Plants

Trees that grow well in Tennessee benefit from a state so ecologically diverse that Great Smoky Mountains National Park, straddling the Tennessee-North Carolina border, is often cited by botanists as home to more tree species than the entire continent of Europe, with well over 100 native tree species documented within the park’s boundaries alone. This … Read more

Trees that grow well in New Jersey benefit from a genuinely surprising contrast, since the nation’s most densely populated state is also home to the Pinelands National Reserve, a sprawling 1.1-million-acre expanse of pine and oak forest covering roughly 22 percent of New Jersey’s total land area, making it the largest body of open space … Read more

Prairies once covered an estimated 170 million acres of North America, stretching in a vast, largely unbroken band from the Rocky Mountains east to Indiana and from the Canadian prairie provinces south into Texas, making grassland one of the continent’s largest and most significant ecosystems before agricultural conversion dramatically reduced its extent. Despite their reputation … Read more

Trees that grow well in North Carolina benefit from one of the most botanically diverse states east of the Mississippi River, shaped by a landscape that rises from sea level along the Atlantic coastline to more than 6,600 feet atop Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern United States. This elevation range, combined with … Read more

Trees that grow well in Illinois have to adapt to one of the more surprising climate gradients found within a single state, since Illinois stretches more than 385 miles from north to south, placing Chicago in a climate similar to southern Wisconsin while the southern tip near Cairo sits at roughly the same latitude as … Read more

Trees that grow well in Michigan benefit from a landscape unlike any other state in the country, since Michigan is the only state made up of two separate peninsulas almost entirely surrounded by the Great Lakes, a position that gives the state more than 3,200 miles of freshwater coastline, more than any other state except … Read more

Trees that grow well in Georgia benefit from the largest land area of any state east of the Mississippi River, a distinction that gives Georgia enough room to span cool, high-elevation mountain forests in the north down to warm, moss-draped maritime forests along its Atlantic coastline in the south. Forests currently cover roughly two-thirds of … Read more

Trees that grow well in Vermont benefit from one of the most heavily forested landscapes in the entire United States, with woodlands covering an estimated 75 percent of the state’s total land area, a figure that consistently ranks Vermont among the two or three most forested states in the country. This extensive tree cover is … Read more

Trees that grow well in Ohio benefit from a landscape shaped by one of the more distinctive geological divides found in the eastern United States, since the last continental glacier flattened roughly two-thirds of the state into gently rolling till plains while leaving the rugged, unglaciated Allegheny Plateau of southeastern Ohio untouched, preserving steep sandstone … Read more

Passion fruits belong to the genus Passiflora, which contains more than 550 documented species, though only a relatively small fraction of these produce fruit that is actually cultivated or eaten by people around the world. The passion fruit’s unusual name has nothing to do with romance and everything to do with 16th-century Spanish missionaries in … Read more