Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Compass Plant
A towering prairie perennial with large yellow sunflower-like blooms and deeply cut leaves that align north-south to avoid the midday sun, giving it its navigational name.
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Common Sunflower
The common sunflower is a fast-growing annual famous for its large golden flower heads that track the sun; it is grown worldwide as an ornamental and oilseed crop.
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Chrysanthemum
A classic autumn-blooming perennial with dense, colorful flower heads in countless forms. Mums are a staple of fall displays and a major cut flower worldwide.
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Hardy Geranium
Hardy geranium, or cranesbill, is a tough, long-lived perennial that forms spreading mounds of deeply lobed leaves covered in saucer-shaped flowers. Unlike the tender bedding "geraniums" (Pelargonium), these true geraniums are cold-hardy and low-maintenance.
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Heliotrope
A tender shrubby perennial loved for dense clusters of tiny purple flowers with an intense vanilla-cherry fragrance, earning it the nickname 'cherry pie plant.' It is grown as a fragrant bedding and container plant in most climates.
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Canary Creeper
Canary creeper is a delicate climbing relative of the nasturtium, named for its fringed, bright yellow flowers that resemble tiny birds in flight. It quickly clothes trellises and fences with lacy blue-green foliage.
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Goldenrod
A tough, late-season perennial wildflower that lights up fields and roadsides with plumes of tiny golden flowers. Its heavy, sticky pollen is spread by insects rather than wind.
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Grass Pink Orchid
Grass Pink is a North American terrestrial bog orchid known for its magenta-pink, non-resupinate blooms whose lip sits on top of the flower. It grows from a corm in acidic wetlands and is notoriously difficult to cultivate outside its native habitat.
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Globe Amaranth
A heat-loving annual grown for its round, clover-like flower heads of papery bracts in magenta, purple, pink, white or orange. The everlasting blooms keep their color when dried and stand up beautifully to summer heat and humidity.
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Four O'Clock
A bushy tuberous perennial famous for fragrant trumpet flowers that open in late afternoon and stay open through the night, then close by morning. A single plant can bear differently colored blooms, sometimes flecked on the same flower.
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Fire Pink
A short-lived native wildflower of eastern North American woodlands, prized for its brilliant scarlet, star-shaped flowers that lure hummingbirds in spring.
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Flamingo Flower
A tropical plant famous for its glossy, heart-shaped red 'flowers' (actually spathes) with a protruding spadix. Long-lasting blooms make it a popular gift plant.
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Blue Flag Iris
A native North American wetland iris with striking violet-blue flowers veined in yellow and white. It thrives in marshes, pond margins, and wet meadows.
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Butterfly Weed
Butterfly weed is a native milkweed bearing flat clusters of brilliant orange flowers in summer. It is a top nectar plant for butterflies and a larval host for monarchs.
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Buttercup
Buttercups are cheerful wildflowers with glossy, cup-shaped yellow blooms that seem to glow in spring meadows.
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Bugleweed
Bugleweed is a low, fast-spreading evergreen groundcover prized for its glossy rosettes and spikes of blue-violet flowers in spring. It quickly carpets bare ground in sun or shade.
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Evening Primrose
A hardy biennial wildflower whose fragrant yellow blossoms open at dusk and close by midday, timed to attract night-flying moths. It forms a low rosette in its first year and a tall flowering stalk in its second.
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Dusty Miller
Grown for its felted, silvery-white foliage rather than flowers, dusty miller is a versatile foil plant that tolerates heat, drought, and salt.
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Bleeding Heart
Bleeding heart is a shade-loving perennial famous for arching stems hung with dangling, heart-shaped pink-and-white flowers. It blooms in spring and often goes dormant by midsummer.
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Bluebell
Bluebells are spring bulbs that carpet woodlands in hazy drifts of nodding, violet-blue bells. The native English bluebell is a protected woodland icon, distinct from the more vigorous Spanish bluebell.
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Echinacea
Echinacea, or purple coneflower, is a hardy North American perennial with daisy-like pink-purple blooms, popular in prairie and pollinator gardens.
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Cyclamen
Cyclamen is a tuberous perennial famous for its swept-back, butterfly-like flowers and heart-shaped, silver-marbled leaves. The florist's cyclamen blooms through the cool months, going dormant in summer heat.
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Bull Thistle
Bull thistle is a spiny biennial weed with sharp, prickly leaves and large rose-purple flower heads that is both a pasture nuisance and a pollinator magnet.
