Abelmoschus manihot

Abelmoschus manihot wears two faces. To a flower gardener it is the Sunset Hibiscus, a fast tropical perennial that throws up large, pale-yellow blooms with a deep maroon eye all through the warm season, each one open for a day in the manner of its mallow kin. To much of the Pacific and tropical Asia it is something more fundamental: aibika, among the most important leafy vegetables in Papua New Guinea, grown in dooryards from New Guinea to Queensland and across into China and Japan.

A relative of okra, it trades the edible pod for showy flowers and tender, nutritious leaves. The young leaves and shoots cook down with a soft, okra-like mucilage that thickens soups and stews, and they are genuinely nourishing, rich in protein, vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron. The plant carries a long medicinal tradition too: in China the flowers have been used for chronic kidney complaints, and across Asia various parts have been reached for against fever, inflammation, and other ailments. Modern phytochemists have catalogued well over a hundred compounds in it, flavonoids chief among them.

It is easily grown in any warm, sunny, well-drained spot, perennial where winters are mild (roughly zone 7 and warmer) and grown as an annual or die-back perennial elsewhere, returning quickly from seed or root. Give it room, since it can reach three to five feet in a single season.

In the garden it earns a place at the back of a sunny border or in a productive, ornamental-edible planting where its big sulphur flowers and bold leaves do double duty. Site it where you can both admire the bloom and pick a few leaves for the pot.