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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African Milk Tree

The African milk tree is a fast-growing, upright succulent with ridged, branching green stems that resemble a cactus. Despite the look, it is a Euphorbia that exudes milky white sap when cut, not a true cactus.

succulent

African Tulip Tree

The African tulip tree is a fast-growing tropical tree topped with vivid orange-red, tulip-shaped flowers held above glossy foliage. Its showy blooms make it a popular ornamental, though it is invasive in many tropical regions.

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Sausage Tree

The sausage tree is an African tree famous for its enormous, heavy, sausage-shaped fruits dangling on long stalks, and its dark maroon, bat-pollinated flowers. It is a striking specimen of savanna and riverbank landscapes.

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Baobab Tree

The baobab is an iconic African tree with a massive, swollen, water-storing trunk and stout branches that look like roots, earning it the name upside-down tree. Some specimens live over a thousand years.

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Pencil Cactus

A nearly leafless succulent shrub whose mass of slender, pencil-thick green branches gives it a coral-like silhouette. It is striking and easy to grow.

succulent

Candelabra Cactus

A tall, tree-like succulent euphorbia with upright branching ridged stems that form a candelabra silhouette. Though cactus-like, it is a spurge that exudes milky latex.

succulent

Norway Maple

A dense, fast-growing European shade tree with broad five-lobed leaves and milky sap, widely planted but invasive in much of North America.

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Amaryllis

The popular indoor amaryllis is a bulb (genus Hippeastrum) that produces towering stalks topped with huge, trumpet-shaped flowers, often forced for winter bloom. True Amaryllis is a separate South African genus.

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Atlas Cedar

Atlas Cedar is a stately true cedar from North Africa, famous for the silvery-blue 'Glauca' form. It has stiff, ascending branches and a bold pyramidal shape that becomes flat-topped with age.

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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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