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 12-48 inches 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 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 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 4-8 inches long clothe a tree that reaches 30-60 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 6-10 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.

A woody, deciduous flowering shrub in the Hydrangeaceae, native to Japan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia and long grown as the classic "hortensia" or French hydrangea. NC State Extension describes a rounded shrub 3 to 6 feet tall and wide with large opposite, simple, toothed leaves (4-8 inches long) and big rounded mop-head or flat lacecap flower clusters in late spring and summer in white, pink, blue, or purple. Famously, flower color tracks soil chemistry — acidic soils push the blooms blue and alkaline soils turn them pink. It wants protection from hot afternoon sun and steady moisture, making it a mainstay of shaded foundation plantings and woodland borders.

The premier true mahogany and one of the most commercially important tropical hardwoods on Earth: a very large neotropical timber tree that reaches roughly 100-150 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 clumping, multi-stemmed evergreen perennial from South Africa, grown for its unmistakable crane-head flowers — a horizontal green-and-pink spathe from which bright orange sepals and vivid blue petals emerge like the crest of an exotic bird. Bold, paddle-shaped blue-green leaves on long stalks form a 3-4 foot fountain of foliage. Winter hardy only in USDA zones 10-12 (frost-free subtropics); everywhere colder it is grown as a houseplant or summered-out container plant. It blooms reliably only from a well-established, somewhat crowded clump, so patience is the key to flowers.

A cool-season Asian leaf vegetable grown for its loose, non-heading rosette of dark-green leaves carried on broad, juicy white stalks — the spoon-shaped petioles that distinguish it from heading cabbages. Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder records that the group spans varieties from 3-4 inches to 24 inches tall and is edible at every stage, from seedlings to small immature heads to large mature heads and even while flowering. The stems are mild and juicy while the leaves carry a cabbage-like flavor; like other brassicas it tolerates light frosts but bolts in summer heat.

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 vigorous, thorny tropical woody vine from Brazil, grown across the warm world for one of the most spectacular floral displays in horticulture — sheets of magenta, purple, red, orange, pink, or white that can smother a wall, fence, or pergola. The vivid color, though, is not from petals: it comes from papery BRACTS (modified leaves) that surround the true flowers, which are small, slender, and white to cream. Bougainvillea spectabilis is a sprawling, climbing scrambler armed with sharp, woody thorns; in frost-free climates it reaches 15-40 feet, hauling itself up supports and over rooftops, but it can also be kept hard-pruned as a shrub, a hedge, or a container plant. It is frost-tender and hardy in the ground only in USDA zones 9b-11b; everywhere colder it is grown as a greenhouse, conservatory, or seasonal container plant and overwintered indoors. It blooms most heavily when grown lean and a little dry in blazing full sun, which is why the showiest bougainvilleas are often the ones that look slightly neglected.

Broadleaf plantain is the broad-leaved, ground-hugging weed of lawns, paths, driveways, and roadsides across North America - and, honestly, an introduced Eurasian species, not a native. It forms a flat basal rosette of broad, strongly ribbed oval leaves that presses tight to the ground, sending up slender, erect, rat-tail flower spikes through summer. Its tie to human disturbance runs so deep that some Indigenous peoples called it 'white man's footprint,' because it followed colonists wherever soil was trodden bare. Despite the weedy reputation it is genuinely undervalued for habitat: the wind-pollinated spikes are heavy pollen sources, the ripe seed feeds finches and other small birds, and it is a documented larval host for the common buckeye butterfly. The young leaves are edible cooked or in salad, with a long medicinal and poultice history.

A cool-season vegetable grown for its large, tight, terminal head of green flower buds on a thick edible stem, framed by waxy blue-green leaves. Grown as an annual; it grows poorly once daytime temperatures consistently exceed 80°F, so it is timed for spring and fall. Harvest promptly while the head is firm and tight, before the buds begin to open.

A slow-growing, long-season cool-weather vegetable grown for the miniature cabbage-like buds (1-2 inches wide) that form in the leaf axils along a single 2-3 foot stem. It is the same species as kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and kohlrabi, differing only by cultivar group. Flavor improves after the first fall frost, so it is timed for a cool-temperature autumn harvest rather than summer heat.

