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 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 deciduous Eastern-Asian fruit tree with a rounded, spreading crown that the Missouri Botanical Garden lists at 20-30 feet tall and wide. Oval leaves emerge yellowish-green, mature to glossy green, and turn gold to red in fall; fragrant but insignificant late-spring flowers give way to showy orange persimmons (3-4 inches) that ripen in late fall and may persist on bare branches into winter. Winter hardy to USDA Zones 7-10 and drought tolerant once established.

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 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.

The Mediterranean evergreen whose leathery, glossy dark-green leaves are the bay leaf of the kitchen. Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder describes it as a pyramidal, aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub that can reach 60 feet but is usually seen at 10-30 feet and is often pruned to 8 feet or less for garden use. Trees are dioecious: small yellowish-green spring flowers on female plants, if pollinated, give way to single-seeded purple-black berries. Winter hardy only to USDA Zone 8, so it is grown as a clipped container houseplant farther north.

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 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 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.

The hardiest and largest of the California lilacs — a fast-growing broadleaf-evergreen shrub of the Pacific coast that smothers itself in dense thyrse clusters of pale-to-deep blue flowers in spring. Glossy three-veined, finely toothed dark-green leaves and a billowing shrub habit make it a signature blue mass on West Coast slopes. Drought tolerant once established, it asks for little summer water and resents overwatering; deer and elk browse the foliage and the bloom is a documented draw for native bees.

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 drought-hardy western-native subshrub (long known as Zauschneria) that lights up dry, rocky ground with scarlet tubular flowers from midsummer until frost — exactly when migrating and resident hummingbirds need a late-season nectar source. Slender, highly-branched stems carry small grey-green lance-shaped leaves; the whole plant thrives on full sun, lean soil, and very little water once established.