark-blue drupes that feed migrating songbirds + black bears. Dioecious - only female trees produce fruit. Tolerates wet feet but also drought once established; among the most adaptable native canopy trees for residential landscapes.

A large deciduous timber and nut tree of eastern North America, growing 75 to 100 feet tall with an oval to rounded crown and dark, deeply furrowed diamond-patterned bark. Pinnately compound leaves carry 13-23 strongly aromatic leaflets, and yellowish-green flowers in May-June ripen into hard-shelled edible nuts inside green husks. Its roots and tissues release juglone, a compound that suppresses azaleas, rhododendrons, blueberries, peonies, and tomato-family crops planted nearby.

Blackthorn is a dense, fiercely spiny deciduous shrub native across Europe, western Asia, and locally in northwest Africa, famous for its clouds of white blossom in early spring and its bitter sloe berries used to make sloe gin. In garden settings it is valued as an impenetrable wildlife hedge and early pollinator plant, but the honest catch is its aggressive root-suckering: given space it spreads into spreading thickets that are almost impossible to eradicate, and its long, needle-sharp thorns cause "blackthorn disease" - septic puncture wounds that can require medical attention - making it a plant to site with eyes open rather than as a casual garden shrub.

Blue fescue (Festuca glauca) is a small, neat, evergreen ornamental grass native to Europe, grown almost entirely for its striking foliage: it forms a tidy, rounded, hedgehog-like tuft of fine, needle-thin, intensely steel-blue leaves. In early summer slim, wheat-coloured flower spikes rise just above the dome and fade to buff. Compact and orderly, it reads as a cool blue mound that holds its shape and colour through the seasons. Honesty matters with this grass: the famous blue is at its brightest only in full sun and lean, sharply drained soil - in rich, wet, or shaded ground it sulks, greens out, and rots. It is also short-lived, tending to die out in the centre after three or four years, so it must be lifted and divided regularly to keep fresh blue tufts coming. Like most exotic ornamental grasses it offers little to wildlife compared with native bunchgrasses. The trade's best-known form is the cultivar 'Elijah Blue', which holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit.

An architectural, branching perennial grown for the metallic steel-blue flush it takes on in summer: small, egg-shaped flowerheads, each ringed by a collar of spiny, silvery-blue bracts, are held on rigid, blue-tinted stems above a basal rosette of leathery, heart-shaped leaves. It is a tough, genuinely drought-tolerant plant for hot, dry, sharply drained, even poor sandy or gravelly soil in full sun - it resents rich, wet ground, where it rots and flops - which makes it ideal for gravel gardens and coastal, seaside plantings, and one of the best long-lasting cut and dried flowers. At the height of summer it is a magnet for bees, butterflies, and hoverflies. It is grown purely as an ornamental and is not eaten.

One of the few shade-tolerant goldenrods, this eastern-North-American native carries small yellow flower clusters in the leaf axils along an arching blue-purple stem, bringing late-season pollinator color to woodland edges and dappled shade.

Bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) is a big, suckering, mound-forming deciduous shrub from the rich woodlands of the Deep South, native to Alabama and southwestern Georgia. It is grown for three things: bold, palmately compound leaves that cast deep summer shade; tall, erect white flower panicles, 8 to 12 inches long, that stand up like bottle brushes above the foliage in mid summer when little else blooms in shade; and a clean golden-yellow fall colour. The flowers, white petals set off by pink-red anthers, draw bees and butterflies and are visited by hummingbirds. Its greatest asset and its main catch are the same trait: it suckers steadily from the roots into a broad, dense colony 8 to 15 feet across, so this is a shrub for space, not for a tight foundation bed. It wants part to full shade and moist, rich, well-drained soil, and it resents drought, especially when young. Note that the smooth brown seeds (buckeyes) and the other parts are poisonous if eaten.

A native southeastern US deciduous shrub with deep-red strap-petaled fragrant flowers in late spring - the scent variously described as strawberry, banana, or wine, and reliably present only on cultivated cultivars with selected fragrance. Among the most distinctive native shrubs for woodland-edge and shaded mixed borders.

Chestnut oak (Quercus montana) is the rock-ridge oak of the eastern mountains - a white-group tree of 50 to 70 feet, occasionally to 100, that holds the dry, stony, acid slopes where soil is thin and everything else struggles. It is named twice over for what it looks like: the leaves are coarsely and bluntly toothed rather than lobed, so they read as chestnut rather than oak, and the mature bark is the deepest, chunkiest, most heavily ridged trunk of any oak in the East - great vertical blocks that look more like an old chestnut than a Quercus. Its other common names, rock oak and rock chestnut oak, name the habitat directly. In a garden it is a genuinely tough large shade tree with real drought tolerance and an unusual willingness to grow on poor rocky ground, and it carries the biggest acorns in this group at up to an inch and a quarter, sitting in warty cups. If you are choosing between this and chinkapin oak, the deciding factor is soil chemistry: this one wants acid, and chinkapin oak wants lime.

Chinese juniper (Juniperus chinensis) is a species almost nobody actually plants. Missouri Botanical Garden says as much outright - species plants are rarely sold in commerce - and what garden centres stock instead is a hundred-plus cultivars spanning everything from ankle-high groundcover to 50-foot column: 'Blue Point', 'Kaizuka', 'Sea Green', 'Hetzii', the Pfitzer group. Several of those are not even this species. The Pfitzer plants are Juniperus x pfitzeriana, a hybrid with the toxic J. sabina, sold under the J. chinensis name for decades. The wild plant behind all of it is a dioecious East Asian conifer, usually a conical tree 40 to 50 feet tall and 15 to 20 feet wide, carrying two kinds of leaf at once - sharp awl-like juvenile needles 0.2 to 0.4 inches long and blunt adult scales 0.06 to 0.12 inches long - and blue-black berry-like cones 0.3 to 0.5 inches across that take roughly 18 months to ripen on female plants. It is genuinely tough: deer, drought, dry soil, shallow rocky soil, black walnut and city air are all on Missouri Botanical Garden's tolerance list. It is also genuinely dangerous to an orchard. Chinese juniper is the telial host of Japanese apple rust (Gymnosporangium yamadae) and Japanese pear rust (G. asiaticum), both now recorded in North America, alongside the cedar-apple rust group Missouri Botanical Garden names in its problems list. The juniper shrugs the rust off with a few gelatinous orange horns. The apple, crabapple, pear or hawthorn downwind does not.

Chocolate vine is a vigorous, twining woody climber native to China, Japan, and Korea, producing clusters of spice-scented purple-maroon flowers in spring and large sausage-shaped fruits in autumn. It adapts readily to most well-drained soils in sun or part-shade and covers structures fast, making it a striking focal-point plant for walls, fences, and pergolas. The honest catch is its invasive potential: it smothers native shrubs and trees by blocking sunlight and is listed as invasive across much of the US East Coast and the Pacific Northwest, so it must not be planted where it can escape into natural areas, and annual hard pruning is essential to keep it under control.