AMERICAN GARDENER

Invasive plants with white flowers share a pattern that distinguishes them from an ordinary lawn or garden weed, since the label “invasive” specifically means a non-native species that displaces native vegetation and disrupts an existing ecosystem, not merely a plant that shows up somewhere unwanted. Many of the species on this list were deliberately introduced … Read more

Types of sassafras trees start from a genuinely small foundation, since the true genus Sassafras contains only 3 recognized species anywhere in the world. That scarcity is exactly why so many unrelated aromatic trees around the globe have picked up “sassafras” as part of their common name over the centuries, simply because their crushed leaves, … Read more

Trees with large leaves actually achieve that size through 2 genuinely different botanical strategies, and the distinction matters more than it might seem. According to Colorado State University Extension’s Master Gardener program, Kentucky coffeetree produces a single compound leaf that can reach 36 inches long and 24 inches wide, a scale that rivals the biggest … Read more

Trees with large nuts range from familiar backyard producers to genuine botanical extremes, and according to the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, black walnut produces nuts that are almost the size of a baseball once the thick outer husk is included, a scale that makes the tree one of the more immediately recognizable nut producers in … Read more

Trees with large canopies can dwarf almost anything else in a landscape, and according to the National Wildlife Federation, the crowns of the largest southern live oaks reach diameters of up to 150 feet, nearly large enough to encompass half a football field, even though the average specimen spreads a still-impressive 80 feet. According to … Read more

Trees with smooth gray bark stand out immediately in a forest full of furrowed, plated, and shaggy trunks, and according to Virginia Tech’s Cooperative Extension, American and European beech both carry a smooth, sensuous dark gray bark considered exceptionally attractive, though that same smoothness unfortunately makes both species a favorite target for people carving initials … Read more

Trees with heart shaped leaves are genuinely easy to confuse with one another at a glance, and according to Colorado State University Extension’s Master Gardener program, linden leaves have a distinctly uneven, asymmetrical base where one side sits lower than the other, a detail that separates them immediately from the more evenly symmetrical heart shape … Read more

Trees with white bark aren’t simply showing off, and according to research on bark coloration, that pale color reflects sunlight in a way that helps a tree stay safely dormant longer during an early winter thaw rather than breaking dormancy prematurely and risking damage from the next hard frost. That function, called bark thermoregulation, is … Read more

Trees with large seed pods produce some of the most visually dramatic fruiting structures in the entire plant kingdom, and according to University of Minnesota’s Campus Trees program, catalpa’s long, green, cigar-like seed pods can reach up to 22 inches, among the most distinctive of any tree grown in North America. That single species alone … Read more

Weeds with orange flowers are genuinely harder to find in number than weeds of almost any other color, since true orange is one of the rarer pigments in the plant world, produced by carotenoid compounds that show up far less often in wild, unselected populations than the anthocyanins responsible for purple, pink, and blue blooms. … Read more