(Bluebeard, White Surprise Bluebeard)

The heavenly bluebeard 'White Surprise' offers soft blue flowers in fall. This vigorous small flowering shrub is as tough and drought tolerant as it is pretty. It was discovered as a sport of 'Heavenly Blue', a hybrid which originates from a cross between the two Asian species Caryopteris incana and C. mongholica.

The deciduous shrub has a mounding, rounded habit and becomes covered with many small, toothed green leaves each with an irregular white border. The foliage has...

(Blue Mist Shrub, Blue Spirea, Bluebeard, Worchester Gold Bluebeard)

The popular golden-leaved bluebeard 'Worcester Gold' offers lovely soft violet-blue flowers in late summer to fall. This vigorous small flowering shrub is as tough and drought tolerant as it is pretty. The hybrid originates from a cross between the two Asian species Caryopteris incana and C. mongholica.

The deciduous shrub has a uniform mounding, rounded habit and becomes covered with many small golden to chartreuse toothed leaves that have a minty scent if crushed. In the...

(White Sapote)

The tasty tropical fruit, white sapote, is a relatively obscure but close cousin of citrus. In addition to its fine fruit, it has a pretty form and multicolored bark. Native to the middle highland elevations of southern Mexico and Central America, this broadly branched tree is usually evergreen but frost and drought can cause leaf drop, so it is better listed as semi-evergreen. When mature, it attains a somewhat weeping form and curvaceous trunk and branches. Its bark is warty, thick and gray with...

(Brewster's Cassia, Cigar Cassia, Leichardt-bean)

Feathery green leaves, pendent clusters of yellow and reddish flowers, and long cigar-like seed pods are the chief ornamental qualities of cigar cassia. This plant may be quite variable in form, either growing as a medium to large shrub or becoming an upright tree with a billowy, rounded canopy. Cigar cassia is native to the hills across northeastern Australia, where it usually is evergreen, but chilly winter weather can cause leaf drop.

The compound leaves comprise numerous long oval leaflets...

(Gold Medallion Tree)

Brilliantly attractive in form and when its cheerful yellow flower clusters appear in the summer, gold medallion tree is one of the most magnificent small tropical trees. An evergreen small tree from southeastern Brazil, its spreading but elegantly rounded canopy is lined with medium to deep green leaves that have eight to twelve pairs of small oval leaflets. Large clusters of sunny yellow flowers appear most heavily in the summertime, continuing for many weeks. The blossoms occur on semi-weeping...

(Silver Cassia)

Silvery blue-green foliage and yellow buttercup-shaped flowers that appear in late winter are best ornamental features of the silver cassia. This fast-growing evergreen shrub is native to arid central Australia. It is exceptionally tolerant of dry soil, heat, frosts and hot sunlight. It looks like an acacia, but the five-petaled flowers reveal its inclusion in the genus Cassia. Silver cassia attains a wispy-looking rounded to upright, v-shaped habit.

To conserve moisture in its hot,...

(American Chestnut)

A massive deciduous tree, the American chestnut has bristled leaves and sweet edible nuts. Native to the interior eastern United States, it is a slow-growing, broad and round-canopied tree that has gray to grayish-brown bark. It also occurs in Canada's southern Ontario, making it the nation's only native chestnut. Since the 1930s, this species has been devastated by chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), so severely that remaining plants resprout from their trunks to merely form large...

(Chinese Chestnut)

A spreading, deciduous tree, the Chinese chestnut has bristled leaves and starchy edible nuts. Native to Korea and northern China, it is a slow-growing, round-canopied tree that has spirally-furrowed, gray to grayish-brown bark. The leaves are simple (no lobes), oblong in shape with a tapered point and edges with teeth that end in very short bristles. The leaf undersides are lighter in color and softly fuzzy. In late spring or early summer, the branches are filled with flowers in fluffy white strings...

(Common Chestnut, Spanish Chestnut, Sweet Chestnut)

A tall deciduous tree, the Spanish chestnut has bristled leaves and sweet edible nuts, giving it the alternate name of sweet chestnut. Native originally to western Asia, from Iran to the Balkans, it is now widely found in southern Europe and coastal northern Africa. It has been cultivated for over 3000 years. This is the chestnut popular worldwide for roasting and eating. It likely was dubbed "Spanish chestnut" because Englishmen regarding nuts imported from Spain had the best flavor.

The glossy...

(Giant Red Indian Paintbrush)

Tall in stature, meadow paintbrush brings upright tufted clusters of orange-red to pinkish red flowers from spring to fall. A semi-evergreen perennial native to the wetlands of western North America (no further east than the Rocky Mountains), it is also called the giant red Indian paintbrush.

The lance-shaped leaves are medium to dark green and overall are fine in texture upon the tall, wispy stems. Beginning in late spring, the stem tips bear a cluster of showy bracts (modified leaves) that...