Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Thanksgiving Cactus
The Thanksgiving cactus is a forest cactus that blooms in late autumn with colorful, tubular flowers. It is distinguished from the Christmas cactus by the sharp, claw-like teeth on its flattened stem segments.
succulent
Trout Lily
A delicate spring ephemeral named for its mottled, trout-patterned leaves and nodding yellow lily flowers. It forms vast, slow-spreading woodland colonies that can be over a century old.
flower
Wisteria
Wisteria is a vigorous woody climbing vine famous for dramatic cascades of fragrant purple, blue, or white flowers in spring. It is beautiful but can become invasive and needs firm pruning.
shrub
Texas Sage
Texas sage is a silvery-leaved desert shrub that erupts in purple flowers after rain or humidity—earning the nickname barometer bush. It thrives on heat, sun, and minimal water.
shrub
Toad Lily
Toad lily is a shade perennial bearing exotic, orchid-like flowers heavily speckled with purple in late summer and fall. Its intricate blooms reward a close look in the woodland garden.
flower
Star Fruit Tree
A tropical evergreen tree producing waxy, ribbed yellow fruit that forms a star shape when sliced. Its decorative five-pointed fruit makes it an attractive ornamental in warm climates.
tree
Sugar Maple
Sugar maple is a hallmark of North America's blazing autumn forests and the maple traditionally tapped for its sap. It is a large, long-lived shade tree with dense, hard wood prized for furniture and flooring.
treeCebu Blue Pothos
Cebu Blue is a fast-growing aroid prized for its shimmery, silvery-blue lance-shaped leaves. As it matures it can fenestrate, developing splits reminiscent of its relative Epipremnum pinnatum.
houseplant
Sandbur
Sandbur is a warm-season grass infamous for its sharp, spiny seed burs that cling painfully to skin, clothing, and animal fur. It thrives in dry, sandy, disturbed soils and is a troublesome weed of lawns and pastures.
grassGorgon's Grotto
A bold aeonium hybrid forming large, layered rosettes of green leaves often streaked with cream-yellow variegation and red margins. Its dense, ruffled rosettes look like coral or a sea grotto.
succulent
Prayer Plant
A low-growing tropical foliage plant famous for folding its decoratively veined leaves upward at night, like hands in prayer. Its oval leaves show striking patterns of green, cream and red.
houseplant
Privet
A fast-growing, dense deciduous-to-semi-evergreen shrub long used for clipped hedges. It bears panicles of small white flowers and black berries, but is invasive in many regions.
shrub
Rattlesnake Master
A distinctive prairie perennial with yucca-like, spiny-edged leaves and greenish-white, golf-ball-shaped flower heads. Despite its name, it is a member of the carrot family.
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
Pignut Hickory
Pignut hickory is a tall, upland hickory of eastern North America with smooth gray bark and pear-shaped nuts. It is valued for tough wood, brilliant golden fall color, and as wildlife habitat.
tree
Peperomia
A diverse genus of compact, slow-growing houseplants with thick, often succulent-like leaves in a huge range of textures and colors. Their small size makes them ideal for desks and shelves.
houseplant
Pasque Flower
Pasque flower is an early-spring perennial bearing silky, bell-shaped purple flowers cloaked in fine hairs, followed by ornamental feathery seed heads. It blooms around Easter, giving it its name.
flower
Paperbark Maple
Paperbark maple is a small ornamental maple famous for its cinnamon-colored bark that peels in papery curls year-round and its fiery red-orange autumn foliage. It offers four-season interest in a compact form.
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
Nasturtium
Nasturtiums are easygoing annuals with round, lily-pad leaves and bright spurred flowers in fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. They are a cheerful, low-fuss choice for beds, baskets, and borders.
herb
Painted Daisy
Painted daisy is a hardy perennial bearing cheerful daisy flowers in pink, red, and white with golden centers over fern-like foliage. Its flowers are the natural source of the insecticide pyrethrum.
flower
Musk Thistle
Musk thistle is a spiny biennial weed with large, nodding rose-purple flower heads; native to Eurasia, it is an aggressive invader of pastures and rangelands across North America.
flower
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
Larkspur
A cool-season annual related to delphinium, bearing tall spikes of spurred blue, purple, pink or white flowers above feathery foliage. It is a cottage-garden classic and an excellent cut flower.
flower