Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Red Maple
Red maple is one of North America's most widespread and adaptable trees, prized for its brilliant scarlet fall color and early red flowers. It thrives in a remarkable range of soils, from swamps to dry ridges.
tree
Red Hot Poker
Red hot poker is a bold perennial sending up torch-like spikes of tubular flowers that grade from fiery red at the top to yellow below. Its grassy clumps and dramatic blooms attract hummingbirds and bees.
flower
Philodendron Micans
An easy-going trailing philodendron with soft, velvety heart-shaped leaves in deep green to bronze, often shimmering with iridescent purple and pink tones. A forgiving choice for hanging baskets.
houseplant
Philodendron Verrucosum
A spectacular climbing philodendron with large, heart-shaped, velvety leaves of deep green and pale veining, set on distinctive hairy, fuzzy petioles. It demands high humidity to thrive.
houseplant
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
New England Aster
A robust native perennial that crowns the fall garden with masses of purple, daisy-like flowers around golden centers. It is a magnet for late-season bees and migrating monarch butterflies.
flower
Monterey Cypress
Monterey Cypress is a wind-sculpted evergreen conifer native to a tiny stretch of the California coast, famous for the gnarled trees of the Monterey Peninsula. It is widely planted for hedging and shelter in mild climates.
tree
Masterwort
Masterwort is a clump-forming perennial with intricate, pincushion-like flower heads surrounded by a papery collar of petal-like bracts. It brings cottage-garden charm to moist, partly shaded borders.
flower
Longan Tree
A subtropical evergreen relative of the lychee, bearing clusters of small brown-skinned fruits with translucent flesh around a single dark seed. The seed peeking through the flesh gives it the name dragon eye.
tree
Hoya Rope Plant
A curiously twisted cultivar of the wax plant whose thick, curled and folded leaves cling tightly to trailing stems, resembling braided rope. It produces clusters of fragrant, star-shaped waxy flowers.
houseplant
Forsythia
A tough deciduous shrub that bursts into brilliant yellow flowers along bare branches in early spring, before its leaves appear. One of the earliest and most reliable harbingers of spring in temperate gardens.
shrub
Fig Tree
The common fig is a deciduous Mediterranean tree grown for its large lobed leaves and distinctive fruiting form. Easy to grow and forgiving, it is one of the oldest cultivated trees and thrives in warm gardens and containers.
tree
Century Plant
A massive rosette-forming agave with thick, spiny, blue-grey leaves that grows for decades before sending up a towering flower stalk and then dying. It is an iconic architectural plant of arid gardens.
succulent
Brain Cactus
A crested form of the ladyfinger cactus whose fused, fan-like growth folds into convoluted ridges resembling a brain. A novelty succulent prized for its sculptural, undulating surface.
succulent
Blackberry
Blackberries are vigorous, often thorny cane plants in the rose family, bearing glossy black aggregate berries in late summer. Famously tough, they grow wild as brambles and in many improved garden varieties.
shrub
Bell Pepper
Bell pepper is a blocky-fruited variety of Capsicum annuum grown as a warm-season garden crop, bearing glossy fruit in shades of green, red, yellow, and orange. It is a colorful, productive plant for sunny beds and containers.
herb
Snake Plant
The snake plant is a tough, drought-tolerant succulent with stiff, upright sword-shaped leaves banded in green and yellow. It thrives on neglect and tolerates low light, making it one of the most beginner-friendly houseplants available.
succulent
Tomato
The tomato is one of the world's most popular garden plants, a warm-season fruiting member of the nightshade family grown on sprawling or vining stems. It comes in countless cultivars from tiny cherries to giant beefsteaks.
herb
Winterberry
Winterberry is a deciduous holly native to eastern North America, prized for the dense clusters of brilliant red berries that cling to its bare branches through winter. Unlike most hollies it drops its leaves, leaving a striking show of fruit against snow.
shrub
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
Spanish Fir
Spanish Fir is a rare Mediterranean conifer from the mountains of southern Spain, prized for its dense, radially arranged blue-green needles that give branches a bottlebrush look. It is one of the few firs adapted to hot, dry summers.
tree
Joe-Pye Weed
Joe-Pye weed is a tall, native North American perennial topped with large, domed clusters of mauve-pink flowers in late summer. A pollinator powerhouse, it brings height and butterfly-friendly blooms to moist, sunny gardens and rain gardens.
flower
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus is a fast-growing, aromatic Australian tree prized for its fragrant, oil-rich foliage and distinctive peeling bark. The blue gum is one of the most widely planted species worldwide for timber and ornamental use.
tree
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