Regions: West India

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.

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

Red brushes of stamens on drooping branches; a hardy naturalised garden tree.

Yellow flower spires and copper seed pods; the summer partner to the gulmohar.

A slender Western Ghats evergreen with purple fruit that souring curries depend on.

A tough dry-forest tree with papery winged seeds that blanket the ground in March.