Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
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
Goosegrass
Goosegrass is a tough warm-season annual weed forming flattened rosettes with a distinctive white or silvery center, thriving in compacted soils and high-traffic areas.
grass
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
Green Ash
Green ash is a tough, adaptable deciduous tree once widely planted for shade, with compound leaves and yellow fall color; its survival is now threatened across North America by the emerald ash borer.
tree
Candelabra Cactus
A tall, tree-like succulent euphorbia with upright branching ridged stems that form a candelabra silhouette. Though cactus-like, it is a spurge that exudes milky latex.
succulent
Grand Fir
Grand Fir is a fast-growing Pacific Northwest fir with flat, glossy needles arranged in neat flat sprays and a strong citrus scent when crushed.
tree
Chinquapin Oak
Chinquapin oak is a white oak with chestnut-like, coarsely toothed leaves that thrives on dry, alkaline, limestone soils.
tree
Green Bean
Green beans are the young pods of the common bean, picked while still slender before the seeds mature. They come in bush and pole forms and are among the most reliable and rewarding crops for home gardens.
herb
Chives
Chives are a clump-forming perennial culinary herb in the onion family, grown for their slender hollow leaves and pompom-like purple flowers.
herb
Grapefruit Tree
The grapefruit is a large evergreen citrus tree grown for its big fruit with pink, red, or white flesh. It arose as a hybrid of pomelo and sweet orange.
tree
Chamomile
Chamomile is a daisy-like aromatic herb famous for its small, apple-scented white-and-yellow flowers.
herb
Fringe Tree
A small native tree or large shrub that produces airy, cloud-like clusters of fragrant, fringe-like white flowers in late spring. Its feathery blooms give it the name old man's beard.
tree
Carrot
The carrot is a popular root vegetable grown for its taproot, most familiar in orange but also available in purple, red, yellow, and white. It is a biennial usually harvested in its first year.
herb
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
Celery
Celery is a marsh-loving biennial grown for its long, ribbed leaf stalks. It is famously demanding, needing rich soil and constant moisture to grow well.
herb
Globe Amaranth
A heat-loving annual grown for its round, clover-like flower heads of papery bracts in magenta, purple, pink, white or orange. The everlasting blooms keep their color when dried and stand up beautifully to summer heat and humidity.
flower
Cast Iron Plant 'Milky Way'
'Milky Way' is a speckled cast iron plant whose deep green, upright leaves are scattered with tiny creamy-white to yellow spots, like stars across a night sky. It keeps the legendary toughness and shade tolerance of the cast iron plant.
houseplant
Golden Barrel Cactus
The golden barrel cactus is a globe-shaped desert cactus ringed with golden-yellow spines. Slow-growing and architectural, it is a popular feature in xeriscapes and pots despite being endangered in the wild.
succulent
Catmint
A soft, billowing perennial with gray-green aromatic foliage and a long haze of small lavender-blue flowers. Tough, drought-proof, deer-resistant, and a magnet for bees.
herb
Four O'Clock
A bushy tuberous perennial famous for fragrant trumpet flowers that open in late afternoon and stay open through the night, then close by morning. A single plant can bear differently colored blooms, sometimes flecked on the same flower.
flower
Chickweed
Chickweed is a low, sprawling annual often dismissed as a lawn weed, with weak stems and tiny white star-shaped flowers that give it the name starwort.
herb
Ground Ivy
Ground ivy is a creeping, aromatic perennial in the mint family with scalloped round leaves and blue-violet spring flowers, the same plant widely known as creeping Charlie. It forms dense mats in shady lawns and gardens and is notoriously persistent.
herb
Chaste Tree
The chaste tree is a Mediterranean deciduous shrub or small tree with aromatic, palmate foliage and slender spikes of lavender-blue summer flowers that attract bees and butterflies.
shrub
Gooseberry
A thorny deciduous shrub in the currant family that produces translucent berries on arching, spiny stems. It is hardy, productive and tolerant of cool climates.
shrub
Cherry Blossom
Cherry blossoms are ornamental flowering cherry trees famed for clouds of pink or white spring blossoms. They are cultural icons in Japan, where they are celebrated as sakura.
