Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Trout Lily
A delicate spring ephemeral named for its mottled, trout-patterned leaves and nodding yellow lily flowers. It forms vast, slow-spreading woodland colonies that can be over a century old.
flower
Texas Sage
Texas sage is a silvery-leaved desert shrub that erupts in purple flowers after rain or humidity—earning the nickname barometer bush. It thrives on heat, sun, and minimal water.
shrub
Wisteria
Wisteria is a vigorous woody climbing vine famous for dramatic cascades of fragrant purple, blue, or white flowers in spring. It is beautiful but can become invasive and needs firm pruning.
shrub
White Oak
White oak is a majestic, long-lived North American hardwood with rounded leaf lobes and prized, water-tight timber. A keystone forest tree, it can live for centuries and supports a vast web of wildlife.
tree
Sweetbay Magnolia
Sweetbay magnolia is a graceful native North American tree with creamy, lemon-scented summer flowers and silvery-backed leaves. Unusually for a magnolia, it thrives in wet, swampy ground.
tree
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
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
Potato
The potato is a cool-season nightshade-family plant grown for its starchy underground tubers, among the world's most widely cultivated staple crops. It is grown from 'seed potatoes' that sprout into leafy plants.
herb
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
Pasque Flower
Pasque flower is an early-spring perennial bearing silky, bell-shaped purple flowers cloaked in fine hairs, followed by ornamental feathery seed heads. It blooms around Easter, giving it its name.
flower
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
Overcup Oak
Overcup oak is a flood-tolerant white oak of southern US bottomlands, named for the acorn cap that nearly encloses the nut. Its toughness makes it an increasingly popular urban shade tree.
tree
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
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
Lipstick Plant
A trailing tropical epiphyte named for its tubular red flowers that emerge from dark, lipstick-tube-shaped buds. It makes a lush, flowering hanging-basket plant when given warmth and bright light.
houseplant
Janet Craig Dracaena
Janet Craig is a popular Dracaena cultivar with glossy, solid dark-green strap leaves on upright canes. Exceptionally tolerant of low light and neglect, it's a staple of homes and offices.
houseplant
Holly
A classic evergreen shrub or small tree with glossy, spiny leaves and bright red berries, long associated with winter and Christmas. Most hollies need separate male and female plants for berries to form.
shrub
Golden Pothos
Golden Pothos is one of the most popular and forgiving houseplants, with heart-shaped green leaves marbled in golden yellow. It tolerates neglect and low light, earning the nickname devil's ivy.
houseplant