Regions: East India

The world’s most stubborn weed, and an aromatic tuber used for centuries.

Flowers nearly all year in a warm city, and sunbirds find it within a week.

One enlarged white sepal per flower, so the whole shrub reads as pale bracts.

Blue flower sprays and orange berries at once; the standard clipped Indian hedge.

Invasive across Indian forests — grow the sterile garden cultivars only, never the wild kind.

The chandni — pinwheel white flowers, glossy leaves and constant flowering in shade.

A soft-haired jasmine that flowers through the cool months on a low wall.

A pot by an open window does more for a summer evening than any air freshener.

Twisted screw-shaped pods on a scrub shrub of the dry deciduous forest.

Narrow willow leaves and yellow bells; tough, fast and equally poisonous.