Plant Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.

all houseplant flower tree shrub succulent herb fern grass

Sugar Maple

Sugar maple is a hallmark of North America's blazing autumn forests and the maple traditionally tapped for its sap. It is a large, long-lived shade tree with dense, hard wood prized for furniture and flooring.

tree

Sandbur

Sandbur is a warm-season grass infamous for its sharp, spiny seed burs that cling painfully to skin, clothing, and animal fur. It thrives in dry, sandy, disturbed soils and is a troublesome weed of lawns and pastures.

grass

Gorgon's Grotto

A bold aeonium hybrid forming large, layered rosettes of green leaves often streaked with cream-yellow variegation and red margins. Its dense, ruffled rosettes look like coral or a sea grotto.

succulent

Privet

A fast-growing, dense deciduous-to-semi-evergreen shrub long used for clipped hedges. It bears panicles of small white flowers and black berries, but is invasive in many regions.

shrub

Purslane

Purslane is a low, succulent annual with fleshy paddle-shaped leaves and trailing reddish stems. A widespread plant of warm, sunny ground, it grows both wild and as a cultivated garden vegetable.

succulent

Prayer Plant

A low-growing tropical foliage plant famous for folding its decoratively veined leaves upward at night, like hands in prayer. Its oval leaves show striking patterns of green, cream and red.

houseplant

Rattlesnake Master

A distinctive prairie perennial with yucca-like, spiny-edged leaves and greenish-white, golf-ball-shaped flower heads. Despite its name, it is a member of the carrot family.

flower

Plantain

Broadleaf plantain is a tough, low-growing lawn and trail-side herb (not the banana relative) with broad ribbed leaves arranged in a flat rosette. It is one of the most common colonizers of compacted ground.

herb

Pignut Hickory

Pignut hickory is a tall, upland hickory of eastern North America with smooth gray bark and pear-shaped nuts. It is valued for tough wood, brilliant golden fall color, and as wildlife habitat.

tree

Pin Oak

Pin oak is a fast-growing deciduous oak known for its distinctive layered branching, deeply lobed bristle-tipped leaves, and brilliant red fall color, making it a popular street and park tree.

tree

Peperomia

A diverse genus of compact, slow-growing houseplants with thick, often succulent-like leaves in a huge range of textures and colors. Their small size makes them ideal for desks and shelves.

houseplant

Peace Lily

The peace lily is a popular flowering houseplant with glossy dark green leaves and elegant white hooded blooms. It thrives in low light and even tells you when it's thirsty by dramatically drooping.

houseplant

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.

tree

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.

tree

Oxeye Daisy

A classic white-and-yellow daisy native to Europe and naturalized across North America, the oxeye daisy is the wild ancestor of garden Shasta daisies. It thrives in meadows, roadsides, and disturbed ground.

flower

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

Mock Orange

A deciduous shrub grown for its profuse, intensely fragrant white late-spring flowers that smell like orange blossom. Easy and hardy, it is a nostalgic favorite of cottage gardens.

shrub

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.

tree

Mullein

Mullein is a striking biennial that forms a rosette of soft, woolly leaves the first year and a towering yellow flower spike the second. It is a classic wildflower herb of dry, open ground.

herb

Nasturtium

Nasturtiums are easygoing annuals with round, lily-pad leaves and bright spurred flowers in fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. They are a cheerful, low-fuss choice for beds, baskets, and borders.

herb

Painted Daisy

Painted daisy is a hardy perennial bearing cheerful daisy flowers in pink, red, and white with golden centers over fern-like foliage. Its flowers are the natural source of the insecticide pyrethrum.

flower

Musk Thistle

Musk thistle is a spiny biennial weed with large, nodding rose-purple flower heads; native to Eurasia, it is an aggressive invader of pastures and rangelands across North America.

flower

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

Lungwort

Lungwort is a shade-loving perennial grown for its silver-spotted leaves and early spring flowers that often open pink and age to blue on the same plant. It is an excellent groundcover for woodland and shady gardens.

flower