Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Puncturevine
Puncturevine is a low, mat-forming summer weed notorious for its hard, spiny seed burs that puncture bicycle tires and bare feet. It thrives in hot, dry, disturbed ground and is widespread in warm regions worldwide.
herb
Blue Chalksticks
Blue chalksticks is a spreading ground-cover succulent with slender, upright, powdery blue-green finger-like leaves. Its cool blue color and low, mounding habit make it a popular landscape and container plant.
succulent
Dewberry
Dewberry is a low, trailing relative of the blackberry that produces dark berries earlier in the season. Its sprawling thorny canes form ground-hugging mats.
shrub
Creeping Buttercup
Creeping buttercup is a low, spreading perennial with glossy yellow flowers that colonizes lawns and damp ground via rooting runners. It is an aggressive and persistent weed.
flower
Pennyroyal
Pennyroyal is a low, creeping mint with a sharp, spearmint-like aroma. It forms a dense ground-hugging mat and produces whorls of small lilac flowers in summer.
herb
Blue Star Juniper
Blue Star Juniper is a compact, mounding dwarf conifer with dense, silvery-blue, awl-shaped needles, prized as a low-maintenance ground-cover shrub.
shrub
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
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
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
Mullein
Mullein is a striking biennial that forms a rosette of soft, woolly leaves the first year and a towering yellow flower spike the second. It is a classic wildflower herb of dry, open ground.
herb
Rhubarb
Rhubarb is a hardy herbaceous perennial grown for its thick, ruby-to-green leaf stalks rising from a ground-level crown. It is a robust, long-lived cool-season garden plant.
herb
Crabgrass
Crabgrass is a fast-growing annual grass and one of the most familiar lawn and garden weeds, spreading low across the ground from a central crown like the legs of a crab. It germinates in warm weather and dies with the first frost, leaving behind thousands of seeds.
grass
Purslane
Purslane is a low, succulent annual with fleshy paddle-shaped leaves and trailing reddish stems. A widespread plant of warm, sunny ground, it grows both wild and as a cultivated garden vegetable.
succulent
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
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
Horsetail
An ancient, fern-related plant with jointed, hollow stems and whorls of needle-like branches that resemble a horse's tail. It is a persistent weed of damp ground, spreading by deep rhizomes and reproducing by spores.
fern
Carpetweed
A low, mat-forming summer annual that spreads flat across the ground in a star-like pattern of whorled leaves. It is a common weed of gardens, lawns and bare soil, germinating in warm weather.
herb
Weeping Willow
Weeping willow is a graceful, fast-growing tree famous for its long, cascading branches that sweep the ground. It thrives beside ponds and streams, where its moisture-loving roots feel at home.
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
Japanese Stiltgrass
Japanese stiltgrass is an aggressive annual grass from Asia that has become one of the most damaging invasive plants in eastern North American forests and shaded yards. It forms dense, sprawling mats that crowd out native ground flora.
grass
Sweet Woodruff
Sweet woodruff is a low, spreading groundcover herb with whorls of slender green leaves and clusters of tiny white star-shaped flowers in spring. When dried, its foliage releases a sweet, hay-and-vanilla scent and it carpets shady ground beautifully.
herb
Peanut Cactus
A small clustering cactus with finger-like, peanut-sized stems that sprawls into a mat and produces vivid orange-red flowers. It is an easy, free-flowering favorite for sunny spots.
succulent
Apple Tree
The apple tree is a deciduous fruit tree grown worldwide for its familiar fruit. With thousands of cultivars and the need for cross-pollination, it is a rewarding but slightly demanding garden and orchard tree.
tree
Pear Tree
The pear tree is a deciduous fruit tree grown for its abundant white spring blossom and glossy foliage. European pears (Pyrus communis) are long-lived ornamental and orchard trees.
tree