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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Empress Tree

The empress tree is an extremely fast-growing tree with huge fuzzy leaves and upright clusters of fragrant lavender, foxglove-like flowers in spring. It is admired for its rapid growth and bloom but is invasive in many regions.

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Dragon Tree

The dragon tree is an easy-care indoor tree with slender, arching stems topped by spiky rosettes of narrow, red-edged green leaves. It tolerates low light and infrequent watering.

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Eastern White Pine

A tall, fast-growing native conifer with soft blue-green needles in bundles of five and long, slender cones. The largest conifer of the northeastern forests and a historic timber tree.

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Bristlecone Pine

Bristlecone Pine is among the longest-lived organisms on Earth, with individuals exceeding 4,800 years old. These gnarled, weathered conifers cling to harsh, high-elevation mountains of the American West.

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English Yew

English Yew is a long-lived evergreen conifer with dark needles and red berry-like arils, traditionally used for hedges and topiary.

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Douglas Fir

Douglas fir is a towering western North American conifer prized as a timber and Christmas tree, recognizable by its soft flat needles and distinctive three-pointed bracts protruding from the cones.

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Basswood

Basswood, or American linden, is a large deciduous shade tree with big heart-shaped leaves and fragrant summer flowers beloved by bees. Its soft, pale wood is a favorite of woodcarvers.

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Eastern Hemlock

Eastern hemlock is a graceful, shade-tolerant evergreen conifer of cool eastern forests, with soft flat needles and tiny cones; it is threatened across its range by the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid.

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Black Walnut

A large, valuable native hardwood prized for its rich, dark timber. Its roots release juglone, a compound that inhibits the growth of many nearby plants.

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Eastern Red Cedar

Eastern Red Cedar is a tough, aromatic evergreen juniper native to North America, known for its reddish, fragrant wood and blue berry-like cones. It thrives in poor, dry soils.

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Black Oak

Black oak is a large red-oak-group tree of eastern North America with dark, blocky bark and bristle-tipped lobed leaves. Its inner bark once yielded the yellow dye quercitron.

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Black Spruce

Black Spruce is a slow-growing boreal conifer of cold northern bogs, recognizable by its narrow crown, short needles, and small persistent cones.

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Crepe Myrtle

Crepe myrtle is a small deciduous tree or large shrub beloved for its long-lasting, crinkled summer flower clusters, smooth peeling bark, and brilliant fall color, thriving in hot climates.

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Blood Orange

Blood orange is an orange cultivar whose flesh develops crimson-to-burgundy pigment from anthocyanins, triggered by cool nights. It produces fruit on a compact evergreen tree.

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Crabapple Tree

A small ornamental tree prized for its profuse spring blossoms and colorful, persistent miniature apples. Flowering crabapples are among the most popular landscape trees in temperate climates.

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Bitternut Hickory

Bitternut hickory is a tall, fast-growing eastern North American hickory recognized by its bright sulfur-yellow winter buds. Its dense, strong wood is valued for tool handles and firewood.

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Bald Cypress

A deciduous conifer of southern swamps, famous for its feathery foliage, buttressed trunk, and 'knees' that poke up from the water. Drops its needles in fall, hence 'bald.'

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Atlas Cedar

Atlas Cedar is a stately true cedar from North Africa, famous for the silvery-blue 'Glauca' form. It has stiff, ascending branches and a bold pyramidal shape that becomes flat-topped with age.

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Colorado Blue Spruce

A striking conifer prized for its stiff, sharp, silvery-blue needles and tidy pyramidal form. Native to the Rocky Mountains and a popular ornamental and Christmas tree.

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Clementine Tree

A small, virtually seedless mandarin with glossy deep-orange skin that peels easily. It is a popular winter citrus borne on a compact, attractive evergreen tree.

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Bay Leaf

Bay laurel is an aromatic evergreen Mediterranean tree grown for its glossy, fragrant leaves and as an ornamental.

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Chihuahua Pine

A southwestern and Mexican pine unusual for sprouting from its base after fire and for cones that take two to three years to mature. Its slender blue-green needles and ability to resprout set it apart from most pines.

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Cherry Tree

The cherry tree is a deciduous fruiting and ornamental tree grown for its fruit and showy spring blossoms. Sweet cherries (Prunus avium) and sour cherries (Prunus cerasus) are the two main types.

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Areca Palm

A clumping feather palm with feathery, arching fronds and golden-yellow stems. One of the most popular indoor palms.

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Apricot Tree

A deciduous stone-fruit tree prized for its golden-orange fruit and early spring blossoms. It thrives in regions with cold winters and warm, dry summers.

