Clusia

Low-maintenance and trouble-free, these plants branch out close to the ground and can get very wide. They're excellent as hedges, large accent plants or grow them as a wall of privacy and/or shade. Their salt-tolerant nature makes them ideal for a seaside home, and the unique foliage adds unique texture to a tropical garden. Clusia is also known as "Pitch Apple." With the biggest leaves, it's often grown as a small tree or you can grow it as a very wide shrub.

Add composted cow manure to the hole when you plant. You can do just one hard pruning in spring (late March or early April) and let it do its thing from there. (Guttifera does best with a minor trim rather than being cut way back with a hard pruning it may not grow out into a nice, natural shape.) Trim it more often to keep the plant shaped with branch trimming only, never cut across foliage.

If you choose the tree-form, buy one already trained to a single trunk. These shrubs are sometimes called Autograph Tree or Plant because you can scratch a name or initials onto a leaf and it will stay there forever or as long as the leaf remains on the plant. These salt-tolerant, evergreen shrubs will grow in full sun to part shade. They're drought tolerant shrubs, moderate grower. Rosea gets very big as a shrub you can keep it 8 or 10 feet tall and wide. As a tree, you may want to let it grow as much as 25 feet. Though you can trim the guttifera variety to stay about 5 or 6 feet tall, it can be allowed to grow much larger.