Regions: South India

Yellow culms striped green; the ornamental clumping bamboo of Indian gardens.

The deep red night-flowering lily of eastern tanks and temple ponds.

Grows on water or wet mud and crops every fortnight through the monsoon.

Big heart leaves on a wet corner; the corm below and the leaf above both go to the pot.

The chameli of the perfume fields — long-tubed white flowers picked before dawn.

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

Pink or white flowers all year on a shrub that survives the worst urban roadside.

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

Orange tubular flowers, continuously, and the sunbirds that follow them.

The southern vasaka — a shade-tolerant shrub with white hooded flowers.