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 5-8 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, 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 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 native Southeastern North American semi-evergreen woodland groundcover (Pachysandra procumbens), prized for its blue-green to bronze mottled leaves and fragrant white-to-pinkish bottlebrush flower spikes that open at ground level in late winter to early spring. Unlike the widely planted invasive Asian Pachysandra terminalis, this native spreads slowly by rhizomes into well-behaved clumping colonies, making it a low, restrained groundcover for shaded native plantings.

A medium-to-large native shade tree of central and eastern North America, reaching 50-80 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.

Once the dominant canopy hardwood of the eastern United States forest — an estimated four billion trees, prized for fast growth, rot-resistant timber, and an enormous annual crop of sweet edible nuts that fed people, livestock, and wildlife alike. In the early 1900s an introduced Asian fungus, chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), swept through and functionally destroyed it: by the 1950s the species was effectively extinct as a mature forest tree. Surviving root systems still send up sprouts from old stumps, but the blight almost always girdles and kills them before they can grow large enough to flower and reproduce. The honest reality for a gardener is that you cannot reliably grow a mature wild-type American chestnut today. The realistic paths are blight-resistant backcross hybrids from The American Chestnut Foundation or transgenic blight-tolerant lines still being deployed — not a pure wild seedling, which the blight will almost certainly kill.

A fast, suckering native shrub of streambanks and moist thickets across eastern North America, grown for huge flat-topped cymes of tiny lemon-scented white flowers in early summer and the clusters of dark elderberry drupes that follow. Spreads by root suckers into naturalized colonies 5-12 feet tall and wide; the flowers feed butterflies and the showy fruit feeds birds. The raw berries are not eaten fresh — they are cooked into jelly, pie, and wine.

American germander, also called wood sage, is a widespread North American native perennial in the mint family that runs steadily underground on creeping rhizomes. From early to midsummer it sends up erect, softly hairy stems topped with one-sided spikes of pale pink-to-lavender flowers, each with the distinctive deeply lobed lower lip that gives the germanders their look and makes a generous landing platform for bees. It is a plant of moist open ground - wet meadows, streambanks, ditches, and the edges of thickets - across most of the contiguous United States into southern Canada, which tells you exactly what it wants: sun and a soil that does not dry out. The honest caveat is its vigor: those same rhizomes that fill a bank or a rain garden so readily will also colonize a tidy perennial border and crowd politer neighbors. Site it where it can run, or give it a root barrier, and it rewards you with a long, dependable bee-friendly bloom rather than a maintenance fight.

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.

The only native U.S. holly with both spiny green leaves and bright red berries — an upright, pyramidal, broadleaf evergreen tree that slowly matures to 15-30 feet in cultivation (to 50 feet in the wild). Thick, leathery, deep green leaves bear spiny marginal teeth, and pollinated female trees carry showy red-to-orange drupes that ripen in fall and persist through winter as bird food. This is the classic "Christmas holly" of wreaths and decorations.

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.

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.

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.

A native canopy tree of eastern North American forests with iconic star-shaped 5-lobed leaves displaying outstanding red-purple-orange fall color, distinctive corky wing-bark on twigs, and spiky round seed pods that famously litter lawns ("gumballs"). The seed pods are the design-defining drawback — Liquidambar is rarely planted in formal landscapes for this reason. Choose seedless cultivars ('Rotundiloba', 'Slender Silhouette') for residential planting.

A massive native deciduous canopy tree of eastern North American floodplain forests producing distinctive mottled white-tan-gray exfoliating bark (the design-defining trait — sycamore bark looks like military camouflage), large palmate maple-like leaves, and persistent spherical seed balls. Among the largest deciduous trees in eastern North America — old-growth specimens exceed 150 feet tall + 10 feet trunk diameter. Site only where massive scale is acceptable.

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.