tree
Foxtail
Foxtail is a group of annual grasses named for their bushy, bristly seed heads that resemble a fox's tail. They are common weeds of lawns, fields and roadsides.
grass
Cigar Plant
A bushy tender perennial covered in tiny tubular orange-red flowers tipped with white and black, resembling lit cigars and beloved by hummingbirds.
shrub
Goatsbeard
Goatsbeard is a robust, shade-loving perennial that produces tall, feathery plumes of creamy-white flowers, resembling a giant astilbe. It is a striking native woodland plant for moist, partly shaded gardens.
shrub
Catnip
Catnip is a hardy, easy-growing mint-family herb famous for the response it triggers in many cats. It is also a useful pollinator and pest-repelling plant.
herb
Fire Pink
A short-lived native wildflower of eastern North American woodlands, prized for its brilliant scarlet, star-shaped flowers that lure hummingbirds in spring.
flower
Chestnut Oak
A rugged white-oak of dry rocky ridges, recognized by its deeply furrowed bark and chestnut-like, wavy-toothed leaves.
tree
Fiddle Leaf Fig
The fiddle leaf fig is a striking indoor tree with huge, violin-shaped glossy leaves. It is a designer favorite but can be fussy, demanding consistent bright light and stable conditions.
tree
Cheatgrass
Cheatgrass is an invasive winter annual grass of the western United States, notorious for its sharp seeds and for fueling more frequent, intense wildfires across rangelands.
grass
Forsythia
A tough deciduous shrub that bursts into brilliant yellow flowers along bare branches in early spring, before its leaves appear. One of the earliest and most reliable harbingers of spring in temperate gardens.
shrub
Chinese Money Plant
The Chinese money plant is a charming houseplant with round, coin-shaped leaves on slender stalks. It is easy to grow and readily produces baby offshoots to share with friends.
houseplant
Fox Tail Agave
A soft, spineless agave with pale blue-green rosettes and a curving, foxtail-like flower spike. Unusual among agaves for its lack of sharp spines and tolerance of light shade.
succulent
Blueberry
Blueberries are deciduous fruiting shrubs grown for their round, dusty-blue berries. They demand acidic, moist, well-drained soil and reward growers with both fruit and brilliant autumn color.
shrub
Flamingo Flower
A tropical plant famous for its glossy, heart-shaped red 'flowers' (actually spathes) with a protruding spadix. Long-lasting blooms make it a popular gift plant.
flower
Boxwood
A dense, slow-growing evergreen shrub that has been the backbone of formal gardens, hedges and topiary for centuries. Its small glossy leaves clip cleanly into crisp shapes.
shrub
Giant Sequoia
The giant sequoia is the most massive tree on Earth by volume, a colossal evergreen conifer of California's Sierra Nevada with fibrous reddish bark, scale-like foliage, and a lifespan of thousands of years.
tree
Borage
A fast-growing annual herb with brilliant blue star-shaped flowers and bristly, cucumber-scented leaves. A magnet for bees, it self-seeds freely and is a favorite of pollinator gardens.
herb
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
Burro's Tail
A trailing succulent with plump, overlapping blue-green leaves packed along long stems that resemble braided tails. Easy to grow but its beads drop off at the slightest touch.
succulent
Fothergilla
Fothergilla is a native deciduous shrub offering fragrant white bottlebrush flowers in spring and spectacular orange-red-yellow foliage in fall. It is a low-fuss, multi-season ornamental.
shrub
Blue Flag Iris
A native North American wetland iris with striking violet-blue flowers veined in yellow and white. It thrives in marshes, pond margins, and wet meadows.
flower
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
Blue Jacaranda
The blue jacaranda is a subtropical tree celebrated for its spectacular spring display of violet-blue trumpet flowers that blanket the canopy and carpet the ground beneath. Its fine, fern-like foliage makes it a graceful landscape and avenue tree.
tree
Fishbone Cactus
An epiphytic jungle cactus with flat, deeply zigzagged stems resembling a fish skeleton. Easy to grow and capable of producing large, fragrant night-blooming flowers in autumn.
succulent