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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Watch Chain

A quirky succulent with thin stems densely packed with tiny overlapping triangular leaves, creating a braided, chain-like texture. It forms low bushy clumps and is very easy to grow.

succulent

Weeping Birch

Weeping birch is the European white or silver birch, prized for its chalky white peeling bark and slender pendulous branchlets that sway in the breeze. Cultivars like 'Youngii' form a strongly weeping dome.

tree

String of Turtles

A delicate trailing peperomia with tiny round leaves patterned like miniature turtle shells. Slow-growing and compact, it is well suited to small hanging pots and terrariums.

houseplant

Velvet Calathea

A prayer-plant relative with long, wavy-edged leaves that are velvety to the touch and flushed deep maroon underneath. Beautiful but thirsty for humidity and sensitive to hard water.

houseplant

Wandering Dude

A fast-growing trailing plant with shimmering purple-and-silver striped leaves and deep purple undersides. It roots almost anywhere and is one of the easiest houseplants to grow and propagate.

houseplant

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

Warneckii Dracaena

Warneckii Dracaena is a cultivar with sword-shaped green leaves edged and striped in white and gray-green. Architectural and tough, it's a long-standing favorite for low-maintenance interior greenery.

houseplant

Tarragon

Tarragon is an aromatic culinary herb grown in gardens for its slender, glossy, anise-scented foliage. The 'French' type rarely sets viable seed and is propagated by division or cuttings.

herb

Stinging Nettle

Stinging nettle is a tall perennial herb covered in tiny hollow hairs that release an irritating fluid on contact, producing a brief stinging sensation. It has a long history as a fiber and dye plant.

herb

Tamarack

Tamarack is a hardy North American deciduous conifer of cold bogs and wetlands, turning glowing gold each autumn before shedding its soft needles. It is one of the most cold-tolerant trees in North America.

tree

Silk Oak

The silk oak is a fast-growing Australian tree with fern-like silvery foliage and showy golden-orange, comb-shaped flowers in spring. It is widely grown for shade, timber and ornament, but can be weedy outside its range.

tree

Silver Maple

Silver maple is a fast-growing deciduous tree named for the silvery undersides of its deeply cut leaves, which flash in the wind; it is hardy and adaptable but has brittle wood prone to storm damage.

tree

Haworthia

A small, slow-growing rosette succulent often called the zebra plant for the raised white bands on its dark green leaves. Compact and slow-growing, it thrives on neglect and tolerates lower light than most succulents.

succulent

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

Plumeria Tree

A small tropical tree beloved for its intensely fragrant, waxy flowers used in Hawaiian leis. Plumeria blooms in shades of white, yellow, pink, and red atop thick, sculptural branches.

tree

Rat Tail Cactus

A trailing epiphytic cactus with long, slender, spiny stems that hang like rat tails and burst into vivid pink-magenta flowers in spring. It is a spectacular choice for hanging baskets.

succulent

Ragweed

A common annual weed that produces large amounts of lightweight, wind-blown pollen in late summer and fall. It has fern-like, deeply divided leaves and inconspicuous greenish flower spikes.

herb

Prickly Lettuce

Prickly lettuce is a tall annual or biennial weed and the closest wild relative of cultivated lettuce. It is recognized by spiny leaf midribs, milky sap, and leaves that twist to align vertically like a compass.

herb

Ornamental Pepper

A compact form of the common pepper grown for showy, upward-facing fruits that ripen through purple, cream, yellow, orange and red, often all at once. Popular as a fall and holiday houseplant or patio accent.

houseplant

Meadow Rue

Meadow rue is an airy perennial with delicate, columbine-like foliage and fluffy clouds of tiny lilac, pink, or white flowers. It brings a soft, ethereal texture to part-shade borders.

flower

Natal Plum

Natal plum is a glossy, spiny evergreen shrub from South Africa with fragrant white flowers and red plum-like fruit. It is a tough, salt-tolerant choice for warm-climate hedges and coastal gardens.

shrub

Mangosteen Tree

A slow-growing tropical evergreen known for its dark purple fruit with white segments. Notoriously demanding, it needs constant warmth and humidity and takes many years to fruit.

tree

Lilac

Lilacs are hardy deciduous shrubs cherished for their intensely fragrant spring flower clusters in shades of purple, lavender, pink, and white. They are long-lived and easy to grow in cold climates.

shrub

Lantana

Lantana is a tough, heat- and drought-tolerant flowering shrub whose rounded clusters of tiny blooms often shift color as they age. It is a magnet for butterflies but is invasive in many warm regions.

shrub