Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Comfrey
Comfrey is a vigorous, deep-rooted perennial famous as a garden fertilizer. Its rough leaves and bell-shaped flowers grow back fast, making it a favorite for nutrient-rich liquid plant feeds.
herb
Chives
Chives are a clump-forming perennial culinary herb in the onion family, grown for their slender hollow leaves and pompom-like purple flowers.
herb
Chickweed
Chickweed is a low, sprawling annual often dismissed as a lawn weed, with weak stems and tiny white star-shaped flowers that give it the name starwort.
herb
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
Bull Thistle
Bull thistle is a spiny biennial weed with sharp, prickly leaves and large rose-purple flower heads that is both a pasture nuisance and a pollinator magnet.
flower
Red Twig Dogwood
A hardy deciduous shrub prized for its brilliant red winter stems, white spring flowers, and white berries. Especially striking in snowy landscapes when the bare crimson twigs glow.
shrub
Western Red Cedar
Western red cedar is a large, aromatic evergreen conifer of the Pacific Northwest, famed for its rot-resistant, fragrant wood and flat sprays of scale-like foliage. It is a cultural and ecological cornerstone of the region.
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
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
Eastern Red Cedar
Eastern Red Cedar is a tough, aromatic evergreen juniper native to North America, known for its reddish, fragrant wood and blue berry-like cones. It thrives in poor, dry soils.
tree
Wormwood
Wormwood is a silvery, aromatic perennial herb best known as the signature botanical associated with absinthe and vermouth. Its finely divided gray-green foliage is aromatic and drought-tough.
herb
Thyme
A low, woody Mediterranean herb with tiny aromatic leaves, valued as a drought-tolerant ground cover and a superb bee plant.
herb
Sow Thistle
A leafy annual resembling a soft thistle, with milky sap, lobed prickle-edged leaves and small dandelion-like yellow flowers. It is a widespread garden and field weed.
herb
Purslane
Purslane is a low, succulent annual with fleshy paddle-shaped leaves and trailing reddish stems. A widespread plant of warm, sunny ground, it grows both wild and as a cultivated garden vegetable.
succulent
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
Nettle
A vigorous perennial herb famous for the stinging hairs on its leaves and stems. It thrives in rich, damp soils across temperate regions.
herb
Horse Chestnut
Horse chestnut is a large deciduous shade tree famous for its showy upright spikes of spring flowers and shiny brown conkers in spiky husks.
tree
Jasmine
A climbing shrub famous for intensely fragrant, star-shaped white flowers that perfume summer evenings. Common jasmine is vigorous and grown on trellises and walls.
shrub
Hyacinth
Hyacinth is a spring bulb that produces dense, upright spikes of waxy, star-shaped flowers in vivid colors, prized for their powerful sweet fragrance.
flower
Henbit
Henbit is a low winter annual in the mint family that carpets lawns, fields and gardens in early spring with pinkish-purple tubular flowers. It is closely related to purple deadnettle and, like it, is a bee-friendly weed of cool seasons.
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
Groundsel
Common groundsel is a fast-growing annual weed with ragged leaves and small, rayless yellow flower heads that turn into fluffy seed tufts. Wind-borne seeds let it colonize gardens and disturbed ground rapidly.
herb
Hawthorn Tree
The hawthorn is a thorny deciduous tree or shrub bearing fragrant white spring blossoms and clusters of red autumn berries called haws. Long used for hedging, it is steeped in folklore and supports abundant wildlife.
tree
Ginger
Ginger is a tropical perennial herb grown for its knobbly, aromatic underground rhizome, cultivated across the warm regions of the world.
herb