A couple of ideas would be one of the interesting eggplants (there are a few that are lavender and white), or peppers.

There are all kinds of neat looking peppers, going from Hot Banana (long, yellow), to any of the sweet italian bull horn tyes.

rat tail radish. You eat the seed pods, not the bulb.

Someone mentioned to me that they love datil peppers, which can be hard to find. They're quite hot. I have seen the seed for sale online if you poke around.

The white eggplants are beautiful.

My "weird" new plant this year is the Tomatillo verde. If I like them I'll try the purple ones and the ground cherries next year.

I grew a few hot peppers I just loved last year: Kalocsai V2 (a Hungarian Hot Wax type,) Pulla (a long thin beautiful red hot pepper with a hint of fruity taste to it,) Purira (A hot little pepper (about the size and heat of a cherry bomb, but tapered,) Bulgarian Carrots (spicy & pretty what more could you ask for,) and Lemon Drops (spicy & pretty what more could you ask for.)

This year for weird I'm growing Purple of Sicily Cauliflower, Tromboncino squash, Flying saucer squash. Zephyr Squash, Black Palm Tree (cabbage)Kale, Poona Kheera Cukes, Hmong Red Cukes, Early White Cukes, and Chinese Yellow Cukes and of course there are the peppers Sheepnose Pimento, Corno di Torro Rosso, Sweet Romanian, Ethiopian Brown Berbere (tried last year but only got one pepper,) Pet pepperer Pepper, Onja Raja pepper, Szentesi csaresny, Kalocsai M amd Guajillo. There's a number of tomatoes I'm growing too. Most are a little out of the ordinary.

I hope this gives you some ideas.

IF you want short, perhaps ground cherries. They taste nice and look really neat.

If you want tall, perhaps an amaranth of some sort. We have a variety that gives these beautiful burgundy spires. You can eat the leaves as a cooked green or save the seeds for baking.

Ooh, here's a neat one: ever seen Romanesco broccoli?

Asparagus beans or yardlong beans
Okra (not sure if you have the heat for that, but there are early varieties like Annie Oakley)
Blue moon pumpkings (you'd need to herd these away from the peppers)
Gourds
Yellow watermelons or any variety of muskmelon, etc.

Just some ideas. =)

Depending what kind of conversation you want to have, I read on a thread this winter about "peter peppers"...

Sorry, I couldn't help it - unusual, conversation piece, peppers...

Here is a link that might be useful: google photos

Greenbean, when I first saw a photo of peter peppers in the totally tomatoes catalog, I laughed until I had tears running out of my eyes. My husband looked at me like I was some immature child. (that's a switch) It only got worse when I read the caption next to the photo and saw how aptly it was named. Heck, it still makes me giggle.

This green {{gwi:49243}} will certainly evoke interest in viewers.

To order, it can be found here, about 1/4 of the way down the page. I don't know if other sites have it; I just ran across it looking for information about a bean I'm growing.

I have the red hmong cucs, red, white, and purple carrots, purple califlower, blue cabbage, pink eggplant, tri-colored pole beans (green,yellow, and purple) purple radishes, and white tomatoes. The tri colored beans have been planted and is doing excellent, I haven't planted the red cuc yet probably this weekend.

I'm doing 4 varieties of patty pan squash this year. One is called Flying Saucers.

Okay, I looked at the Peter Peppers... OMG! Too funny! It's probably a bit late to start these from seed, but I'm growing a purple cayenne from PineTree Seeds... also I've started beans similar to the ones Anney mentioned, except mine were called speckled shrimp beans. They are Italian in origin, I believe. I grew them last year and really liked their "meaty" pods. Cheers!

Sunni

Here is a link that might be useful: Shrimp Beans

How about purple kohlrabi? Depending on your friends' experience, that my be a real conversation piece.

Charlotte , or rainbow lights swiss chard are also striking.

Let us know what you do.