North Saharan Xeric Steppe and Woodland

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.

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

Chinese silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis) is one of the most popular of all ornamental grasses: a large, clump-forming, warm-season grass that builds a fountain of arching, narrow leaves and then crowns it in late summer and autumn with showy, silvery-pink to coppery, feathery plumes held well above the foliage. As the season turns, the plumes fade to a soft, pale silver and the whole clump dries to warm tan, standing right through winter to give superb autumn colour and bold, four-season structure. POWO (Kew) places it as native to East Asia - China, Japan, and Korea - and it carries one load-bearing honesty caveat into the garden: the straight species self-seeds and is invasive across much of the eastern and central United States, listed as invasive or discouraged in many states. So plant a sterile or low-seeding named cultivar, deadhead the plumes before the seed ripens, and never plant it near wild or natural areas. Cut the old foliage to the ground in late winter before new growth begins.

A native evergreen fern of eastern North America that holds leathery dark green fronds through winter and provides ground-level songbird cover - ideal for shaded woodland slopes and erosion-prone banks.

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.

Cotton lavender is a compact, mound-forming evergreen shrub native to the western and central Mediterranean, valued for its intensely silver-grey, aromatic feathery foliage and bright yellow button flowers in summer. In the garden it excels as a low edging, silver accent, or knot-garden structural element and tolerates drought and poor soils with ease once established. The honest catch is its short life in heavy or wet ground: without sharp drainage and a hard annual clip it becomes woody, open-centred, and collapses within three to five years, making site selection the single most important decision before planting.

English holly is a slow-growing evergreen shrub or small tree native to western and southern Europe, northwest Africa, and southwest Asia, prized for its glossy spiny foliage and brilliant red winter berries. It tolerates shade, tolerates clay and acidic soils, and is remarkably long-lived, making it a stalwart structural plant for hedging and screening. The honest catch is its dioecy: you need at least one male plant nearby for female plants to berry, and those berries - the plant's most celebrated feature - are toxic to humans and pets, so any planting within reach of children requires clear awareness. In the Pacific Northwest and parts of coastal western North America it has proven seriously invasive, outcompeting native forest understory; gardeners in those regions should choose a sterile cultivar or a native substitute.

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

A mat-forming herbaceous perennial in the mint family (Lamiaceae), native to the rocky hills of Turkey, the Caucasus, and Iran. NC State Extension describes it as grown chiefly for its thick, soft, silvery-green leaves that are densely white-woolly and velvety to the touch, 4 to 6 inches long, borne in low basal rosettes about a foot tall and a foot or so wide. In summer it sends up terminal spikes of tiny purplish-pink two-lipped flowers, though the bloom stalks are often sheared off to keep the foliage compact. Deer-resistant and moderately drought-tolerant once established, it wants full sun and very well-drained soil and resents wet leaves and humid, soggy ground.

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.

The only native oak of British Columbia and Washington and the principal oak of Oregon - a slow-growing, deeply tap-rooted deciduous tree with deeply lobed, rounded-lobe glossy leaves and a broad, rugged, rounded crown. It is the keystone of the Pacific Northwest oak savanna, providing acorns and cover for deer, small mammals, and birds. Notably drought-adapted: it wants dry summer soil and resents irrigation.

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.