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American Beech

A majestic, slow-growing native hardwood with smooth silvery-gray bark and golden fall leaves that often cling through winter. A dominant tree of eastern forests.

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Arizona Cypress

Arizona Cypress is a tough, drought-tolerant evergreen conifer from the American Southwest, valued for its silvery blue-gray scale foliage. It makes an excellent windbreak and waterwise screen.

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Arborvitae

Arborvitae is a dense, evergreen conifer with flat sprays of scale-like foliage, widely planted as hedges and privacy screens. It is easy to grow and tolerates a range of conditions.

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American Holly

American Holly is a slow-growing evergreen tree of the eastern United States, prized for its spiny leathery leaves and bright red winter berries. It is a classic source of holiday greenery.

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Cherimoya Tree

A subtropical fruit tree from the Andean highlands, recognized by its large, heart-shaped fruits with green, scale-patterned skin. It tolerates light frost better than most tropical fruit trees.

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Cherry Blossom Tree

Cherry blossom trees are ornamental flowering cherries famed for their spectacular spring bloom of pink or white blossoms. Central to Japanese hanami tradition, they are short-lived but beloved worldwide.

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Catalpa Tree

The catalpa is a fast-growing deciduous shade tree famous for its huge heart-shaped leaves, showy clusters of frilly white flowers, and long slender seed pods resembling beans or cigars. It is a popular ornamental for large lawns and street plantings.

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Blue Spruce

Blue Spruce is a striking conifer famous for its stiff, silvery-blue needles and classic pyramidal form. It is a popular ornamental and Christmas tree in cold climates.

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Bur Oak

Bur oak is a massive, long-lived North American oak known for its huge, fringe-capped acorns, deeply furrowed bark and exceptional toughness. Drought- and fire-resistant, it is a stately tree for large landscapes.

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Butternut

Butternut is a medium-sized North American walnut relative with elongated, sticky nuts and a pale, lightweight wood. Wild populations have been devastated by butternut canker disease.

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Boxelder

A fast-growing, weedy native maple unusual for its compound leaves and paired winged seeds, tough and adaptable but often considered a nuisance tree.

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Bloodgood Japanese Maple

Bloodgood is the classic deep-red Japanese maple, holding its dark burgundy-purple leaf color through summer better than most cultivars before turning crimson in fall. It is an elegant upright specimen tree.

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Bradford Pear

Bradford pear is a fast-growing ornamental cultivar of Callery pear known for a uniform teardrop shape and clouds of white spring flowers. It is now widely regarded as an invasive species with notoriously weak, breakage-prone branching.

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Avocado Tree

The avocado is a broadleaf evergreen fruiting tree. Frost-tender and vigorous, it is a popular subtropical orchard tree and a fun, if slow-fruiting, houseplant from a sprouted pit.

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Australian Willow

Australian Willow is a graceful evergreen tree with weeping, willow-like foliage that is not a true willow but a member of the citrus family. Prized as a tough, low-litter street and shade tree for hot, dry climates.

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Black Locust

Black locust is a fast-growing deciduous tree with fragrant white spring flowers and extremely hard, rot-resistant wood. A nitrogen-fixing legume, it is valued for timber and erosion control but can be invasive.

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Balsam Fir

A fragrant northern evergreen with flat, soft needles and resin-blistered bark, beloved as a Christmas tree for its classic spire shape and lasting pine scent.

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Bishop Pine

Bishop Pine is a hardy two-needle pine of the California and Baja coast, with persistent, prickly cones that often stay closed on the tree for years until fire opens them. It tolerates wind, salt, and poor soils.

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Baobab Tree

The baobab is an iconic African tree with a massive, swollen, water-storing trunk and stout branches that look like roots, earning it the name upside-down tree. Some specimens live over a thousand years.

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Black Cherry

Black cherry is a native North American hardwood valued for its fine reddish furniture timber, drooping clusters of white spring flowers, and small dark fruits borne in late summer.

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American Elm

American elm is a stately deciduous tree famous for its graceful vase-shaped canopy, once a beloved street tree until Dutch elm disease devastated populations; disease-resistant cultivars now revive its use.

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American Sycamore

The American sycamore is one of the largest hardwoods in eastern North America, known for its mottled, peeling bark that reveals creamy-white inner layers. It grows fast and massive along rivers and bottomlands.

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Apple Tree

The apple tree is a deciduous fruit tree grown worldwide for its familiar fruit. With thousands of cultivars and the need for cross-pollination, it is a rewarding but slightly demanding garden and orchard tree.

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