Plant Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.

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Sweetgum

A large deciduous shade tree known for its glossy star-shaped leaves, brilliant fall color, and spiky round seed balls. Native to the southeastern United States.

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Water Oak

Water oak is a fast-growing, semi-evergreen red-oak-group tree of the southeastern US, common along streams and in yards. It has spatula-shaped leaves but is relatively short-lived.

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Weeping Birch

Weeping birch is the European white or silver birch, prized for its chalky white peeling bark and slender pendulous branchlets that sway in the breeze. Cultivars like 'Youngii' form a strongly weeping dome.

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Tricolor Beech

Tricolor beech is a striking cultivar of European beech with purple leaves edged in irregular bands of pink and creamy white. It is a slow-growing, eye-catching specimen tree that needs protection from harsh sun.

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Silk Floss Tree

The silk floss tree is a striking subtropical tree with a bulging, thorn-studded green trunk and large pink-and-cream hibiscus-like flowers in autumn. Its seed pods burst to release silky white fibers, giving the tree its name.

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Torrey Pine

Torrey Pine is the rarest native pine in the United States, found wild in only two coastal California locations. It has long needles in bundles of five and large, heavy cones.

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Yoshino Cherry

An ornamental cherry famous for clouds of pale pink-to-white blossoms in early spring. It is the iconic tree of Washington, D.C.'s Tidal Basin and Japan's cherry-blossom season.

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Umbrella Pine

Japanese Umbrella Pine is a unique living-fossil conifer, the sole member of its family, with glossy whorls of needle-like cladodes arranged like the ribs of an umbrella. It is slow-growing and prized as an ornamental.

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Wisteria Tree

A wisteria tree is a wisteria vine trained and pruned into a small free-standing tree form, prized for cascading clusters of fragrant purple-blue spring flowers. It is vigorous and requires regular pruning.

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Virginia Pine

A small, scrubby pine of the eastern United States that readily colonizes old fields and poor soils. Its short, twisted needles and persistent cones make it a common early-successional and Christmas-tree species.

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Red Oak

Northern red oak is a fast-growing, adaptable shade tree with pointed, bristle-tipped leaf lobes and reddish fall color. Its strong wood is a leading commercial hardwood across eastern North America.

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Sugar Pine

Sugar Pine is the world's tallest and most massive pine, native to the western U.S. and famous for its enormous, foot-plus-long cones.

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Sourwood

Sourwood is a graceful native North American tree with drooping clusters of white lily-of-the-valley-like summer flowers and outstanding scarlet fall foliage.

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Threadleaf False Cypress

Threadleaf false cypress is an evergreen conifer with long, drooping, whip-like thread foliage that gives a soft, mounding, weeping texture. Golden forms are especially popular as garden accents.

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Silver Fir

Silver Fir is a tall European forest conifer with flat, glossy needles bearing two silvery bands beneath. It was the original Christmas tree of central Europe and is an important timber species.

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Sitka Spruce

Sitka Spruce is the largest spruce in the world, a towering conifer of the cool, wet Pacific Northwest coast. Its strong, lightweight wood is prized for aircraft, boats, and musical instruments.

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Swamp White Oak

Swamp white oak is an adaptable white oak of moist North American bottomlands, with two-toned leaves that are green above and silvery beneath. It is a popular, easy-to-grow shade and street tree.

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Tamarind Tree

The tamarind is a large, long-lived tropical fruiting tree in the legume family, producing brown seed pods. It is heat- and drought-tolerant but frost-sensitive.

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White Spruce

White Spruce is a hardy, widespread conifer of the northern forests of North America, valued for its dense conical form and tolerance of cold and poor soils. It is an important timber and Christmas tree species.

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Snowbell Tree

A graceful small tree that hangs with rows of fragrant, bell-shaped white flowers in late spring. Its horizontal branching shows the dangling blooms off to perfection.

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Shore Pine

Shore Pine is the coastal form of the lodgepole pine, a tough, twisted two-needle pine of the Pacific coast. Its irregular, picturesque shape makes it popular for seaside gardens and bonsai.

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Tamarack

Tamarack is a hardy North American deciduous conifer of cold bogs and wetlands, turning glowing gold each autumn before shedding its soft needles. It is one of the most cold-tolerant trees in North America.

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Scarlet Oak

A red-oak celebrated for brilliant scarlet autumn color, with deeply C-shaped sinuses between sharply bristle-tipped lobes and a graceful open crown.

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Weeping Willow

Weeping willow is a graceful, fast-growing tree famous for its long, cascading branches that sweep the ground. It thrives beside ponds and streams, where its moisture-loving roots feel at home.

