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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Dogwood

Flowering dogwood is a small ornamental tree beloved for its spring display of showy white or pink bracts. Native to eastern North America, it offers four-season interest with berries and red fall foliage.

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Cottonwood

Cottonwood is a fast-growing deciduous tree of North American riverbanks, named for the fluffy, cotton-like seeds that fill the air in early summer. Large and vigorous, it provides quick shade and vital riparian habitat.

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Black Oak

Black oak is a large red-oak-group tree of eastern North America with dark, blocky bark and bristle-tipped lobed leaves. Its inner bark once yielded the yellow dye quercitron.

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Silver Dollar Plant

A shrubby jade relative with round, silvery blue-gray leaves edged in red, resembling stacked silver coins. An easy, long-lived succulent that can grow into a small bonsai-like tree.

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Rowan

The rowan, or mountain ash, is a graceful deciduous tree with feathery foliage, creamy spring flower clusters, and vivid orange-red autumn berries. Hardy and wildlife-friendly, it is rich in northern European folklore.

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Kwanzan Cherry

A flowering cherry prized for its showy, fully double, deep-pink pompom blossoms in mid-spring. Its upright vase shape and dense blooms make it a popular street and lawn tree.

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Holly

A classic evergreen shrub or small tree with glossy, spiny leaves and bright red berries, long associated with winter and Christmas. Most hollies need separate male and female plants for berries to form.

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Crepe Myrtle

Crepe myrtle is a small deciduous tree or large shrub beloved for its long-lasting, crinkled summer flower clusters, smooth peeling bark, and brilliant fall color, thriving in hot climates.

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Black Locust

Black locust is a fast-growing deciduous tree with fragrant white spring flowers and extremely hard, rot-resistant wood. A nitrogen-fixing legume, it is valued for timber and erosion control but can be invasive.

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Red Oak

Northern red oak is a fast-growing, adaptable shade tree with pointed, bristle-tipped leaf lobes and reddish fall color. Its strong wood is a leading commercial hardwood across eastern North America.

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Ponderosa Pine

Ponderosa pine is a tall, drought-hardy evergreen conifer of western North America, known for its long needles, large cones and puzzle-piece bark that smells of vanilla or butterscotch. It is a major western timber tree.

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White Oak

White oak is a majestic, long-lived North American hardwood with rounded leaf lobes and prized, water-tight timber. A keystone forest tree, it can live for centuries and supports a vast web of wildlife.

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Pin Oak

Pin oak is a fast-growing deciduous oak known for its distinctive layered branching, deeply lobed bristle-tipped leaves, and brilliant red fall color, making it a popular street and park tree.

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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.

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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.

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Musk Thistle

Musk thistle is a spiny biennial weed with large, nodding rose-purple flower heads; native to Eurasia, it is an aggressive invader of pastures and rangelands across North America.

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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.

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Magnolia

Magnolias are ancient flowering trees and shrubs prized for their large, fragrant, cup- or star-shaped blooms. They range from evergreen Southern magnolias to deciduous spring-flowering types.

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Mockernut Hickory

Mockernut hickory is a sturdy, slow-growing eastern hickory with fragrant, densely hairy leaves and very thick-shelled nuts. Its strong wood and golden fall color make it a valued forest and shade tree.

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Bur Oak

Bur oak is a massive, long-lived North American oak known for its huge, fringe-capped acorns, deeply furrowed bark and exceptional toughness. Drought- and fire-resistant, it is a stately tree for large landscapes.

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Bishop Pine

Bishop Pine is a hardy two-needle pine of the California and Baja coast, with persistent, prickly cones that often stay closed on the tree for years until fire opens them. It tolerates wind, salt, and poor soils.

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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.

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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.

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Monterey Cypress

Monterey Cypress is a wind-sculpted evergreen conifer native to a tiny stretch of the California coast, famous for the gnarled trees of the Monterey Peninsula. It is widely planted for hedging and shelter in mild climates.

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