Regions: South India

Purple fruit in June and dense evergreen shade for the rest of the year.

The fruit of the dry west, cropping where irrigation is impossible.

A century-tree with feathery shade and the sourness of half of Indian cooking.

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.

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

Evergreen, wind-firm and cropping twice a year on the coasts.

The tree the coasts are built on — water, kernel, oil, thatch and shade.

Slim palm of the wet south-west and north-east, grown in dense stands.

A coastal tree that fruits on poor laterite where almost nothing else does.