Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Plumeria
Plumeria is a tropical shrub or small tree prized for its intensely fragrant, waxy flowers in shades of white, yellow, pink, and red, famously used to make Hawaiian leis.
shrub
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
Mugwort
A tall, aromatic perennial with silvery-backed, deeply cut leaves, long associated with folklore. It is hardy, vigorous, and often weedy along roadsides.
herb
Lychee Tree
A subtropical evergreen tree producing clusters of red, knobbly-skinned fruit. It is a beautiful but demanding tree that needs precise climate conditions to fruit.
tree
Katsura Tree
A graceful Asian shade tree with heart-shaped blue-green leaves that turn gold and apricot in fall, famously releasing a sweet scent of burnt sugar or cotton candy.
tree
Ironweed
A tall, robust native perennial crowned in late summer with clusters of intensely purple flowers. Its tough, wiry stems and iron-hard durability give it its name.
flower
Jacaranda
A subtropical tree famous for spectacular clouds of violet-blue trumpet flowers in spring, paired with delicate fern-like foliage and a broad, airy canopy.
tree
Gladiolus
Gladiolus is a tall summer bulb that sends up dramatic spikes of funnel-shaped flowers in nearly every color, a staple of cutting gardens and floral arrangements.
flower
Elderberry
Elderberry is a fast-growing deciduous shrub bearing large creamy flower clusters in early summer and drooping bunches of small dark purple-black berries in late summer.
shrub
Castor Bean
Castor bean is a fast-growing, dramatic plant with huge tropical leaves and spiny seed pods, often used as a bold ornamental for an instant tropical effect in gardens.
shrub
Chinese Evergreen
A tough, colorful foliage plant tolerant of low light, valued for its patterned leaves in green, silver, pink or red. A reliable beginner-friendly houseplant.
houseplant
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
Butterfly Weed
Butterfly weed is a native milkweed bearing flat clusters of brilliant orange flowers in summer. It is a top nectar plant for butterflies and a larval host for monarchs.
flower
Blanket Flower
A heat-loving, daisy-like perennial in fiery bands of red, orange, and yellow that bloom nonstop all summer. Tough, drought-proof, and beloved by bees and butterflies.
flower
Barberry
A dense, thorny deciduous shrub grown for colorful red, gold, or purple foliage and bright red berries. Tough and adaptable, though invasive in parts of North America.
shrub
American Beech
A majestic, slow-growing native hardwood with smooth silvery-gray bark and golden fall leaves that often cling through winter. A dominant tree of eastern forests.
tree
Angelonia
Often called summer snapdragon, angelonia produces upright spikes of orchid-like flowers that thrive in heat and humidity all season without deadheading.
flower
Annual Phlox
A bushy Texas native annual that produces dense, rounded clusters of starry flowers in nearly every color, prized for long-lasting summer color in beds and containers.
flower
Wild Garlic
A pungent perennial bulb in the onion family that spreads aggressively through lawns and fields, recognized by its hollow, grass-like leaves and strong garlic odor. It is a common turf weed.
herb
Weeping Birch
Weeping birch is the European white or silver birch, prized for its chalky white peeling bark and slender pendulous branchlets that sway in the breeze. Cultivars like 'Youngii' form a strongly weeping dome.
tree
Velvet Calathea
A prayer-plant relative with long, wavy-edged leaves that are velvety to the touch and flushed deep maroon underneath. Beautiful but thirsty for humidity and sensitive to hard water.
houseplant
Tarragon
Tarragon is an aromatic culinary herb grown in gardens for its slender, glossy, anise-scented foliage. The 'French' type rarely sets viable seed and is propagated by division or cuttings.
herb
Silk Oak
The silk oak is a fast-growing Australian tree with fern-like silvery foliage and showy golden-orange, comb-shaped flowers in spring. It is widely grown for shade, timber and ornament, but can be weedy outside its range.
tree
Quaking Aspen
A fast-growing native tree whose flat-stalked leaves tremble in the slightest breeze and turn brilliant gold in fall. It forms vast clonal groves and is the most widely distributed tree in North America.
tree