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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Bluebeard

Bluebeard is a compact late-summer shrub smothered in clusters of blue flowers that pollinators adore. It is heat- and drought-tolerant and blooms when most shrubs have finished.

shrub

Nordmann Fir

Nordmann Fir is the world's most popular Christmas tree, prized for its soft, glossy, dark green needles that resist dropping. Native to the Caucasus, it forms a dense, symmetrical pyramid.

tree

Carrot

The carrot is a popular root vegetable grown for its taproot, most familiar in orange but also available in purple, red, yellow, and white. It is a biennial usually harvested in its first year.

herb

Neon Pothos

A vibrant cultivar of pothos with electric chartreuse-green, heart-shaped leaves that practically glow. It is one of the easiest, most forgiving trailing houseplants and tolerates a wide range of conditions.

houseplant

Lime Tree

The lime tree is a small, often thorny evergreen citrus grown for its aromatic green fruit. Key limes (Citrus aurantiifolia) and Persian limes are the most familiar types.

tree

Crabapple Tree

A small ornamental tree prized for its profuse spring blossoms and colorful, persistent miniature apples. Flowering crabapples are among the most popular landscape trees in temperate climates.

tree

Hydrangea Tree

The hydrangea tree is a panicle hydrangea trained to a single trunk, topped with large cone-shaped clusters of white flowers that age to pink in late summer. It is the hardiest and most sun-tolerant of the hydrangeas.

shrub

Saucer Magnolia

A deciduous magnolia famous for large, goblet-shaped pink-and-white blooms that open on bare branches in early spring. It is one of the most widely planted flowering trees in temperate gardens.

tree

Loblolly Pine

Loblolly pine is a fast-growing evergreen conifer of the southeastern United States and the region's most important timber tree. Tall and straight with long needles, it dominates southern forests and plantations.

tree

Kentia Palm

The kentia palm is an elegant, slow-growing feather palm from Australia's Lord Howe Island, famed since Victorian times as one of the most durable and graceful indoor palms.

houseplant

Golden Pothos

Golden Pothos is one of the most popular and forgiving houseplants, with heart-shaped green leaves marbled in golden yellow. It tolerates neglect and low light, earning the nickname devil's ivy.

houseplant

Giant Sequoia

The giant sequoia is the most massive tree on Earth by volume, a colossal evergreen conifer of California's Sierra Nevada with fibrous reddish bark, scale-like foliage, and a lifespan of thousands of years.

tree

Bougainvillea

Bougainvillea is a thorny tropical climbing shrub blanketed in vivid papery bracts of magenta, purple, orange, or red. It thrives in heat and sun and blooms most when kept on the dry side.

shrub

Scotch Pine

Scotch Pine is a widespread evergreen conifer known for its distinctive orange-red upper bark and blue-green twisted needles. It is one of the most common Christmas trees and a major timber species.

tree

Petunia

Petunias are prolific, trumpet-shaped bedding flowers prized for nonstop summer color in containers, hanging baskets, and borders. Most garden plants are hybrids derived from South American Petunia species.

flower

Yellow Trumpet Tree

The yellow trumpet tree erupts in brilliant golden-yellow trumpet flowers in spring, usually while leafless, making it one of the most dazzling tropical flowering trees. It is the national tree of Brazil.

tree

Red Tip Photinia

Red tip photinia is a fast-growing evergreen shrub famous for its brilliant red new growth that matures to glossy green. It is one of the most popular shrubs for tall hedges and screens.

shrub

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

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

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

Lemon Myrtle

Lemon myrtle is an Australian rainforest tree whose glossy leaves carry one of the most intense natural lemon fragrances of any plant, driven by very high citral content. It is grown as an aromatic ornamental.

tree

Illawarra Flame Tree

The Illawarra flame tree is a striking Australian native that sheds its leaves and covers itself in masses of brilliant scarlet bell-shaped flowers in early summer. It is one of Australia's most spectacular flowering trees.

tree

Beet

Beet is a cool-season root vegetable grown for its rounded, swollen root and its leafy greens. The familiar deep-red root is the most common, but golden, white, and striped types also exist.

herb

Holly

A classic evergreen shrub or small tree with glossy, spiny leaves and bright red berries, long associated with winter and Christmas. Most hollies need separate male and female plants for berries to form.

shrub