A native eastern-US deciduous shrub — 'Annabelle' is a sterile-flowered cultivar of smooth hydrangea — with very large white snowball blooms in summer. Blooms on new wood so spring frost cannot destroy the flower display, and serves as the larval host for the hydrangea sphinx moth.

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.

The domesticated orchard apple — a deciduous Rosaceae tree grown for its showy, edible fruit and fragrant April blossom of five white-to-pink petals around a ring of yellow stamens. Not native to North America (the genus Malus spans Europe, Asia, and North America, but the cultivated apple is an Old World hybrid lineage). Almost all varieties are self-incompatible: a second, different apple cultivar blooming at the same time must be nearby for fruit to set, and trees are grown on dwarf, semi-dwarf, or standard rootstocks that decide final size.

A small deciduous Rosaceae fruit tree grown for its golden-orange, red-blushed drupes — fragrant, showy, edible, and ripening in summer. Fragrant white flowers (pink in bud) open in early spring before the foliage, two weeks ahead of peaches. That early bloom is also its weakness: the flowers are extremely susceptible to frost injury, so apricots are notoriously hard to crop reliably outside sheltered sites.

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 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 dense, conical-to-narrow-pyramidal evergreen tree native to eastern and central North America, prized as a screening and foundation conifer. Flat, fan-like sprays of scale-like, aromatic yellow-green foliage clothe the tree from the ground up, and red-brown bark exfoliates on mature trunks. Wild trees can reach 40-60 feet but cultivated plants typically stay near 20-30 feet; small urn-shaped cones and dense evergreen cover make it valuable food and shelter for birds.

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.

A suckering, thicket-forming native cherry that reads as a large shrub or small tree across most of North America. Fragrant white flowers open in elongated drooping racemes in spring, followed by dense pendulous clusters of pea-sized cherries that ripen red to dark purple-black in late summer. The astringent fruit is technically edible after processing, and the plant is a workhorse for wildlife — feeding birds and mammals and hosting sphinx-moth larvae.

A low, clump-forming native woodland violet of eastern North America, grown for its early spring blue-to-purple flowers with conspicuous white throats held over glossy, heart-shaped leaves. It does not run, but self-seeds freely — to the point of being weedy in rich, moist ground. A larval host for fritillary butterflies and a nectar source for early bees and butterflies; the leaves are high in vitamins A and C.

An upright, multi-stemmed, suckering deciduous shrub in the olive family, grown for its intensely fragrant mid-to-late-spring (May) bloom of lilac-purple flowers in large conical panicles. Native to southeastern Europe and cultivated in North America since the early 1600s, it matures to 12-16 feet tall with blue-green, pointed-ovate to heart-shaped leaves. It needs cold winters and cool summers — and offers few ornamental features after bloom, with leggy form, no fall color, and summer powdery mildew.

A large, graceful evergreen conifer of cool, moist eastern North American forests, reaching 40-70 feet with a dense, pyramidal-to-conical crown and arching, feathery branches that sweep nearly to the ground. Short, flat, dark-green needles with two white bands beneath line slender twigs, and small drooping cones hang from the branch tips. The most shade-tolerant of the eastern conifers, it makes an elegant specimen or tall screen where soils stay consistently moist and cool. HONESTY: across much of its eastern range it is under serious, frequently lethal attack from the hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae); do not plant it as a long-term backbone tree without committing to monitoring and treatment.

A large deciduous nut tree native to a wide arc from southeastern Europe through central Asia to the Himalayas, grown for both its prized edible kernels and its valuable wood. NC State Extension lists it at roughly 40-60 feet tall and wide with a rounded, spreading crown, smooth gray bark, and aromatic pinnately compound leaves of 5-9 broad leaflets. Monoecious and wind-pollinated, it bears yellowish-green catkins in spring that ripen into smooth, thin-shelled nuts inside green husks. Like its relatives it produces juglone, an allelopathic compound that can suppress some sensitive plants nearby, though noticeably less intensely than black walnut (Juglans nigra).

