Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Pawpaw Tree
A small native North American tree producing the largest fruit native to the continent, borne on a hardy understory tree with large drooping leaves. It is the only temperate member of a largely tropical plant family.
tree
Dawn Redwood
A fast-growing 'living fossil' conifer that drops its feathery needles each fall, once known only from fossils until living trees were discovered in China in the 1940s.
tree
Scotch Pine
Scotch Pine is a widespread evergreen conifer known for its distinctive orange-red upper bark and blue-green twisted needles. It is one of the most common Christmas trees and a major timber species.
tree
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
Sea Buckthorn
Sea buckthorn is a thorny, nitrogen-fixing shrub bearing dense clusters of bright orange berries. It is extremely hardy, tolerating salt, drought, and poor soils.
shrub
Buffalo Berry
A tough, thorny North American shrub with silvery leaves and small red berries. Nitrogen-fixing and extremely drought- and cold-hardy, it forms dense thickets on poor soils.
shrub
Red Clover
Red clover is a short-lived perennial legume with rounded pinkish-purple flower heads, widely grown as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop and forage plant.
herb
Pea
The garden pea is a cool-season climbing legume grown for its seeds and pods. It is one of the earliest crops to sow in spring and fixes nitrogen to enrich the soil.
herb
Sweetshrub
Sweetshrub is a deciduous native shrub of the southeastern U.S. known for its unusual maroon-brown flowers that release a fruity fragrance reminiscent of strawberries, banana or spice. Its aromatic bark and foliage add to the appeal.
shrub
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
Lupin
Lupin is a striking perennial bearing tall, dense spikes of pea-like flowers in vivid colors above palmate leaves. A legume, it fixes nitrogen and is a cottage-garden showstopper.
flower
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
Fenugreek
Fenugreek is a fast-growing legume herb grown in gardens, with clover-like leaves, small pale flowers and slender, sickle-shaped seed pods. It is easy to grow and enriches soil as a nitrogen-fixer.
herb
Broadleaf Plantain
Broadleaf plantain is a tough, low-growing perennial weed with a rosette of broad, ribbed leaves and slender flower spikes, found in lawns, paths and compacted ground worldwide. It is unrelated to the banana-like plantain fruit despite the shared name.
herb
Edamame
Edamame is a warm-season legume in the pea family, a bushy annual grown from young green soybeans. The plant fixes its own nitrogen and forms fuzzy green pods.
herb
White Clover
White clover is a low, creeping perennial legume with three-part leaves and round white flower heads, found in lawns, pastures and meadows worldwide. It fixes nitrogen in the soil and is a favorite of bees, making it both a beneficial cover plant and a common lawn 'weed'.
herb