Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Lupine
A striking cottage-garden perennial with tall, dense spires of pea-like flowers in vivid blues, purples, pinks, and bicolors above palmate leaves. A nitrogen-fixing legume beloved by bees.
flower
Lupin
Lupin is a striking perennial bearing tall, dense spikes of pea-like flowers in vivid colors above palmate leaves. A legume, it fixes nitrogen and is a cottage-garden showstopper.
flower
Edamame
Edamame is a warm-season legume in the pea family, a bushy annual grown from young green soybeans. The plant fixes its own nitrogen and forms fuzzy green pods.
herb
Wild Indigo
A long-lived native prairie perennial that forms a shrub-like mound of blue-green foliage topped by spikes of indigo-blue, pea-like flowers. Its deep taproot makes it exceptionally drought tolerant and nearly permanent in the garden.
flower
Cholla Cactus
A group of shrubby to treelike desert cacti with cylindrical, jointed segments and barbed spines that detach easily. Iconic plants of the American Southwest deserts.
succulent
Engelmann Spruce
Engelmann Spruce is a tall, narrow conifer of high western mountains, often forming dense subalpine forests near treeline. Its soft, resonant wood is prized for musical instrument soundboards.
treeSago Palm
An ancient, palm-like cycad with a stout trunk and a symmetrical crown of stiff, feathery dark-green fronds. Despite the name it is not a true palm.
shrub
Ponytail Palm
Not a true palm but a succulent with a swollen, water-storing trunk and a fountain of long, curly leaves. Its bulbous base gives it the nickname elephant's foot.
succulent
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.
flower
Silver Pothos
Silver pothos is a trailing tropical vine prized for its thick, heart-shaped leaves splashed with shimmering silvery markings, despite not being a true pothos.
houseplant
Asparagus Fern
The asparagus fern is not a true fern but a relative of garden asparagus, grown for its soft, feathery sprays of bright green needle-like foliage. It is easy and fast-growing.
houseplant
Yucca Palm
The yucca palm is not a true palm but a tough, drought-tolerant evergreen from Central America, prized as an architectural houseplant with rosettes of sword-shaped leaves atop woody canes.
shrub
Rose
The rose is the world's most beloved flowering shrub, a thorny perennial grown for thousands of years for its fragrant, many-petaled blooms in nearly every color but true blue.
shrub
False Sunflower
False sunflower is a tough native perennial covered in golden-yellow daisy-like blooms all summer. It resembles a true sunflower but returns reliably year after year.
flower
Satin Pothos
A trailing tropical vine with heart-shaped, matte green leaves splashed in shimmering silver. Despite the name it is not a true pothos, but it shares the same easygoing, low-light tolerance.
houseplant
Wild Ginger
A low, spreading woodland groundcover with heart-shaped leaves and curious maroon flowers hidden at soil level. Its ginger-scented roots inspired the common name, though it is unrelated to true ginger.
flower
Geranium
The familiar bedding "geranium" is actually a Pelargonium, a drought-tolerant flowering plant with rounded leaves and bold clusters of red, pink, or white blooms. True Geranium species (cranesbills) are separate hardy perennials.
flower
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.
tree
Calla Lily
Calla lilies are elegant plants grown for their sculptural, trumpet-shaped flower bracts in white and rich jewel tones above arrow-shaped leaves. Despite the name, they are not true lilies.
flower
Wild Geranium
A graceful woodland perennial bearing saucer-shaped pink to lavender flowers above deeply lobed leaves in late spring. It is a true hardy geranium, distinct from the tender garden 'geraniums' that are actually pelargoniums.
flower
Madagascar Palm
The Madagascar palm is a spiny, succulent caudex plant with a thick, spine-covered trunk topped by a crown of strappy leaves. Despite its name and look, it is not a true palm but a relative of the desert rose.
succulentHeavenly Bamboo
An evergreen-to-semi-evergreen shrub with lacy, bamboo-like foliage that flushes red in cool weather, plus white summer flowers and showy red winter berries. Despite the name, it is not a true bamboo.
shrub
Canna Lily
Canna lily is a bold tropical perennial grown for its large paddle-shaped leaves and vivid flower spikes. Despite the name it's not a true lily, and its rhizomes are lifted in cold climates.
flower
Amaryllis
The popular indoor amaryllis is a bulb (genus Hippeastrum) that produces towering stalks topped with huge, trumpet-shaped flowers, often forced for winter bloom. True Amaryllis is a separate South African genus.
flower