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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Dawn Redwood

A fast-growing 'living fossil' conifer that drops its feathery needles each fall, once known only from fossils until living trees were discovered in China in the 1940s.

tree

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.

tree

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.

tree

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.

tree

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.

tree

Juniper

A tough, evergreen coniferous shrub (some species small trees) with needle-like or scale-like foliage and blue berry-like cones. Junipers range from low groundcovers to upright forms and thrive in poor, dry soils.

shrub

Saucer Magnolia

A deciduous magnolia famous for large, goblet-shaped pink-and-white blooms that open on bare branches in early spring. It is one of the most widely planted flowering trees in temperate gardens.

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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.

tree

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.

tree

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.

tree

Honey Locust

Honey locust is a fast-growing deciduous tree with fine, fern-like compound leaves casting light dappled shade; wild forms have fierce branching thorns and long twisted seed pods, but thornless cultivars dominate landscaping.

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Southern Live Oak

Southern Live Oak is a massive, spreading evergreen oak of the American Deep South, famous for its broad canopy draped in Spanish moss. It is among the longest-lived and most iconic trees of the region.

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Apache Pine

A southwestern pine of the Sierra Madre and Arizona–New Mexico borderlands, notable for very long, drooping needles and a grass-like seedling stage. Young trees resemble a tuft of grass before the trunk elongates.

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Red Maple

Red maple is one of North America's most widespread and adaptable trees, prized for its brilliant scarlet fall color and early red flowers. It thrives in a remarkable range of soils, from swamps to dry ridges.

tree

Bluebeard

Bluebeard is a compact late-summer shrub smothered in clusters of blue flowers that pollinators adore. It is heat- and drought-tolerant and blooms when most shrubs have finished.

shrub

Honeyberry

An extremely cold-hardy deciduous shrub bearing elongated blue berries with a waxy bloom. It is one of the earliest of its kind to set fruit each season.

shrub

Bachelor's Button

Bachelor's button, or cornflower, is an easy cottage-garden annual famous for its intense true-blue, fringed flowers that are excellent for cutting.

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Globe Thistle

Globe thistle is a bold, architectural perennial topped with spherical, steel-blue flower heads above spiny, gray-green foliage. It is drought-tolerant and irresistible to bees.

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Floss Flower

Floss flower is a compact annual covered in fluffy, thread-like clusters of blue, lavender, pink, or white blooms that flower nonstop all summer.

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Cape Daisy

A sun-loving South African daisy with vivid, often metallic-blue-centered blooms in purple, white, and orange, prized for nonstop color in beds and containers.

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Aloe Vera

Aloe vera is a hardy succulent with thick, fleshy leaves arranged in a rosette and filled with a clear inner gel. It is easy to grow on a sunny windowsill and needs very little water.

succulent

Dutchman's Breeches

A delicate spring ephemeral whose white, pantaloon-shaped flowers hang in a row like tiny upside-down breeches. It blooms early in woodlands then vanishes by summer.

flower

Skullcap

Skullcap is a slender North American mint-family herb with tiny blue, two-lipped flowers. It takes its name from the small helmet- or skull-cap-shaped appendage on the calyx of each bloom.

herb

Plumbago

Plumbago is a sprawling evergreen shrub covered for months in clusters of soft sky-blue, phlox-like flowers. It thrives in heat and is a favorite of butterflies.

shrub