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Brunnera
Brunnera is a shade perennial grown for its large, heart-shaped leaves, often beautifully silvered, and its dainty sprays of sky-blue, forget-me-not-like flowers in spring. It is a standout foliage plant for woodland and shady borders.
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Blanket Flower
A heat-loving, daisy-like perennial in fiery bands of red, orange, and yellow that bloom nonstop all summer. Tough, drought-proof, and beloved by bees and butterflies.
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Daylily
An exceptionally tough clumping perennial whose trumpet-shaped flowers each last a single day, but bloom in dazzling succession all summer. Available in thousands of cultivars and nearly foolproof to grow.
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Creeping Buttercup
Creeping buttercup is a low, spreading perennial with glossy yellow flowers that colonizes lawns and damp ground via rooting runners. It is an aggressive and persistent weed.
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Astilbe
A shade-loving perennial topped with feathery, plume-like flower panicles in pink, red, lavender, or white above fern-like foliage. Prized for bringing color and softness to moist, dappled gardens.
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Barrenwort
Barrenwort is a tough, low groundcover for dry shade, with delicate spring flowers and heart-shaped leaves that often emerge and finish the season tinted red. It thrives where little else will.
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Crocus
Crocuses are among the earliest spring bulbs, pushing up goblet-shaped flowers in purple, yellow, and white, sometimes through snow. Autumn-blooming species include the saffron crocus.
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Daffodil
A cheerful spring bulb with trumpet-centered yellow or white flowers, among the first to bloom after winter. Daffodils are hardy, deer-resistant, and reliably perennial.
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Bird of Paradise
The bird of paradise is a dramatic tropical plant famous for its vivid orange-and-blue flowers that resemble an exotic bird in flight. It has bold paddle-shaped leaves and makes a striking statement indoors or in warm gardens.
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Bells of Ireland
Bells of Ireland is a cool-season annual famous for its tall spires of shell-like green calyces that look like little bells. It is a florist favorite for adding vertical lines and lasting green color to bouquets.
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Bellflower
Bellflowers are a large group of perennials and biennials bearing bell- or star-shaped flowers, usually in blue, purple or white. They range from low rock-garden creepers to tall border plants.
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Cleome
Cleome is a tall, airy annual topped with spidery clusters of pink, white, or purple flowers and long whisker-like seedpods, blooming all summer.
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Baby's Breath
Baby's breath is an airy perennial producing clouds of tiny white or pink flowers on wiry, branching stems. It's a florist's staple as a delicate filler in bouquets and a soft accent in the garden.
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Alyssum
Sweet alyssum is a low, spreading annual smothered in tiny honey-scented flowers, prized as a fast, fragrant carpet for borders, containers and hanging baskets.
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Begonia
An enormous genus grown for both showy flowers and spectacularly patterned foliage. From bedding wax begonias to dramatic rex begonias, there is a begonia for nearly every garden and windowsill.
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Black-Eyed Susan
Black-eyed Susan is a cheerful North American wildflower with golden-yellow petals around a dark brown center, blooming abundantly from summer into fall.
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Anemone
Anemones, also called windflowers, are graceful perennials and bulbs that produce delicate, cup- or daisy-shaped flowers in spring or fall. Japanese anemones in particular bring valuable late-season color to shady borders.
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Columbine
Columbine is a graceful perennial prized for its intricate, spurred flowers that nod above lacy blue-green foliage in late spring. It self-seeds readily and is a favorite of hummingbirds and bees.
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Centaurea
Centaurea is a large genus best known for the cornflower, a cheerful annual with intense blue, fringed flowers. Easy and long-blooming, it is a cottage-garden classic beloved by bees and butterflies.
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Celandine Poppy
A spring-blooming woodland wildflower of eastern North America bearing bright golden-yellow poppy flowers above deeply lobed blue-green leaves.
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Celosia
Celosia produces striking flame-like plumes or brain-like crested heads in vivid colors, holding both fresh and dried for long-lasting display.
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Angelonia
Often called summer snapdragon, angelonia produces upright spikes of orchid-like flowers that thrive in heat and humidity all season without deadheading.
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Canna Lily
Canna lily is a bold tropical perennial grown for its large paddle-shaped leaves and vivid flower spikes. Despite the name it's not a true lily, and its rhizomes are lifted in cold climates.
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Annual Phlox
A bushy Texas native annual that produces dense, rounded clusters of starry flowers in nearly every color, prized for long-lasting summer color in beds and containers.
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Cardinal Flower
Cardinal flower is a moisture-loving native perennial bearing tall spikes of brilliant scarlet-red flowers in late summer. Its intense color is a magnet for hummingbirds.
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