Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Lemon Balm
Lemon balm is a vigorous, lemon-scented perennial herb in the mint family, loved as a magnet for bees. It grows easily and can spread enthusiastically in the garden.
herb
Japanese Yew
Japanese Yew is a versatile, shade-tolerant evergreen shrub or small tree widely used for hedges, with flat dark needles and red, berry-like arils.
shrub
Incense Cedar
Incense Cedar is a stately western conifer with fragrant, flat sprays of foliage and cinnamon-red fibrous bark, famous as the wood used for pencils.
tree
Hollywood Juniper
Hollywood Juniper is a sculptural Chinese juniper cultivar famous for its dramatically twisted, irregular branches and rich green scale-like foliage.
shrub
Jabuticaba
A slow-growing Brazilian tree remarkable for producing its grape-like purple-black fruit directly on the trunk and main branches (cauliflory).
tree
Gasteria
Gasteria is a slow-growing South African succulent with thick, tongue-shaped leaves often arranged in fans, named for its curved, stomach-shaped flowers.
succulent
False Sunflower
False sunflower is a tough native perennial covered in golden-yellow daisy-like blooms all summer. It resembles a true sunflower but returns reliably year after year.
flower
Dragon Fruit
A climbing cactus that produces vivid pink-skinned fruit covered in green, leaf-like scales. Its enormous, fragrant flowers bloom for a single night.
succulent
Dawn Redwood
A fast-growing 'living fossil' conifer that drops its feathery needles each fall, once known only from fossils until living trees were discovered in China in the 1940s.
tree
Dahlia
A tuberous flower prized for spectacular, intricate blooms ranging from small pompoms to dinner-plate giants. Dahlias bloom from summer to frost in a huge color range.
flower
Corn Poppy
An annual wildflower famed for its papery, blood-red blooms that carpet European fields and serve as the international symbol of wartime remembrance.
flower
Chrysanthemum
A classic autumn-blooming perennial with dense, colorful flower heads in countless forms. Mums are a staple of fall displays and a major cut flower worldwide.
flower
Cilantro
A fast-growing aromatic annual herb grown in gardens worldwide. Its finely divided foliage is known as cilantro and its small round seeds as coriander.
herb
Cherry Blossom
Cherry blossoms are ornamental flowering cherry trees famed for clouds of pink or white spring blossoms. They are cultural icons in Japan, where they are celebrated as sakura.
tree
Blue Flag Iris
A native North American wetland iris with striking violet-blue flowers veined in yellow and white. It thrives in marshes, pond margins, and wet meadows.
flower
Bok Choy
Bok choy is a fast-growing Asian leafy green with crisp white stalks and tender dark leaves. A cool-season vegetable, it matures quickly and is widely grown in gardens.
herb
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
Bay Laurel
Bay laurel is an aromatic evergreen tree or shrub, a classic culinary herb most often grown as an elegant clipped topiary or hedge. Slow-growing and easily shaped.
herb
Bear's Paw
Bear's paw is a fuzzy succulent named for its plump, fleshy leaves tipped with tooth-like 'claws.' The chubby, hairy leaves and reddish tips give it a paw-like, animal appearance.
succulent
Wild Violet
Wild violet is a low-growing perennial wildflower with heart-shaped leaves and five-petaled blue-purple blooms, beloved by some and considered a stubborn lawn weed by others.
flower
Twinflower
A delicate, mat-forming evergreen subshrub of northern forests bearing nodding pairs of fragrant, bell-shaped pink flowers; the namesake of botanist Linnaeus.
flower
Torrey Pine
Torrey Pine is the rarest native pine in the United States, found wild in only two coastal California locations. It has long needles in bundles of five and large, heavy cones.
tree
Yoshino Cherry
An ornamental cherry famous for clouds of pale pink-to-white blossoms in early spring. It is the iconic tree of Washington, D.C.'s Tidal Basin and Japan's cherry-blossom season.
tree
Raspberry
Raspberries are thorny, cane-forming shrubs grown for their aggregate berries. With summer- and autumn-fruiting types, a small patch can yield fruit over many weeks.
shrub