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 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 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 4-6 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.

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 3-6 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 2 feet. 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.

A long-lived, pyramidal deciduous conifer of southeastern North American swamps, bayous, and riverbanks — same family as the redwoods, but "bald" because it drops its soft, feathery, two-ranked needles each fall after a coppery display. Trunks flare into a buttressed base, and trees standing in water often raise the knobby "knees" that make this species unmistakable. Despite its swamp reputation it grows very well in ordinary, even somewhat dry, upland soil, which makes it a tough, large-scale shade tree for parks, lawns, and rain gardens.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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 familiar European blackberry, a vigorous arching thorny deciduous bramble that forms dense thickets and bears clusters of large sweet black aggregate berries in mid-to-late summer. Rubus fruticosus is not a single plant but a species AGGREGATE of many closely related microspecies, long cultivated for its fruit. HONEST CAUTION: while the berries are edible and excellent, the European blackberry aggregate is a load-bearing INVASIVE in many temperate regions. It and the closely related Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) escape gardens into dense, impenetrable, thorny thickets that smother native vegetation, and are serious noxious weeds across the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. Where it is invasive, plant a regionally-appropriate native bramble (Plotwright carries the native Allegheny blackberry, Rubus allegheniensis) or a sterile/thornless cultivated cultivar instead.

A deciduous shrub grown almost entirely for its explosion of yellow four-lobed flowers that line the bare arching stems in early spring, before the leaves emerge. A garden hybrid of two Asian species (Forsythia suspensa × F. viridissima) — not native to North America. Missouri Botanical Garden describes it as a "one-season wonder" that fades into the background after bloom, so it earns its place as a late-winter color signal rather than a four-season anchor.

An arching, multi-stemmed deciduous-to-semi-evergreen shrub grown for its long, cone-shaped summer-to-frost panicles of small, honey-scented flowers in purple, magenta, pink, or white. Native to central and western China, it is one of the most magnetic adult-butterfly NECTAR plants you can grow in a hot, sunny border. The honest catch: despite the name it hosts no native butterfly larvae, so it feeds adults but raises none — and the straight species is invasive, escaping along rivers and disturbed ground. Grow it for nectar with eyes open: deadhead it, choose a sterile cultivar, and back it with true native host plants.

The California state flower — a drought-tolerant southwestern native perennial (grown as annual outside zones 8-10) producing iconic vibrant orange (sometimes yellow, pink, red, or white in cultivars) cup-shaped flowers that open in sun and close at night or in cloudy weather. Naturalizes readily via self-seeding; among the most reliable hot-dry-site wildflowers for borders, meadow plantings, and rock gardens. Family Papaveraceae but unrelated to the opium poppy (different chemistry, no narcotic alkaloids).

A pyramidal-to-rounded deciduous flowering tree once planted everywhere as a fast, tidy street and lawn tree (above all the 'Bradford' cultivar), prized for a smothering cloud of white early-spring flowers, glossy summer leaves, and reliably brilliant red-to-purple fall color. Plotwright does not recommend planting it. It is now a recognized INVASIVE that is banned or being phased out in a growing number of states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and others) because cross-pollinated cultivars produce fertile seedlings that escape into dense, thorny wild thickets that smother native plants. The flowers also smell unpleasantly fishy up close, and 'Bradford' has notoriously weak branch unions that split apart in storms by 15-25 years old. Choose a native flowering tree instead — serviceberry (Amelanchier) or eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) give you the same spring show without the ecological cost.

A widespread native North American perennial with plumes of bright yellow flowers in late summer + fall — among the most ecologically critical late-season pollinator plants. Spreads aggressively by rhizomes; site where the spreading habit is welcome (meadows, restorations) rather than tight borders.

The classic clove-scented carnation, a short-lived evergreen perennial in the pink family grown for centuries for its frilled, spice-fragrant double flowers and tidy mounds of narrow blue-gray foliage. Native to the Mediterranean region, it thrives in full sun and lean, sharply drained, neutral-to-alkaline soil with steady but never soggy moisture, and is hardy in USDA zones 6a-9b. It is the florist's carnation and the parent of countless border and perpetual-flowering strains, prized as much for cutting as for the garden.