A dry-country wildflower of the Intermountain West whose narrow, scarlet, tubular flowers line a slender stalk that rises about 3 feet above a low rosette of glaucous blue-green leaves. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center documents it blooming red from May into August on dry, gravelly soils, and it is one of the classic hummingbird-pollinated penstemons. Deeply drought-tolerant once established — best on lean, well-drained ground where it is not over-watered.

A refined small deciduous tree from the mountains of Japan, Manchuria, and Korea, grown above all for its nearly round, many-lobed leaves and its brilliant red-orange autumn color. It builds slowly to a rounded, spreading 15-30 feet, carrying small reddish-purple flowers in spring before the foliage hardens. A classic specimen and dappled-shade understory tree that resents hot, dry, windy sites; not native to North America.

A herbaceous perennial of the buckwheat family (Polygonaceae) grown as a culinary herb for its basal clusters of arrowhead-shaped leaves, which carry a tangy, acidic, sour-lemony flavor used in salads, soups, omelets, and sauces. Native to northern temperate regions, it reaches about 2 feet tall and sends up long, spike-like terminal clusters of greenish flowers that turn reddish with age in summer. Per the Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder, it self-seeds and spreads in the garden, and flowers should be removed promptly to keep new leaf growth coming; younger leaves taste best.

A large, stately deciduous shade tree from the Balkan mountains of southeastern Europe, long planted across cool-temperate parks, avenues, and large lawns for its dramatic spring bloom and dense summer shade. In May it covers itself in upright, candle-like panicles of white flowers blotched yellow then pink, carried above big, coarse, palmately compound leaves of five to seven leaflets. By autumn it drops spiny green husks that split to release glossy mahogany-brown seeds — the 'conkers' of British schoolyard tradition. It is grand but high-maintenance and strictly ornamental: all parts, and especially those tempting shiny seeds, are toxic to people and livestock, and the tree is plagued by leaf blotch and the horse-chestnut leaf miner that brown the foliage by late summer. Do not confuse it with the unrelated, edible sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) — that name overlap is a genuine and dangerous source of poisonings.

A bushy, lemon-scented herbaceous perennial of the mint family, grown for its wrinkled, ovate medium-green leaves that crush to a bright citrus fragrance. Tiny two-lipped white-to-pale-yellow flowers appear in the leaf axils through summer and draw bees. Native to southern Europe, it has escaped gardens and naturalized across much of the U.S.; frequent pruning keeps it leafy, curbs self-seeding, and produces the most fragrant new growth.

A low, shade-loving rhizomatous perennial groundcover from Eurasia, grown for its sweetly fragrant, nodding, bell-shaped white flowers in late spring. NC State Extension describes paired basal elliptic leaves 5-10 inches long and arching racemes of small (about 1/3 inch) six-lobed white bells held 6-10 inches tall over the foliage. It is prized for carpeting shady ground and for its perfume, but it is HIGHLY TOXIC in all parts and its dense rhizomes can spread aggressively and choke out other plants — a beautiful but hazardous and potentially invasive groundcover that must be sited with care.

A dense, symmetrical shade and street tree of European origin, reaching about 50-60 feet with a tidy pyramidal-to-oval crown of small, heart-shaped, finely toothed dark-green leaves. In early-to-mid summer it carries clusters of small, pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers — each cluster hung from a narrow leafy bract — that are a premier nectar source and have long been dried for linden-flower tea. Small nutlets follow, the foliage casts deep even shade, and the formal habit and pollution tolerance have made it one of the classic urban and avenue lindens.

A large, fast-growing European evergreen conifer reaching 40-60 feet (sometimes far taller in age) with a broadly pyramidal crown and a distinctive habit: the main branches sweep upward or outward while the slender secondary branchlets hang straight down in graceful, drooping curtains. Stiff, four-sided dark-green needles clothe the twigs, and it bears the longest cones of any spruce — pendulous, cylindrical, 4-6 inches long, ripening from reddish to tan-brown. Long planted in North America for windbreaks, tall screens, Christmas trees, and timber, it is cold-hardy and adaptable in cool climates but is NOT heat-, drought-, or humidity-tolerant and falters toward the warm (zone 7) edge of its range.

