Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Borage
A fast-growing annual herb with brilliant blue star-shaped flowers and bristly, cucumber-scented leaves. A magnet for bees, it self-seeds freely and is a favorite of pollinator gardens.
herb
Wood Sorrel
Wood sorrel is a clover-like herb with heart-shaped trifoliate leaves and small flowers, common as a garden and lawn weed.
herb
Centaurea
Centaurea is a large genus best known for the cornflower, a cheerful annual with intense blue, fringed flowers. Easy and long-blooming, it is a cottage-garden classic beloved by bees and butterflies.
flower
Wood Betony
Wood betony is a clump-forming perennial herb with crinkled, scalloped leaves and spikes of reddish-purple flowers beloved by bees. It was a widely grown garden plant in medieval Europe.
herb
Garlic
Garlic is a pungent bulbous member of the onion family grown worldwide as a garden and field crop, recognized by its strap-like foliage and segmented underground bulb.
herb
Bachelor's Button
Bachelor's button, or cornflower, is an easy cottage-garden annual famous for its intense true-blue, fringed flowers that are excellent for cutting.
flower
Onion
The onion is a globally cultivated plant grown for its layered underground bulb. A biennial usually grown as an annual, it is one of the world's most widely grown garden plants.
herb
Lily
True lilies are summer-blooming bulbs with large, often fragrant, trumpet-shaped flowers on tall stems. They are easy garden perennials prized in borders and as cut flowers.
flower
Feverfew
Feverfew is a bushy, aromatic herb covered in small white daisy flowers with yellow centers. It is a cheerful, easy cottage-garden plant with feathery, citrus-scented foliage.
herb
Asparagus Fern
The asparagus fern is not a true fern but a relative of garden asparagus, grown for its soft, feathery sprays of bright green needle-like foliage. It is easy and fast-growing.
houseplant
Scarlet Runner Bean
A vigorous climbing bean grown for its showy scarlet flowers and long, flat pods, equally at home on an ornamental fence or a garden trellis.
herb
Kohlrabi
Kohlrabi is a cool-season cabbage relative grown for its crisp, swollen above-ground stem. It is a leafy garden vegetable in the cabbage family.
herb
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
Begonia
An enormous genus grown for both showy flowers and spectacularly patterned foliage. From bedding wax begonias to dramatic rex begonias, there is a begonia for nearly every garden and windowsill.
flower
Quackgrass
Quackgrass is an aggressive cool-season perennial grass that spreads by long, white underground rhizomes, making it one of the most persistent lawn and garden weeds.
grass
Loganberry
A blackberry-raspberry hybrid bramble producing long, deep-red berries on vigorous trailing canes. Reliable and hardy, it is a classic garden cane fruit.
shrub
Hydrangea
A leafy garden shrub famous for big rounded clusters of summer flowers that can shift between blue and pink depending on soil pH. Hydrangeas are showy, thirsty, and shade-tolerant.
shrub
Baby's Breath
Baby's breath is an airy perennial producing clouds of tiny white or pink flowers on wiry, branching stems. It's a florist's staple as a delicate filler in bouquets and a soft accent in the garden.
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
Endive
Endive is a leafy plant in the chicory family grown as a cool-season green. Curly (frisée) and broad-leaved (escarole) forms are both popular garden greens.
herb
Lawson Cypress
Lawson Cypress, or Port Orford Cedar, is a tall, graceful conifer of the Pacific Northwest with flattened, fern-like fragrant foliage. It has produced hundreds of garden cultivars in many colors and forms.
tree
Delphinium
Delphiniums are stately cottage-garden perennials famed for their towering spires of intensely blue (or purple, pink, and white) flowers. Their dramatic vertical form makes them a classic centerpiece of the summer border.
flower
Coral Bells
A versatile mounding perennial grown chiefly for vivid foliage in shades of purple, amber, lime, and silver, accented by airy sprays of tiny bell-shaped flowers. A modern shade-garden favorite.
flower
Bellflower
Bellflowers are a large group of perennials and biennials bearing bell- or star-shaped flowers, usually in blue, purple or white. They range from low rock-garden creepers to tall border plants.
flower