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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American Sycamore

The American sycamore is one of the largest hardwoods in eastern North America, known for its mottled, peeling bark that reveals creamy-white inner layers. It grows fast and massive along rivers and bottomlands.

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Silver Maple

Silver maple is a fast-growing deciduous tree named for the silvery undersides of its deeply cut leaves, which flash in the wind; it is hardy and adaptable but has brittle wood prone to storm damage.

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Japanese Maple

A small, elegant ornamental tree prized for delicate, deeply lobed leaves in shades of red, green and purple, and spectacular fall color. A centerpiece of Japanese gardens.

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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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Red Maple

Red maple is one of North America's most widespread and adaptable trees, prized for its brilliant scarlet fall color and early red flowers. It thrives in a remarkable range of soils, from swamps to dry ridges.

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Sugar Maple

Sugar maple is a hallmark of North America's blazing autumn forests and the maple traditionally tapped for its sap. It is a large, long-lived shade tree with dense, hard wood prized for furniture and flooring.

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Paperbark Maple

Paperbark maple is a small ornamental maple famous for its cinnamon-colored bark that peels in papery curls year-round and its fiery red-orange autumn foliage. It offers four-season interest in a compact form.

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Coral Bark Maple

Coral bark maple is a Japanese maple cultivar famous for its glowing coral-red young stems that brighten the winter landscape. Its spring leaves emerge soft green and turn golden-yellow in fall.

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Bloodgood Japanese Maple

Bloodgood is the classic deep-red Japanese maple, holding its dark burgundy-purple leaf color through summer better than most cultivars before turning crimson in fall. It is an elegant upright specimen tree.

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Boxelder

A fast-growing, weedy native maple unusual for its compound leaves and paired winged seeds, tough and adaptable but often considered a nuisance tree.

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Thimbleberry

Thimbleberry is a thornless North American shrub with large maple-like leaves, white flowers, and soft red berries shaped like thimbles. It thrives in cool, shaded woodlands.

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Foamflower

Foamflower is a charming native woodland perennial with maple-like, often patterned leaves and frothy spikes of tiny, star-shaped white or pink flowers in spring. It forms a delicate groundcover for shady gardens.

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Flame Bottle Tree

The flame bottle tree, or Illawarra flame tree, is an Australian tree that blazes with masses of scarlet bell-shaped flowers on bare branches in early summer. It belongs to the bottle tree family, with a stout trunk and maple-like leaves.

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Painted Dropwing

Important note: the Painted Dropwing (also called the violet dropwing) is not a plant but a dragonfly, Trithemis annulata. Mature males are a striking violet-pink with red-veined wings, often seen perched at the edges of warm ponds and streams.

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Holly

A classic evergreen shrub or small tree with glossy, spiny leaves and bright red berries, long associated with winter and Christmas. Most hollies need separate male and female plants for berries to form.

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