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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Bishop's Cap Cactus

A spineless, star-shaped cactus with a rounded body of distinct ribs flecked with tiny white scales, resembling a bishop's mitre. It produces yellow daisy-like flowers from its crown.

succulent

Yoshino Cherry

An ornamental cherry famous for clouds of pale pink-to-white blossoms in early spring. It is the iconic tree of Washington, D.C.'s Tidal Basin and Japan's cherry-blossom season.

tree

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

Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's lace is a biennial wildflower with delicate, flat-topped clusters of tiny white flowers and a single dark floret in the center. It is the wild ancestor of the cultivated carrot.

flower

Norfolk Island Pine

Norfolk Island Pine is a tropical conifer with symmetrical tiers of soft, feathery branches, popular as a houseplant and living Christmas tree. It is not a true pine.

houseplant

Cedar of Lebanon

Cedar of Lebanon is a majestic, long-lived true cedar famous for the broad, flat tiers of foliage it develops with age. It is an iconic specimen tree steeped in history and symbolism.

tree

Calamondin

Calamondin is a small ornamental citrus hybrid bearing abundant tiny orange fruit. Popular as a potted houseplant, it flowers and fruits nearly year-round.

tree

Black Oak

Black oak is a large red-oak-group tree of eastern North America with dark, blocky bark and bristle-tipped lobed leaves. Its inner bark once yielded the yellow dye quercitron.

tree

Alyssum

Sweet alyssum is a low, spreading annual smothered in tiny honey-scented flowers, prized as a fast, fragrant carpet for borders, containers and hanging baskets.

flower

Shirley Poppy

The Shirley poppy is a refined garden strain of the wild corn poppy, bred for its delicate, papery flowers in soft pinks, whites, reds, and bicolors. These cool-season annuals self-sow freely for drifts of tissue-thin blooms.

flower

Hairy Bittercress

A small annual weed in the mustard family that forms a basal rosette and shoots tiny white flowers in early spring, followed by seed pods that explosively fling seeds. It is a common nuisance in nursery pots and garden beds.

herb

Persian Ironwood

Persian ironwood is a tough, slow-growing tree celebrated for spectacular multicolored fall foliage and beautiful flaking bark. Its tiny red flowers appear on bare branches in late winter.

tree

Heather

Heather is a low, evergreen shrub that blankets moorlands with a haze of tiny pink, purple or white flowers in late summer. It needs acidic soil and is prized for ground cover and year-round foliage color.

shrub

Flowering Dogwood

Flowering dogwood is a beloved small ornamental tree whose spring branches are clouded in showy white or pink bracts. It offers four-season interest with summer berries, scarlet fall color, and tiered branching.

tree

Douglas Fir

Douglas fir is a towering western North American conifer prized as a timber and Christmas tree, recognizable by its soft flat needles and distinctive three-pointed bracts protruding from the cones.

tree

Black Cherry

Black cherry is a native North American hardwood valued for its fine reddish furniture timber, drooping clusters of white spring flowers, and small dark fruits borne in late summer.

tree

Teasel

Teasel is a tall, spiny biennial topped with egg-shaped, prickly flower heads ringed by tiny lavender blooms. Once used to raise the nap on woolen cloth, it is now considered an invasive weed in much of North America.

herb

Hebe

Hebe is a neat evergreen shrub from New Zealand with tidy mounding foliage and bottlebrush-like spikes of purple, pink or white flowers. It is a reliable, pollinator-friendly choice for mild coastal gardens.

shrub

Black Locust

Black locust is a fast-growing deciduous tree with fragrant white spring flowers and extremely hard, rot-resistant wood. A nitrogen-fixing legume, it is valued for timber and erosion control but can be invasive.

tree

Silver Fir

Silver Fir is a tall European forest conifer with flat, glossy needles bearing two silvery bands beneath. It was the original Christmas tree of central Europe and is an important timber species.

tree

Norway Spruce

Norway spruce is a fast-growing European evergreen conifer with drooping branchlets and the longest cones of any spruce; it is widely used for timber, windbreaks, and as a Christmas tree.

tree

Loquat Tree

An evergreen subtropical fruit tree bearing clusters of orange fruit in late winter and spring. Ornamental and easy to grow, it offers lush foliage and unusually timed blossoms.

tree

Little Jewel

A compact intergeneric hybrid forming tight rosettes of plump, pointed, blue-green leaves tipped in rosy red. A small, jewel-like succulent that clusters into neat clumps.

succulent

Lobelia

Edging lobelia is a low, mounding or trailing annual smothered in tiny, intensely blue flowers from spring to frost. It's a staple of hanging baskets, window boxes and bedding borders.

flower