Plant Encyclopedia
Search and identify 1,000+ plants, flowers, trees, and succulents — with care, light, water, and how to tell them apart.
Carrot
The carrot is a popular root vegetable grown for its taproot, most familiar in orange but also available in purple, red, yellow, and white. It is a biennial usually harvested in its first year.
herb
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
Dill
Dill is a feathery, aromatic annual herb in the carrot family, grown in herb gardens for its delicate foliage and oval seeds.
herb
Rattlesnake Master
A distinctive prairie perennial with yucca-like, spiny-edged leaves and greenish-white, golf-ball-shaped flower heads. Despite its name, it is a member of the carrot family.
flower
Longleaf Pine
A stately fire-adapted pine that once dominated vast southeastern U.S. forests, prized for its very long needles, durable timber and grass-stage seedlings. Restoration of its open, biodiverse savannas is a major conservation effort.
tree
Cumin
Cumin is a small annual herb in the carrot family grown for its seeds, a widely used culinary spice. It needs a long, hot, sunny season to ripen.
herb
Apache Pine
A southwestern pine of the Sierra Madre and Arizona–New Mexico borderlands, notable for very long, drooping needles and a grass-like seedling stage. Young trees resemble a tuft of grass before the trunk elongates.
tree
Angelica
Angelica is a stately, architectural biennial herb in the carrot family with huge domed greenish-white flower heads and bold, divided foliage. It is a dramatic showpiece in herb and ornamental gardens.
herb
Flame Violet
The Flame Violet is a trailing tropical plant grown for both its velvety, metallic-patterned leaves and its vivid red-orange flowers. A relative of the African violet, it spreads by runners to form a lush carpet.
houseplant
Sweet Alyssum
A low, spreading annual smothered in tiny honey-scented flowers, sweet alyssum is a classic edging and container filler that blooms from spring through frost.
flower
Starfish Cactus
A clumping stem succulent that produces enormous, hairy, star-shaped maroon flowers resembling a starfish. The blooms smell of carrion to attract flies, earning it the name carrion plant.
succulent
Bugleweed
Bugleweed is a low, fast-spreading evergreen groundcover prized for its glossy rosettes and spikes of blue-violet flowers in spring. It quickly carpets bare ground in sun or shade.
flower
Alyssum
Sweet alyssum is a low, spreading annual smothered in tiny honey-scented flowers, prized as a fast, fragrant carpet for borders, containers and hanging baskets.
flower
Red Pagoda
A low, spreading crassula with leaves stacked in tight, triangular tiers like a pagoda. Stressed in sun it blazes bright red, fading to green-yellow in shade.
succulent
Lifesaver Cactus
A low, clumping stem succulent famous for bizarre flowers with a thick, glossy red ring at the center that looks exactly like a candy lifesaver. The flowers are striped like a zebra.
succulent
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
Wood Anemone
A low-growing spring ephemeral of European woodlands that carpets the forest floor with star-shaped white flowers before the tree canopy leafs out.
flower
Texas Bluebonnet
The Texas bluebonnet is the iconic state flower of Texas, a spring-blooming wildflower lupine that carpets roadsides and fields in sweeps of deep blue with white-tipped flower spikes.
flower
Meadowsweet
Meadowsweet is a graceful wetland perennial topped with frothy, almond-scented cream flowers carried in branched plumes above pinnate foliage.
herb
Elephant Bush
Elephant bush is a fast-growing South African succulent shrub with small round jade-green leaves on reddish stems, popular as a houseplant, bonsai subject, and carbon-storing landscape plant.
succulent
Periwinkle
Periwinkle is a tough, low evergreen ground cover with glossy leaves and starry blue-violet flowers that thrives in shade. It spreads quickly to carpet difficult areas but can become invasive.
shrub
Phlox
Phlox are North American perennials ranging from low spring-flowering carpets to tall, fragrant summer border plants. Their massed clusters of five-petaled flowers draw butterflies and perfume the garden.
flower
Bluebell
Bluebells are spring bulbs that carpet woodlands in hazy drifts of nodding, violet-blue bells. The native English bluebell is a protected woodland icon, distinct from the more vigorous Spanish bluebell.
flower
Corn Speedwell
Corn speedwell is a tiny low-growing winter annual weed with small, deep-blue flowers and rounded toothed leaves. It commonly carpets lawns, gardens, and bare ground in late winter and spring.
herb