Regions: South India

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.

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.

White flowers with orange tubes that open at night and are on the ground by dawn.

The wild amla of the southern hills, smaller-fruited and tougher than the orchard kind.

The sap palm of Bengal and the Deccan, tapped in winter for nolen gur.