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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Castor Bean

Castor bean is a fast-growing, dramatic plant with huge tropical leaves and spiny seed pods, often used as a bold ornamental for an instant tropical effect in gardens.

shrub

Chinese Evergreen

A tough, colorful foliage plant tolerant of low light, valued for its patterned leaves in green, silver, pink or red. A reliable beginner-friendly houseplant.

houseplant

Catmint

A soft, billowing perennial with gray-green aromatic foliage and a long haze of small lavender-blue flowers. Tough, drought-proof, deer-resistant, and a magnet for bees.

herb

Burning Bush

A deciduous shrub famous for its fiery crimson-red fall foliage and distinctive corky 'wings' along the stems. Tough and adaptable, it is also invasive in parts of North America.

shrub

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.

flower

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.

flower

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.

tree

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.

tree

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.'

tree

Barberry

A dense, thorny deciduous shrub grown for colorful red, gold, or purple foliage and bright red berries. Tough and adaptable, though invasive in parts of North America.

shrub

Banana Plant

The banana is a giant tropical herb, not a true tree, grown for its fruit and dramatic paddle-shaped leaves. Its 'trunk' is actually a pseudostem of tightly rolled leaf sheaths.

herb

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.

tree

Angelonia

Often called summer snapdragon, angelonia produces upright spikes of orchid-like flowers that thrive in heat and humidity all season without deadheading.

flower

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.

flower

Thimble Cactus

A tiny clustering cactus that produces masses of little thimble-sized offsets which detach at the slightest touch. The pale spines give the cluster a soft, frosty look.

succulent

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.

tree

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.

tree

Watermelon

Watermelon is a sprawling, heat-loving vine in the gourd family grown for its very large fruits. It needs a long, hot season and plenty of room to develop well.

herb

Witchgrass

Witchgrass is a native North American annual grass famous for its huge airy seedhead that breaks off and tumbles in the wind, scattering seed as it rolls.

grass

Wood Anemone

A low-growing spring ephemeral of European woodlands that carpets the forest floor with star-shaped white flowers before the tree canopy leafs out.

flower

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.

tree

Sweet Pea

Sweet pea is a climbing annual cherished for its ruffled, intensely fragrant flowers in soft pastel shades, a classic of cottage gardens and cut-flower beds.

flower

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.

tree

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.

tree