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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Orchid

The moth orchid is the most popular indoor orchid, prized for arching sprays of long-lasting blooms. Despite a delicate look, it is one of the easiest orchids to grow at home.

houseplant

Million Bells

A trailing relative of the petunia, million bells smothers itself in small bell-shaped flowers all season and needs no deadheading.

flower

Irish Yew

Irish Yew is a distinctive columnar cultivar of English yew with a tight, upright form, dark needles whorled around the stems, and red arils.

shrub

Horse Chestnut

Horse chestnut is a large deciduous shade tree famous for its showy upright spikes of spring flowers and shiny brown conkers in spiky husks.

tree

Cleome

Cleome is a tall, airy annual topped with spidery clusters of pink, white, or purple flowers and long whisker-like seedpods, blooming all summer.

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

ZZ Raven

ZZ Raven is a dramatic cultivar of the ZZ plant whose new growth emerges bright green then matures to a near-black purple. It is exceptionally tough and drought-tolerant.

houseplant

Yucca

A bold, drought-tolerant plant with rosettes of stiff, sword-shaped leaves atop thick woody canes. A tough, architectural choice for indoors and warm gardens.

shrub

Woolly Senecio

A striking succulent whose cylindrical leaves are wrapped in dense, silvery-white felt, like little woolly cocoons. The bright white woolly coating makes it one of the whitest of all succulents.

succulent

Shore Pine

Shore Pine is the coastal form of the lodgepole pine, a tough, twisted two-needle pine of the Pacific coast. Its irregular, picturesque shape makes it popular for seaside gardens and bonsai.

tree

Parlor Palm

A compact, slow-growing palm that thrives in low light, making it a classic indoor plant since Victorian times. It forms delicate clumps of feathery green fronds.

houseplant

Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's lace is a biennial wildflower with delicate, flat-topped clusters of tiny white flowers and a single dark floret in the center. It is the wild ancestor of the cultivated carrot.

flower

Plumbago

Plumbago is a sprawling evergreen shrub covered for months in clusters of soft sky-blue, phlox-like flowers. It thrives in heat and is a favorite of butterflies.

shrub

Poison Sumac

Poison sumac is a wetland shrub or small tree of eastern North America, distinguished from harmless sumacs by its smooth-edged leaflets and drooping pale berries.

shrub

Plumeria

Plumeria is a tropical shrub or small tree prized for its intensely fragrant, waxy flowers in shades of white, yellow, pink, and red, famously used to make Hawaiian leis.

shrub

Pansy

Pansies are cool-season bedding flowers known for their large, flat, face-like blooms in a huge range of colors. They are a hybrid garden plant derived from wild violas.

flower

Noble Fir

Noble Fir is a stately Pacific Northwest conifer with blue-green upswept needles and large upright cones. It is one of the most popular and long-lasting Christmas trees.

tree

Obedient Plant

Obedient plant is a native perennial with tall spikes of pink to white snapdragon-like flowers in late summer. It earns its name because pushed flowers stay in their new position.

flower

Norfolk Island Pine

Norfolk Island Pine is a tropical conifer with symmetrical tiers of soft, feathery branches, popular as a houseplant and living Christmas tree. It is not a true pine.

houseplant

Mugwort

A tall, aromatic perennial with silvery-backed, deeply cut leaves, long associated with folklore. It is hardy, vigorous, and often weedy along roadsides.

herb

Lychee Tree

A subtropical evergreen tree producing clusters of red, knobbly-skinned fruit. It is a beautiful but demanding tree that needs precise climate conditions to fruit.

tree

Lucky Bamboo

Despite the name, lucky bamboo is not a bamboo but a Dracaena, often grown in water and trained into curls or stalks. It is a popular feng shui gift symbolizing good fortune.

houseplant