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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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

Calathea

A group of tropical foliage plants prized for their elaborately patterned, often purple-backed leaves. Calatheas are humidity-loving and known for being fussy about water quality.

houseplant

Cherry Blossom Tree

Cherry blossom trees are ornamental flowering cherries famed for their spectacular spring bloom of pink or white blossoms. Central to Japanese hanami tradition, they are short-lived but beloved worldwide.

tree

Burros Tail

A trailing succulent with long, rope-like stems densely packed with plump, blue-green leaves that resemble a braided tail. It makes a spectacular hanging plant but its leaves drop at the slightest touch.

succulent

Bottlebrush

Bottlebrush is an Australian evergreen shrub famous for its cylindrical brushes of bright red flowers that draw hummingbirds and bees. It is heat- and drought-tolerant and blooms for much of the year.

shrub

Bishop's Cap Cactus

A spineless, star-shaped cactus with a rounded body of distinct ribs flecked with tiny white scales, resembling a bishop's mitre. It produces yellow daisy-like flowers from its crown.

succulent

Threadleaf False Cypress

Threadleaf false cypress is an evergreen conifer with long, drooping, whip-like thread foliage that gives a soft, mounding, weeping texture. Golden forms are especially popular as garden accents.

tree

Shirley Poppy

The Shirley poppy is a refined garden strain of the wild corn poppy, bred for its delicate, papery flowers in soft pinks, whites, reds, and bicolors. These cool-season annuals self-sow freely for drifts of tissue-thin blooms.

flower

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

Firesticks

A pencil-thin, branching succulent whose cylindrical stems turn brilliant orange, red, and yellow in cool, sunny weather. It is a dramatic landscape and container plant with slender, leafless stems.

succulent

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

Pyracantha

Pyracantha, or firethorn, is a thorny evergreen shrub that bursts with white spring flowers and brilliant masses of red, orange, or yellow berries in fall. It makes a formidable hedge or espalier.

shrub

Philodendron Micans

An easy-going trailing philodendron with soft, velvety heart-shaped leaves in deep green to bronze, often shimmering with iridescent purple and pink tones. A forgiving choice for hanging baskets.

houseplant

Philodendron Verrucosum

A spectacular climbing philodendron with large, heart-shaped, velvety leaves of deep green and pale veining, set on distinctive hairy, fuzzy petioles. It demands high humidity to thrive.

houseplant

Passionflower

Passionflower is a vigorous climbing vine famous for its intricate, fringed purple-and-white blooms. The maypop form (Passiflora incarnata) is hardy in temperate gardens and produces egg-shaped fruits.

flower

Persian Ironwood

Persian ironwood is a tough, slow-growing tree celebrated for spectacular multicolored fall foliage and beautiful flaking bark. Its tiny red flowers appear on bare branches in late winter.

tree

Philodendron Birkin

Philodendron Birkin is a compact, self-heading houseplant with glossy dark green leaves finely striped in creamy white. A stable spontaneous mutation, it is easy to grow and ideal for tabletops.

houseplant

Orchid Tree

The orchid tree is a fast-growing subtropical tree with distinctive twin-lobed leaves and large, fragrant, orchid-like flowers in shades of pink, purple, and white. It is a popular flowering ornamental in warm climates.

tree

Loropetalum

Loropetalum is an evergreen shrub prized for its spidery, fringe-like flowers and—in popular cultivars—deep burgundy foliage. It blooms heavily in spring with sporadic reflushes through the year.

shrub

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

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

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

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