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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Paper Birch

Paper birch is a northern tree famous for its peeling, chalky-white bark used historically for canoes and writing. It brings bright bark and golden fall color to cool, moist landscapes.

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Weeping Birch

Weeping birch is the European white or silver birch, prized for its chalky white peeling bark and slender pendulous branchlets that sway in the breeze. Cultivars like 'Youngii' form a strongly weeping dome.

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Yellow Birch

A long-lived northern hardwood with shiny, peeling bronze-gold bark and twigs that smell of wintergreen when scratched, important for timber and wildlife value.

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River Birch

A fast-growing native birch famous for its showy, peeling cinnamon-and-cream bark and tolerance of wet soils. The most heat-tolerant of North American birches.

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Paper Bark Birch

A graceful northern tree famous for its peeling, papery white bark and fluttering golden fall foliage. Its bark was traditionally used by Indigenous peoples to build canoes.

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Tree Aeonium

A branching, shrubby succulent that holds glossy leaf rosettes atop bare woody stems. Popular dark cultivars like 'Zwartkop' turn nearly black in strong sun.

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Tree Ivy

Tree ivy is a rare bigeneric hybrid between Japanese aralia and English ivy, combining glossy, ivy-shaped leaves with an upright, shrubby stem. It is an easy, shade-tolerant foliage plant for cool rooms and shady gardens.

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Wisteria Tree

A wisteria tree is a wisteria vine trained and pruned into a small free-standing tree form, prized for cascading clusters of fragrant purple-blue spring flowers. It is vigorous and requires regular pruning.

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Snowbell Tree

A graceful small tree that hangs with rows of fragrant, bell-shaped white flowers in late spring. Its horizontal branching shows the dangling blooms off to perfection.

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Smoke Tree

A deciduous shrub or small tree named for the airy, smoke-like plumes of fading flower stalks that envelop it in summer. Many cultivars also feature striking purple foliage.

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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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Rubber Tree

The rubber tree is a striking indoor tree with large, thick, glossy leaves that can be deep green or burgundy. It is easy to grow and can become an impressive floor plant several feet tall.

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Plumeria Tree

A small tropical tree beloved for its intensely fragrant, waxy flowers used in Hawaiian leis. Plumeria blooms in shades of white, yellow, pink, and red atop thick, sculptural branches.

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Quince Tree

A small deciduous tree bearing fragrant, golden, pear-shaped fruit, also valued for its lovely white-to-pink spring blossom and twisted, gnarled form.

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Persimmon Tree

A deciduous fruit tree grown for its glossy orange fruit that ripens in autumn and clings to bare branches like ornaments, and for its vivid fall foliage.

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Pear Tree

The pear tree is a deciduous fruit tree grown for its abundant white spring blossom and glossy foliage. European pears (Pyrus communis) are long-lived ornamental and orchard trees.

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Olive Tree

The olive is a long-lived evergreen Mediterranean tree, a fruiting tree cultivated for thousands of years. Gnarled, silvery and remarkably drought-hardy, it is also a popular ornamental and container plant.

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Nectarine Tree

A smooth-skinned variety of peach, the nectarine produces juicy fruit on a compact deciduous tree. It is genetically nearly identical to the peach, differing mainly in its fuzz-free skin.

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Mulberry Tree

A fast-growing deciduous tree producing abundant blackberry-like fruit. White mulberry is also famous as the sole food of silkworms.

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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.

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Mango Tree

The mango is a large tropical evergreen tree grown for its stone fruit. It thrives in hot, frost-free climates.

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Mangosteen Tree

A slow-growing tropical evergreen known for its dark purple fruit with white segments. Notoriously demanding, it needs constant warmth and humidity and takes many years to fruit.

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Loquat Tree

An evergreen subtropical fruit tree bearing clusters of orange fruit in late winter and spring. Ornamental and easy to grow, it offers lush foliage and unusually timed blossoms.

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Katsura Tree

A graceful Asian shade tree with heart-shaped blue-green leaves that turn gold and apricot in fall, famously releasing a sweet scent of burnt sugar or cotton candy.

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