A spectacular tall vase-shaped native fern with broad upright sterile fronds (resembling ostrich plumes — hence the name) and distinctive contrasting fertile fronds that emerge brown + persistent through winter. The traditional edible fiddlehead source — young curled fronds harvested in early spring are sold seasonally as a delicacy. Spreads vigorously via rhizomes in moist soils; provides good groundcover-scale presence.

The dominant pine of the western United States — a large, long-lived conifer that grows in a conical form to 60-125 feet in cultivation and far taller in the wild. Mature trunks wear distinctive bright yellowish-brown to reddish-orange bark furrowed into broad scaly plates, often smelling of vanilla or butterscotch on warm days. Dark yellow-green needles up to 10 inches long crowd the branch ends in bundles of three, and the species is highly drought- and deer-tolerant once established.

A tall, clump-forming North American prairie perennial topped in late summer by broad, flat clusters of intense red-purple flowers. Native to the moist tallgrass prairies, wet meadows, and streambanks of the central United States and prairie Canada, it stands 3-6 feet on stiff, unbranched stems and demands full sun with consistently moist soil. Its late-season nectar makes it an outstanding pollinator plant — a fueling stop for monarchs heading south and a magnet for native bees and butterflies when little else is blooming.

A low North American native prairie perennial whose nodding, reddish-pink to purplish globular flowers in spring are upstaged by what follows: as the seeds form, the styles elongate into upright, feathery gray plumes that collectively read like wisps of smoke — the source of its many regional names (prairie smoke, old man's whiskers, long-plumed purple avens). A soft, hairy plant to about 16 inches with fern-like, pinnately divided leaves; it spreads slowly by rhizomes into a low groundcover and prefers cool-summer climates and dry, well-drained soil.

A spring-ephemeral wild leek of eastern North America’s rich, moist deciduous woods — the earliest edible green to carpet the forest floor each spring with broad, smooth, leek-scented basal leaves. The foliage withers by early summer, when a leafless scape rises to lift a rounded umbel of small white flowers above the leaf litter. Prized but heavily over-harvested as a foraged food, so it is best grown deliberately in deep woodland shade.

A native northern + western North American deciduous shrub with brilliant red winter stems (the design-defining trait), white spring flower clusters, white-to-blue drupes, and orange-red fall foliage. Tolerates wet feet + cold winters; among the most reliable winter-interest native shrubs for cold landscapes.

A tough, exceptionally salt- and cold-hardy species rose forming a dense, suckering thicket of upright, very thorny stems clothed in deeply wrinkled (rugose) dark-green leaves. From late spring through summer it carries large, fragrant single flowers in magenta-pink to white, followed by big, tomato-shaped red hips that are edible and very high in vitamin C. NC State Extension lists it for USDA zones 2a-7b. Its toughness is also its drawback: it spreads aggressively by suckers and seed-bearing hips and is invasive on coastal dunes in parts of the northeastern US and northern Europe.

A large deciduous shade and street tree of southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, reaching about 50-70 feet with a dense, symmetrical pyramidal-to-oval crown. Its signature trait is the foliage: heart-shaped, finely toothed dark-green leaves whose undersides are clad in a silvery-white woolly down, so the whole canopy shimmers and flashes silver as the wind turns the leaves. In early summer it carries clusters of small, pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers — each cluster hung from a narrow leafy bract — that are a renowned nectar source and have long been dried for linden ('lime-flower' / tilleul) tea, ripening into small nutlets. It is one of the most heat-, drought-, and pollution-tolerant of the lindens, which has made it a favored urban and avenue tree where its tougher relatives struggle.