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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Katsura Tree

A graceful Asian shade tree with heart-shaped blue-green leaves that turn gold and apricot in fall, famously releasing a sweet scent of burnt sugar or cotton candy.

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Japanese Cedar

Japanese Cedar, or sugi, is a tall, fast-growing evergreen conifer native to Japan and the national tree of that country. It has soft, awl-shaped needles and reddish, fibrous, peeling bark.

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Papaya Tree

A fast-growing tropical plant with a single trunk topped by a crown of large lobed leaves and clusters of melon-like fruit. It can fruit within a year of planting.

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Japanese Maple

A small, elegant ornamental tree prized for delicate, deeply lobed leaves in shades of red, green and purple, and spectacular fall color. A centerpiece of Japanese gardens.

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Persian Ironwood

Persian ironwood is a tough, slow-growing tree celebrated for spectacular multicolored fall foliage and beautiful flaking bark. Its tiny red flowers appear on bare branches in late winter.

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Korean Fir

Korean Fir is a compact, slow-growing conifer famous for producing showy violet-blue upright cones even on young trees. Its short needles show silvery undersides, making it a favorite garden and dwarf-conifer specimen.

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Orchid Tree

The orchid tree is a fast-growing subtropical tree with distinctive twin-lobed leaves and large, fragrant, orchid-like flowers in shades of pink, purple, and white. It is a popular flowering ornamental in warm climates.

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Peach Tree

The peach is a deciduous fruit tree grown for its summer fruit and showy pink spring blossom. Self-fertile and fast-bearing, it rewards gardeners but needs sun, good drainage and disease vigilance.

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Paperbark Maple

Paperbark maple is a small ornamental maple famous for its cinnamon-colored bark that peels in papery curls year-round and its fiery red-orange autumn foliage. It offers four-season interest in a compact form.

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Paper Bark Birch

A graceful northern tree famous for its peeling, papery white bark and fluttering golden fall foliage. Its bark was traditionally used by Indigenous peoples to build canoes.

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Pawpaw Tree

A small native North American tree producing the largest fruit native to the continent, borne on a hardy understory tree with large drooping leaves. It is the only temperate member of a largely tropical plant family.

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Orange Tree

The sweet orange is an evergreen citrus tree grown worldwide for its bright fruit and fragrant white blossoms. It is the most widely cultivated fruit tree on Earth.

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Jacaranda

A subtropical tree famous for spectacular clouds of violet-blue trumpet flowers in spring, paired with delicate fern-like foliage and a broad, airy canopy.

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Mockernut Hickory

Mockernut hickory is a sturdy, slow-growing eastern hickory with fragrant, densely hairy leaves and very thick-shelled nuts. Its strong wood and golden fall color make it a valued forest and shade tree.

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Hackberry

A tough, adaptable North American shade tree with distinctive warty, corky bark and small dark berries relished by birds. It tolerates drought, wind, poor soil, and urban conditions with ease.

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Incense Cedar

Incense Cedar is a stately western conifer with fragrant, flat sprays of foliage and cinnamon-red fibrous bark, famous as the wood used for pencils.

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Money Tree

A tropical tree often sold with a braided trunk and a crown of hand-shaped leaves, popular as a feng shui symbol of prosperity. It is easy-going and low-maintenance.

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Hinoki Cypress

Hinoki Cypress is an elegant evergreen conifer with rich green, fan-like foliage held in graceful sprays. Slow-growing dwarf cultivars are popular for gardens, containers, and bonsai.

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Monterey Pine

Monterey Pine is a fast-growing California coastal pine that, though limited in the wild, has become the world's most widely planted plantation pine. It bears needles in threes and asymmetrical, long-lasting cones.

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Overcup Oak

Overcup oak is a flood-tolerant white oak of southern US bottomlands, named for the acorn cap that nearly encloses the nut. Its toughness makes it an increasingly popular urban shade tree.

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Japanese Black Pine

Japanese Black Pine is a rugged coastal conifer with dark bark, stiff needles, and a picturesque irregular form. It is a classic bonsai and ornamental tree highly tolerant of salt and wind.

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Jabuticaba

A slow-growing Brazilian tree remarkable for producing its grape-like purple-black fruit directly on the trunk and main branches (cauliflory).

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Illawarra Flame Tree

The Illawarra flame tree is a striking Australian native that sheds its leaves and covers itself in masses of brilliant scarlet bell-shaped flowers in early summer. It is one of Australia's most spectacular flowering trees.

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Pacific Silver Fir

Pacific Silver Fir is a shade-tolerant Northwest fir with dense, lush foliage that is glossy green above and silvery-white beneath.

