Regions: Central India

Thorny, nitrogen-fixing and useful on land nobody else will plant.

Glossy-leaved and salt-tolerant, with seed oil once used in every lamp.

Fruit in March, silkworm leaves all summer, and shade in between.

Two crops a year in the west, and content in a large container.

Handsome, thorny and productive on poor dry soil; good in a big pot.

Kagzi lime — the single most useful pot tree for an Indian household.

Mosambi — a grafted tree in a big tub crops well in the west and centre.

Feathery-leaved and drought-hardy; one grafted tree feeds a household in winter.

A thorny hedge shrub that gives pickling fruit and keeps animals out.

Small sour-sweet berries in May, from a shrub that shrugs off a Delhi summer.