Goals: Biodiversity

Peppery leaves in five weeks, and yellow flowers for the bees after.

A slow, tough native tree for a hot courtyard, with fruit that makes the summer sherbet.

The street tree of the plains; even a potted seedling supplies leaves for a pest spray.

A riverbank giant with pale bark — a tree for a campus or a colony park, not a pot.

One of the three fruits of triphala; a large deciduous tree of the sub-Himalayan tract.

The third triphala fruit, from a broad-crowned tree of dry deciduous forest.

A thorny desert shrub whose resin has been traded for millennia; now endangered.

A prickly low solanum of wasteland, with violet flowers bumblebees buzz-pollinate.

An intensely bitter Himalayan herb of mid-altitude meadows, slow and particular.

The lichen of the spice box — not planted, but a reason to keep old trees standing.