A multi-stemmed deciduous large shrub or small tree native to central China, grown for a dense early-spring display of rosy purple-pink pea-family flowers borne directly on bare branches and trunks before the leaves expand. The glossy, rounded heart-shaped leaves follow, and flat bean-like seed pods ripen and persist into winter. More shrubby and densely branched than the native eastern redbud, it makes a compact spring focal point for zones 6-9.

A massive, fast-growing deciduous woody vine from China, famous for its mid-spring curtains of fragrant, lavender-to-violet (sometimes white) pea-like flowers hanging in long, dense racemes that open all at once before the leaves fully expand. The display is genuinely spectacular — but Chinese wisteria is one of the most aggressive ornamental vines in cultivation, and across the southeastern United States it has escaped gardens to become seriously INVASIVE, twining up and GIRDLING trees, smothering whole canopies, and forming dense thickets that crowd out native plants. It is extremely vigorous, twines counterclockwise with great force, and demands very sturdy support, hard annual pruning, and constant vigilance to keep it off houses, gutters, and trees. The seeds and pods are TOXIC if eaten. For most gardeners the honest recommendation is to plant the native American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens) instead — it gives a similar flowering effect with a fraction of the aggression and none of the invasive ecological cost.

The classic broadleaf-evergreen shrub of formal hedges, topiary, and clipped borders — small, glossy dark-green opposite leaves on a dense rounded frame that takes shearing better than almost any other shrub. Native to southern Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa, it carries inconspicuous greenish-cream spring flowers and holds its leaves year-round. All parts are toxic if eaten and the foliage can cause skin irritation, but that same chemistry makes it reliably rabbit- and deer-resistant.

An ancient Mediterranean fruit tree grown for millennia for its sweet, soft edible figs — a deciduous shrub (10-15 ft) or small tree (to 15-30 ft) with bold, deeply 3-5 lobed palmate leaves and smooth silver-gray bark that gnarls handsomely with age. Its tiny greenish flowers bloom hidden inside hollow receptacles that swell into the fruit; most cultivars are parthenocarpic, setting figs without pollination. Best in USDA Zones 8-10, it survives Zones 6-7 in sheltered, south-facing spots with winter protection or grown in containers moved indoors.

A low woody herb for sunny edges, between pavers, and herb-garden borders with pollinator-friendly summer flowers.

A multi-stemmed deciduous shrub or small tree in the loosestrife family, grown across the warm South for its long midsummer show of crinkled, crepe-paper-textured flower panicles. Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder describes rose-to-red bloom from July through September on plants reaching 6 to 25 feet tall, followed by yellow-orange-red fall foliage and smooth, mottled exfoliating bark. Native to China, Indochina, the Himalayas, and Japan — not a North American native — it tolerates drought, clay soil, and urban conditions once established.

A Mediterranean-native evergreen subshrub for sunny edges, pollinator beds, and low-water garden structure. The source of true oil of lavender; well-loved but at times difficult to grow east of the Mississippi because it does not tolerate wet feet or heavy clay.

A fast, sun-loving member of the aster family grown as a warm-season annual, Gaillardia pulchella throws a long succession of 2-inch daisy-like flowers from early summer until frost. The ray florets blaze in bands of red and gold around a darker domed center — the firecracker coloring that gives it its name — on a wiry, branching 12-24 inch clump. It is built for hot, dry, sunny ground where richer-fed bedding plants sulk, blooming hardest exactly when summer heat peaks.

One of the most critically endangered conifers in the world: a slow-growing, pyramidal evergreen with stiff, sharp, dark-green needles whose crushed foliage gives off a pungent smell that earned it the name 'stinking cedar.' Torreya taxifolia is native only to a tiny stretch of cool, shaded bluffs and ravines along the Apalachicola River in the Florida panhandle and adjacent Georgia, where a fungal disease (alongside historic land-use and fire changes) collapsed the wild population to a small remnant that mostly resprouts from the base but rarely reaches maturity. In cultivation it is a 30-50 foot specimen at most, shade-tolerant when young and wanting cool, moist, well-drained ravine-like conditions. This is a conservation-collection plant and a botanical curiosity, NOT a mainstream landscape tree; ethically sourced, nursery-propagated, conservation-program material is what matters here, and an active assisted-migration effort (the 'Torreya Guardians') has controversially planted it well north of its native range.