Regions: South India

Cream powder-puff flowers, then papery pods that rattle all winter.

A scrambling roadside shrub with palmate leaves and small blue flower spikes.

A tall hill-forest tree with pinnate leaves and scented pink-tinged timber.

Sweet basil — indigenous cultivation across India long before its pizza career.

Grown for the seed that swells in falooda and summer sherbets.

The tea of the Brahmaputra valley — one bush on a balcony is enough for a pot.

Malabar tamarind — the sour rind of Konkan and Kerala cooking.

A wild relative of the curry leaf from peninsular scrub forest.

A big orange-flowered climber of central forest, dramatic on a strong pergola.

A thorny southern climber whose pods have washed hair for centuries.