A cool-weather leaf vegetable grown for its dense, edible head of tightly wrapped blue-green, red, or wrinkled (Savoy) leaves. A biennial almost always grown as an annual, it forms a 3-4 pound head in about 80 days and rarely flowers in cultivation. It shares its species with kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and kohlrabi, and grows poorly once daytime temperatures stay above 80 degrees F.

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

A warm-season annual vine in the cucumber family grown for its sweet, aromatic netted melons — one of the six broadly accepted edible groups of the polymorphic Cucumis melo. Stiff-haired, rough-textured trailing stems climb 6-9 feet with the help of unbranched tendrils, carrying funnel-shaped yellow flowers that draw bees. Native to the Old World (Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, New Guinea, and Australia) and intolerant of frost, it is grown as an annual on the ground or on cages and trellises.

A cool-weather brassica grown for the large, tight head of aborted white flower buds — the "curd" — that forms at the center of a rosette of broad blue-green leaves. The same species as cabbage, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi, it is harvested before the curd ever opens into true flowers. Grown as an annual; notoriously fussy, with little tolerance for heat, drought, or cold, it does best in the cool temperatures of spring and fall.

A tender tropical evergreen shrub grown for its enormous, flamboyant flowers — broad funnels of red, pink, orange, yellow, or white, single or double, each with a long protruding column of fused stamens. Native to tropical Asia (a cultigen of such ancient cultivation that no certain wild origin survives), Hibiscus rosa-sinensis blooms continuously in warmth above glossy, dark green, evergreen leaves. Each flower typically lasts only a day, but a healthy plant opens fresh blooms in steady succession from spring through fall — and year-round in frost-free climates. It is the classic hibiscus of warm-climate landscapes and patio containers: heat- and humidity-loving, frost-tender, and hardy in the ground only in USDA zones 9a-11b.

The true Christmas cactus — the hybrid Schlumbergera x buckleyi — a long-lived epiphytic holiday cactus grown indoors almost everywhere for its arching, segmented stems and its rose-to-magenta flowers that open in mid-winter, around Christmas. It is worth getting the identity right, because most plants sold and labeled as 'Christmas cactus' are actually the Thanksgiving cactus, Schlumbergera truncata. You can tell the two apart by the edges of the flat stem segments and by when they bloom: the true Christmas cactus has rounded, scalloped segment margins and flowers a few weeks later, in mid-winter, while the Thanksgiving cactus has sharp, claw-like teeth and blooms from late fall into early winter. Unlike a desert cactus, this is a forest epiphyte that grows on tree branches in the Atlantic coastal forest of southeastern Brazil, so it wants bright indirect light, a free-draining mix, sparing water, and — to set its buds — cool nights and short days. A reassuring point that sets it apart from many houseplants: it is non-toxic to cats and dogs.

A warm-weather annual of the carrot family grown in herb gardens for two distinct crops from one plant: the lacy, strong-scented foliage harvested young as cilantro, and the aromatic dried seed harvested as coriander. The plant bolts and flowers quickly in hot weather, throwing up showy white-to-pale-lavender umbels and a marked leaf dimorphism — broad scalloped lower leaves give way to fine, thread-like upper foliage on the flowering stems. Fast and easy from a direct sowing, it is best succession-planted for a steady leaf harvest before heat triggers bolting.

A tender tropical foliage plant grown for its boldly patterned, toothed leaves rather than its flowers — magenta, maroon, lime, and copper combinations in almost every color of the spectrum except true blue. A frost-sensitive perennial native to tropical and subtropical Asia and northern Australia, it is grown almost everywhere outside USDA zones 10-11 as a warm-season annual, container plant, or houseplant. The small blue-to-white nettle-like flower spikes are insignificant and are usually pinched off to keep the plant compact and the foliage at its best.

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.

An old garden-favorite annual native to Mexico, grown for showy daisy-like flowers in nearly every color but true blue — red, yellow, orange, pink, rose, lavender, green, and white. Bushy, leafy plants rise on upright, hairy, branching stems and bloom continuously from early summer to frost. A magnet for butterflies and hummingbirds, and one of the most reliable cut-and-come-again cutting-garden flowers.