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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Persian Ironwood

Persian ironwood is a tough, slow-growing tree celebrated for spectacular multicolored fall foliage and beautiful flaking bark. Its tiny red flowers appear on bare branches in late winter.

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Stokes' Aster

Stokes' aster is a clump-forming perennial bearing large, frilly, cornflower-like blooms in blue, purple, white, or pink atop neat evergreen foliage. It is a long-blooming, heat-tolerant native of the southeastern US.

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Ranunculus

Ranunculus is a cool-season tuber producing densely layered, rose-like flowers in jewel and pastel tones, a darling of cut-flower growers and spring gardens.

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Coneflower

A rugged North American prairie perennial with daisy-like purple-pink petals around a spiny, copper-orange central cone. Beloved by pollinators and goldfinches.

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Centaurea

Centaurea is a large genus best known for the cornflower, a cheerful annual with intense blue, fringed flowers. Easy and long-blooming, it is a cottage-garden classic beloved by bees and butterflies.

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Bachelor's Button

Bachelor's button, or cornflower, is an easy cottage-garden annual famous for its intense true-blue, fringed flowers that are excellent for cutting.

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Purple Coneflower

Purple coneflower is a tough, long-blooming prairie perennial with daisy-like pink-purple flowers and a raised, spiny orange center that draws butterflies and bees.

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Painted Daisy

Painted daisy is a hardy perennial bearing cheerful daisy flowers in pink, red, and white with golden centers over fern-like foliage. Its flowers are the natural source of the insecticide pyrethrum.

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Cyclamen

Cyclamen is a tuberous perennial famous for its swept-back, butterfly-like flowers and heart-shaped, silver-marbled leaves. The florist's cyclamen blooms through the cool months, going dormant in summer heat.

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Lime Tree

The lime tree is a small, often thorny evergreen citrus grown for its aromatic green fruit. Key limes (Citrus aurantiifolia) and Persian limes are the most familiar types.

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Mimosa Tree

A fast-growing ornamental tree with feathery fern-like leaves and fluffy pink powderpuff flowers, widely planted but invasive across the southern United States.

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Echinacea

Echinacea, or purple coneflower, is a hardy North American perennial with daisy-like pink-purple blooms, popular in prairie and pollinator gardens.

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Peach Tree

The peach is a deciduous fruit tree grown for its summer fruit and showy pink spring blossom. Self-fertile and fast-bearing, it rewards gardeners but needs sun, good drainage and disease vigilance.

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Flowering Peach

The flowering peach is an ornamental form of the peach tree grown for its lavish spring display of double pink, red, or white blossoms. It is a showy small accent tree, prized in gardens and in East Asian culture.

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Avocado Tree

The avocado is a broadleaf evergreen fruiting tree. Frost-tender and vigorous, it is a popular subtropical orchard tree and a fun, if slow-fruiting, houseplant from a sprouted pit.

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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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Kentucky Coffeetree

A bold, coarse-textured native tree with enormous twice-compound leaves and thick leathery seedpods that persist into winter.

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Snowberry

Snowberry is a hardy, suckering deciduous shrub best known for its clusters of plump, white, marble-like berries that persist into winter. It is exceptionally tough and thrives almost anywhere.

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Asparagus

Asparagus is a long-lived perennial grown for the tender shoots, or spears, that emerge in spring. Once established, a bed can persist for 15-20 years or more.

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