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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Yellow Birch

A long-lived northern hardwood with shiny, peeling bronze-gold bark and twigs that smell of wintergreen when scratched, important for timber and wildlife value.

tree

Self-Heal

A low, spreading mint-family herb with squat spikes of violet flowers, forming a tough, pollinator-friendly mat across lawns, meadows, and woodland edges.

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

Queen Victoria Agave

A compact, slow-growing agave forming a near-perfect dome of dark green leaves painted with striking white markings. A prized, geometric collector's succulent.

succulent

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

Lemon Cypress

Lemon Cypress is a bright chartreuse-yellow cultivar of Monterey Cypress whose foliage smells of lemon when brushed. It is popular as a potted topiary and small landscape conifer.

tree

Italian Cypress

Italian Cypress is a tall, narrow columnar conifer iconic of Mediterranean landscapes. Its slender pillar form makes it a dramatic vertical accent in gardens.

tree

Coleus

Coleus is a vibrant foliage plant grown for its endlessly varied leaves in shades of red, pink, green, purple, and gold. Easy to grow and propagate, it is a favorite for containers and shady beds.

houseplant

Celandine Poppy

A spring-blooming woodland wildflower of eastern North America bearing bright golden-yellow poppy flowers above deeply lobed blue-green leaves.

flower

Cape Daisy

A sun-loving South African daisy with vivid, often metallic-blue-centered blooms in purple, white, and orange, prized for nonstop color in beds and containers.

flower

Bearberry

A hardy, mat-forming evergreen groundcover shrub of cold northern regions, with glossy leaves, pink bell flowers, and red berries favored by bears and birds.

shrub

Tamarind Tree

The tamarind is a large, long-lived tropical fruiting tree in the legume family, producing brown seed pods. It is heat- and drought-tolerant but frost-sensitive.

tree

Staghorn Fern

The staghorn fern is a dramatic epiphytic fern whose fertile fronds branch like antlers. It grows mounted on wood or in baskets rather than in ordinary soil.

fern

Willow Oak

A fast-growing red-oak with narrow, willow-like leaves that lack the typical oak lobes, prized as a tough shade and street tree across the southeastern United States.

tree

Orange Tree

The sweet orange is an evergreen citrus tree grown worldwide for its bright fruit and fragrant white blossoms. It is the most widely cultivated fruit tree on Earth.

tree

Lifesaver Cactus

A low, clumping stem succulent famous for bizarre flowers with a thick, glossy red ring at the center that looks exactly like a candy lifesaver. The flowers are striped like a zebra.

succulent

Living Stones

Tiny, stem-less succulents that mimic pebbles to avoid being grazed. They split to reveal new leaves and produce daisy-like flowers, but need a strict dry regime.

succulent

Jackfruit Tree

A large tropical evergreen tree that produces the biggest tree-borne fruit in the world, with enormous spiky green fruit growing directly on the trunk and main branches.

tree

Croton

The croton is a tropical shrub famous for its leathery leaves splashed with brilliant yellow, orange, red, and green. Bright light is the key to its vivid coloring.

shrub

Cherry Tree

The cherry tree is a deciduous fruiting and ornamental tree grown for its fruit and showy spring blossoms. Sweet cherries (Prunus avium) and sour cherries (Prunus cerasus) are the two main types.

tree

Avocado Tree

The avocado is a broadleaf evergreen fruiting tree. Frost-tender and vigorous, it is a popular subtropical orchard tree and a fun, if slow-fruiting, houseplant from a sprouted pit.

tree

Rhodiola

Rhodiola is a hardy, succulent alpine perennial of cold northern mountains, forming low rosettes of fleshy blue-green leaves and clusters of yellow flowers. Cut roots smell faintly of rose.

succulent

Ragweed

A common annual weed that produces large amounts of lightweight, wind-blown pollen in late summer and fall. It has fern-like, deeply divided leaves and inconspicuous greenish flower spikes.

herb

Plumeria Tree

A small tropical tree beloved for its intensely fragrant, waxy flowers used in Hawaiian leis. Plumeria blooms in shades of white, yellow, pink, and red atop thick, sculptural branches.

tree