Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
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.
tree
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
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
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.
tree
Cyclamen
Cyclamen is a tuberous perennial famous for its swept-back, butterfly-like flowers and heart-shaped, silver-marbled leaves. The florist's cyclamen blooms through the cool months, going dormant in summer heat.
flower
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.
tree
Bird's Nest Fern
An epiphytic fern that forms a rosette of broad, undivided, ripple-edged fronds around a central nest-like crown. Unlike lacy ferns, its simple glossy leaves make it forgiving and bold indoors.
fern
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.
tree
String of Turtles
A delicate trailing peperomia with tiny round leaves patterned like miniature turtle shells. Slow-growing and compact, it is well suited to small hanging pots and terrariums.
houseplant
String of Buttons
An easy succulent whose triangular leaves are stacked in pairs around the stem, looking like buttons threaded on a string. Forms tidy spirals that sprawl and trail as they lengthen.
succulent
Goldfish Plant
The goldfish plant is a tropical trailing houseplant named for its bright orange, pouched flowers that look like leaping goldfish among glossy dark green leaves.
houseplant
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
Chervil
A delicate annual culinary herb with lacy, fern-like leaves, grown in gardens. One of the classic French fines herbes, it prefers cool weather and light shade.
herb
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
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
Velvet Shield Anthurium
This collector's anthurium is grown for its large, velvety, heart-shaped leaves emblazoned with bold, contrasting white veins. The thick, dark foliage has a stiff, almost cardboard-like texture that gives it its nicknames.
houseplant
Sweet William
Sweet William is a short-lived cottage-garden classic bearing dense, flat clusters of fringed, often bicolored flowers with a clove-like fragrance. It's typically grown as a biennial, blooming in its second year.
flower
Indian Paintbrush
A vivid North American wildflower whose flame-colored display comes not from petals but from brightly tipped leaf-like bracts. It is a hemiparasite that taps the roots of neighboring plants, making it notoriously difficult to cultivate.
flower
Franklin Tree
The Franklin tree is a rare deciduous tree extinct in the wild, surviving only in cultivation from seed collected in the 1700s. It bears fragrant white camellia-like flowers in late summer and fiery red fall color.
tree
Foxtail Fern
Despite its name, foxtail fern is not a true fern but a member of the asparagus family, grown for its plush, upright plumes of needle-like 'leaves.' Its dense, bottlebrush fronds resemble fluffy green foxtails.
houseplant
Button Fern
The Button Fern is a compact fern with distinctive round, button-like leaflets along arching dark stems. Unlike most ferns it tolerates somewhat drier conditions, making it a charming, manageable choice for small spaces.
fern
Rabbit's Foot Fern
The Rabbit's Foot Fern is named for the fuzzy, silvery rhizomes that creep over the pot's edge like little furry feet. Its lacy, delicate fronds and unusual surface roots make it a striking, conversation-starting houseplant.
fern
Flame Bottle Tree
The flame bottle tree, or Illawarra flame tree, is an Australian tree that blazes with masses of scarlet bell-shaped flowers on bare branches in early summer. It belongs to the bottle tree family, with a stout trunk and maple-like leaves.
tree
Balloon Flower
Balloon flower is a long-lived perennial named for its puffy, balloon-like buds that pop open into star-shaped blue, pink or white blooms. It is an easy, deer-resistant plant that flowers reliably through summer.
flower