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Ohio Buckeye

A medium native tree with palmate compound leaves, spiny husks holding glossy brown 'buckeye' seeds, and foliage that smells unpleasant when crushed.

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Golden Chain Tree

A small deciduous tree that drips with long, hanging chains of brilliant yellow pea-like flowers in late spring.

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Monterey Cypress

Monterey Cypress is a wind-sculpted evergreen conifer native to a tiny stretch of the California coast, famous for the gnarled trees of the Monterey Peninsula. It is widely planted for hedging and shelter in mild climates.

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Ginkgo Biloba

Ginkgo biloba is a unique 'living fossil' tree with distinctive fan-shaped leaves that turn brilliant gold in autumn. Extremely tough and long-lived, it is widely planted as a resilient street tree.

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Mimosa Tree

A fast-growing ornamental tree with feathery fern-like leaves and fluffy pink powderpuff flowers, widely planted but invasive across the southern United States.

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Foxtail Pine

Foxtail Pine is a long-lived, high-elevation pine of California, named for its dense bottlebrush-like foliage. A close relative of the bristlecone pines, it survives harsh alpine conditions for over a thousand years.

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Meyer Lemon

A compact, productive citrus tree thought to be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin or orange, with thin, fragrant skin and rounder fruit than a standard lemon.

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Monkey Puzzle Tree

The monkey puzzle is a striking evergreen conifer from the Andes with stiff, spiral-arranged spiky leaves and a distinctive symmetrical, dome-topped silhouette. It is a living fossil, virtually unchanged for millions of years, and can live over a thousand years.

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Golden Shower Tree

The golden shower tree is a tropical flowering tree that drapes itself in long, hanging chains of brilliant golden-yellow blossoms in summer. It is the national tree and flower of Thailand and a beloved ornamental across the tropics.

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Magnolia

Magnolias are ancient flowering trees and shrubs prized for their large, fragrant, cup- or star-shaped blooms. They range from evergreen Southern magnolias to deciduous spring-flowering types.

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Fraser Fir

A high-elevation Appalachian evergreen and a favorite premium Christmas tree, with fragrant, silvery-backed needles and excellent needle retention.

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Longleaf Pine

A stately fire-adapted pine that once dominated vast southeastern U.S. forests, prized for its very long needles, durable timber and grass-stage seedlings. Restoration of its open, biodiverse savannas is a major conservation effort.

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Loblolly Pine

Loblolly pine is a fast-growing evergreen conifer of the southeastern United States and the region's most important timber tree. Tall and straight with long needles, it dominates southern forests and plantations.

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Medlar Tree

The medlar is an ancient, gnarled deciduous tree in the rose family, grown for its large white spring flowers, twisted branches, and distinctive russet-brown fruit with a wide open calyx. Hardy and low-maintenance.

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Ginkgo

An ancient 'living fossil' tree with unmistakable fan-shaped leaves that turn brilliant gold in autumn. Remarkably tough and pollution-resistant, it is unchanged for over 200 million years.

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Lime Tree

The lime tree is a small, often thorny evergreen citrus grown for its aromatic green fruit. Key limes (Citrus aurantiifolia) and Persian limes are the most familiar types.

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Firewheel Tree

The firewheel tree is an Australian rainforest tree named for its striking red-and-orange flowers arranged in spoke-like wheels. It has glossy lobed foliage and makes a handsome ornamental and street tree.

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Longan Tree

A subtropical evergreen relative of the lychee, bearing clusters of small brown-skinned fruits with translucent flesh around a single dark seed. The seed peeking through the flesh gives it the name dragon eye.

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Lodgepole Pine

Lodgepole Pine is a slender, adaptable western North American pine with paired needles and small prickly cones. Many populations have serotinous cones that open only after fire.

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Lemon Tree

The lemon is a small evergreen citrus tree grown for its fragrant yellow fruit. Glossy leaves, perfumed white blossom and year-round fruit make it a favorite for warm gardens and sunny containers.

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Flowering Plum

The flowering plum is a small deciduous ornamental tree grown for its early pink or white spring blossoms and, in popular purple-leaf forms, its deep burgundy foliage. It is a favorite accent tree for gardens and streets.

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Kousa Dogwood

Kousa dogwood is an elegant small tree with pointed white bracts in late spring, raspberry-like fruit, and striking exfoliating bark. It is more disease-resistant than the native flowering dogwood.

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Kentucky Coffeetree

A bold, coarse-textured native tree with enormous twice-compound leaves and thick leathery seedpods that persist into winter.

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Key Lime

A small, thorny citrus tree producing tiny, highly aromatic green-to-yellow fruit. It is a fruiting tropical tree historically grown in the Florida Keys.

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