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Silk Oak

The silk oak is a fast-growing Australian tree with fern-like silvery foliage and showy golden-orange, comb-shaped flowers in spring. It is widely grown for shade, timber and ornament, but can be weedy outside its range.

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Tangerine Tree

A type of mandarin orange producing small, easy-to-peel fruit with a deep reddish-orange rind. It is a compact, productive citrus tree well suited to home gardens.

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Spanish Fir

Spanish Fir is a rare Mediterranean conifer from the mountains of southern Spain, prized for its dense, radially arranged blue-green needles that give branches a bottlebrush look. It is one of the few firs adapted to hot, dry summers.

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Silver Maple

Silver maple is a fast-growing deciduous tree named for the silvery undersides of its deeply cut leaves, which flash in the wind; it is hardy and adaptable but has brittle wood prone to storm damage.

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Sassafras

An aromatic native tree known for its three differently shaped leaves on the same plant, spicy fragrance, and brilliant fall color.

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Western Red Cedar

Western red cedar is a large, aromatic evergreen conifer of the Pacific Northwest, famed for its rot-resistant, fragrant wood and flat sprays of scale-like foliage. It is a cultural and ecological cornerstone of the region.

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Umbrella Tree

The umbrella tree is a fast-growing tropical plant whose glossy leaflets radiate from a central point like the spokes of an umbrella. It makes a lush, easy-care indoor tree.

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Scotch Pine

Scotch Pine is a widespread evergreen conifer known for its distinctive orange-red upper bark and blue-green twisted needles. It is one of the most common Christmas trees and a major timber species.

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Sausage Tree

The sausage tree is an African tree famous for its enormous, heavy, sausage-shaped fruits dangling on long stalks, and its dark maroon, bat-pollinated flowers. It is a striking specimen of savanna and riverbank landscapes.

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Rocky Mountain Juniper

Rocky Mountain Juniper is a drought-hardy western conifer with scale-like blue-green foliage and waxy blue berry-like cones, popular for windbreaks and bonsai.

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Weeping Cherry

The weeping cherry is an ornamental flowering cherry with gracefully cascading branches smothered in pink or white blossoms each spring. Its waterfall silhouette makes it a popular specimen and lawn focal point.

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Rubber Tree

The rubber tree is a striking indoor tree with large, thick, glossy leaves that can be deep green or burgundy. It is easy to grow and can become an impressive floor plant several feet tall.

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Yellow Birch

A long-lived northern hardwood with shiny, peeling bronze-gold bark and twigs that smell of wintergreen when scratched, important for timber and wildlife value.

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White Oak

White oak is a majestic, long-lived North American hardwood with rounded leaf lobes and prized, water-tight timber. A keystone forest tree, it can live for centuries and supports a vast web of wildlife.

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Tulip Tree

One of the tallest eastern hardwoods, named for its showy tulip-shaped greenish-orange flowers and uniquely four-lobed leaves. A fast-growing member of the magnolia family.

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Weeping Nootka Cypress

Weeping Nootka Cypress is a graceful evergreen conifer with sweeping, drooping branchlets that hang like curtains from upturned limbs. It is a striking, hardy specimen tree for cool climates.

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Willow Oak

A fast-growing red-oak with narrow, willow-like leaves that lack the typical oak lobes, prized as a tough shade and street tree across the southeastern United States.

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White Ash

A large native shade tree once widely planted for its strong wood and purple-bronze fall color. Now severely threatened by the invasive emerald ash borer.

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Quaking Aspen

A fast-growing native tree whose flat-stalked leaves tremble in the slightest breeze and turn brilliant gold in fall. It forms vast clonal groves and is the most widely distributed tree in North America.

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Plumeria Tree

A small tropical tree beloved for its intensely fragrant, waxy flowers used in Hawaiian leis. Plumeria blooms in shades of white, yellow, pink, and red atop thick, sculptural branches.

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Yellow Trumpet Tree

The yellow trumpet tree erupts in brilliant golden-yellow trumpet flowers in spring, usually while leafless, making it one of the most dazzling tropical flowering trees. It is the national tree of Brazil.

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Trumpet Tree

The trumpet tree is a tropical American tree that bursts into a mass of pink-to-magenta trumpet-shaped flowers, often while leafless. Known as pink ipê, it is a prized ornamental.

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Weeping Fig

A popular indoor tree with a graceful, weeping canopy of small glossy leaves. It is attractive but notorious for dropping leaves when stressed or moved.

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Subalpine Fir

Subalpine Fir is a narrow, spire-shaped western fir of high mountains, instantly recognizable by its slender steeple crown adapted to shed heavy snow.

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