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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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

Impatiens

Impatiens are shade-loving annuals that smother themselves in flat, colorful flowers all summer, thriving where few other bedding plants will bloom. Their name refers to seed pods that burst open at a touch.

flower

Heather

Heather is a low, evergreen shrub that blankets moorlands with a haze of tiny pink, purple or white flowers in late summer. It needs acidic soil and is prized for ground cover and year-round foliage color.

shrub

Gray Pine

A sparse, open-crowned California pine known for its ghostly gray-green foliage and enormous, heavy cones with large seeds. It is endemic to the dry foothills surrounding California's Central Valley.

tree

Green Ash

Green ash is a tough, adaptable deciduous tree once widely planted for shade, with compound leaves and yellow fall color; its survival is now threatened across North America by the emerald ash borer.

tree

Franklin Tree

The Franklin tree is a rare deciduous tree extinct in the wild, surviving only in cultivation from seed collected in the 1700s. It bears fragrant white camellia-like flowers in late summer and fiery red fall color.

tree

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

Flowering Dogwood

Flowering dogwood is a beloved small ornamental tree whose spring branches are clouded in showy white or pink bracts. It offers four-season interest with summer berries, scarlet fall color, and tiered branching.

tree

Elephant Bush

Elephant bush is a fast-growing South African succulent shrub with small round jade-green leaves on reddish stems, popular as a houseplant, bonsai subject, and carbon-storing landscape plant.

succulent

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

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

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

Boneset

Boneset is a native North American wildflower with clusters of fuzzy white blooms and distinctive leaves that appear pierced by the stem. It is valued as a pollinator plant for moist gardens.

herb

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

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

Black Cherry

Black cherry is a native North American hardwood valued for its fine reddish furniture timber, drooping clusters of white spring flowers, and small dark fruits borne in late summer.

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American Elm

American elm is a stately deciduous tree famous for its graceful vase-shaped canopy, once a beloved street tree until Dutch elm disease devastated populations; disease-resistant cultivars now revive its use.

tree

Aster

Asters are daisy-like perennials that burst into clouds of starry purple, pink, blue, or white blooms in late summer and autumn. They are pollinator magnets prized for extending color into the season's end.

flower

Baby Toes

A curious dwarf succulent that forms clusters of upright, club-shaped leaves with translucent 'windows' on their flat tops, looking like rows of tiny baby toes. It bears white or yellow daisy-like flowers.

succulent

Sea Holly

Sea holly is a striking, drought-tolerant perennial with spiny, thistle-like flower heads surrounded by metallic silver-blue bracts. It thrives in poor, dry soils and adds architectural texture and a long-lasting, otherworldly color to sunny borders.

flower

Purple Deadnettle

Purple deadnettle is a low winter annual in the mint family, recognized by its triangular, reddish-purple-tinged upper leaves and small pink-purple flowers. A close relative of henbit, it is a harmless, bee-friendly weed that carpets gardens and fields in early spring.

herb

Lady's Mantle

Lady's mantle is a soft, mounding perennial known for its scalloped, pleated leaves that catch dewdrops like beads of mercury, topped by airy sprays of chartreuse-green flowers. It is a versatile, low-maintenance plant for edging and softening borders.

flower

Weeping Cherry

The weeping cherry is an ornamental flowering cherry with gracefully cascading branches smothered in pink or white blossoms each spring. Its waterfall silhouette makes it a popular specimen and lawn focal point.

tree