(Chinese Evergreen)

Chinese evergreen is a small, upright, evergreen perennial native from South China to North Thailand. It is grown for its attractive, lance-like, glossy dark green leaves with wavy margins. Displays insignificant greenish white spathe and spadix flowers appear sporadically throughout the year.

This plant prefers well drained soils and is tolerant of very low light conditions. In temperate regions it may be planted as a tropical tender perennial and makes a lovely houseplant. Where hardy, it makes...

(Aglaonema, Chinese Evergreen)

The showy, tropical Aglaonema nitidum is a popular small houseplant or landscape plant for shaded, frost-free gardens. Its lovely evergreen foliage is dark green blotched and streaked with creamy white markings. This Southeast Asian native is a true tropical forest dweller that thrives in the understory of hot and humid locations. It is rhizomatous and will spread over time.

The long, lance-shaped, leathery leaf blades of Chinese evergreen are dark green marked with lighter green or...

(Chinese Evergreen, Painted Drop Tongue, Silver Queen Painted Drop Tongue)

The dense, upright leaves of 'Silver Queen' are bright green with marbled silvery markings on top and smooth green undersides. It is a favorite foliage plant for interior-scaping as well as tropical landscaping and has been given an Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society.

The showy, tropical Aglaonema nitidum is a popular small houseplant or landscape plant for shaded, frost-free gardens. Its lovely evergreen foliage is dark green blotched and streaked with creamy...

(Agrimony)

(Common Agrimony)

(Coyore, Macaw Palm)

This small, graceful, but heavily armed palm tree is found in rain forests and seasonally dry woodlands of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and the Lesser Antilles.

Borne atop a single, slender, gray to tan trunk that brandishes numerous long black spines, the enormous, arching, ferny leaves have numerous narrowly lance-shaped leaflets. The leaflets arise from a long central axis known as a rachis. The rachis and the undersides of the leaves are also heavily armed, as is the long leaf stem ("petiole")....

(Pacific Chrysanthemum)

Pacific chrysanthemum is a low spreading perennial with attractive deep green silver-edged foliage. It is native to Japan where it exists along the Honshu Island coastline and slopes. It spreads via rhizomes and can become quite aggressive if grown in good soil and provided regular water.

In the late fall Pacific chrysanthemum becomes covered with attractive clusters of bright yellow button-like flowers. Once spent, these can be cut back to make best of the pretty evergreen to semi-evergreen...

(Begonialeaf Alangium, Chinese Alangium)

Lovely green leaves with short pointed lobes adorn the zig-zagged branches of Chinese alangium. Blooming in early summer and again in mid-autumn, the small oval fruits turn dark blue in autumn, too. A large shrub to small tree that is evergreen in frost-free climates but deciduous elsewhere, it is native to a large expanse of southern Asia's Himalayas eastward into the highlands of southeast Asia. Natural variant forms can also be found in eastern Africa.

The leaves are rounded when young, having...

(Persian Silktree, Pink Siris, Silky Mimosa)

A favorite of hummingbirds, silk tree is a multi-stemmed, spreading deciduous tree native from Iran to Japan. Its natural form rosea bears fragrant, fluffy, rich rose-pink flowerheads in summer and tan seed pods in fall. The ferny light green leaves emerge in late spring, and fold up at night. It includes the cultivar 'Ernest Wilson', a hardy selection that succeeds into USDA zone 5.

Silk tree thrives in most well-drained soils and flowers best in full sun. It is tolerant of drought,...

(Alcantarea)

No tropical garden is complete without a giant alcantarea! Larger than a bushel basket, the rosette of strappy light green leaves eventually forms a towering red flower stalk with curving yellow bracts and ivory flowers. This evergreen perennial bromeliad is a lithophyte (growing among and upon rocks) native to the montane cliffs in extreme southeastern Brazil.

Each leaf is light green, occasionally with speckles or a casting of gray, and strap-like. It tapers to a soft point while the base...