(Ageratum, Blue Mink, Flossflower, White Bouquet Ageratum)

Fluffy, white flowers bedeck the White Bouquet flossflower when temperatures are warm and growing conditions favorable. Though technically a tender perennial, this selection is widely grown as an annual bedding plant favored as a cutflower with its tall, sturdy, well-branched stems. It is native to Mexico and Central America where it grows as an evergreen subshrub with a dense, bushy habit, but it has also become naturalized in tropical and subtropical countries across the globe.

The foliage...

(Ageratum, Blue Mink, Cloud Nine™ Ageratum, Flossflower)

Fluffy, cool lavender to violet-blue or white flowers bedeck the plants in the Cloud Nine™ Series of flossflower when temperatures are not hot and growing conditions favorable. Though technically a tender perennial, flossflower is widely grown as an annual bedding plant. It is native to Mexico and Central America where it grows as an evergreen subshrub with a dense, bushy habit, but it has also become naturalized in tropical and subtropical countries across the globe. The Cloud Nine Series was developed...

(Willow Myrtle)

Beautiful and drought resistant, this small to medium-sized, semi-weeping evergreen tree from western Australia makes an excellent plant for gardens where winters and summers are mild. The long, lance shaped, bright green leaves dangle from weeping branchlets, giving the tree a willowy appearance. The leaves smell of peppermint. Masses of small white flowers crowd the branches in late spring and early summer. Plants eventually form a dense wide-spreading canopy and root system, making them unsuitable...

(Jervis Bay Afterdark Willow Myrtle, Willow Myrtle)

Beautiful and drought resistant, this small to medium-sized, semi-weeping evergreen tree from western Australia makes an excellent plant for gardens where winters and summers are mild. The long, lance shaped, bright green leaves dangle from weeping branchlets, giving the tree a willowy appearance. The leaves smell of peppermint. Masses of small white flowers crowd the branches in late spring and early summer. Plants eventually form a dense wide-spreading canopy and root system, making them unsuitable...

(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")....

(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...

(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...

(Alcantarea, Fragrant Alcantarea)

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

Each pointed, strappy leaf is light green to silver with phantom bandings. It tapers to a soft point while the base of the leaf congregates...

(Colicroot, Yellow Colicroot)

An ankle- to shin-high flower stem carrying bright yellow blossoms above a foliage rosette is indicating of the yellow colicroot. This herbaceous perennial is native to the American Southeast, from Savannah, Georgia to New Orleans and south to the Florida Keys. It naturally grows in pinelands, bogs, wet ditches and seasonally flooded prairies.

The leaves arise from the ground to create a basal rosette of attractive light green leaves. Leaf blades are narrow, pointed lances with parallel veins,...

(Colicroot)

A weed-like rosette of bright green leaves is overlooked until the colicroot produces a wiry flower stem in spring. This herbaceous perennial is native to the American Southeast's coastal plain, a naturally occurring hybrid between the southern colicroot (Aletris obovata) and yellow colicroot (Aletris lutea) where their natural ranges overlap. It naturally grows in moist pinelands, damp grasslands and roadside ditches. Up until the 19th century, roots of these plants were dug up...