The desert Southwest
Know what's growing in your desert.
Photograph a plant and get ranked candidates with honest confidence — then care advice actually written for caliche soil, hard sun, and monsoon rain. Built for the plants of the Southwest.
68 species curated so far · free · no account needed
Why this one is different
The identifier is a commodity. The layer around it isn't.
Regional correctness
Care written for 5,000 ft, alkaline caliche, 8 inches of rain, and monsoon season — not generic “water when the top inch is dry.”
Honest confidence
Ranked candidates with calibrated Likely / Possible / Uncertain bands. When we’re not sure, we say so and show you how to get a better shot.
Never blurred, never paywalled
Free, unblurred results. No fake disease scares to sell an upgrade. The answer is the answer.
And abiotic-first health triage — because across the desert Southwest most plant trouble is sunscald, salt burn, iron chlorosis, or overwatering, and no vision model detects those. Diagnose a struggling plant →
From the field guide
Iconic Southwest plants
FouquieriaceaeOcotillo
Fouquieria splendens
A fan of long, thorny, whip-like canes that leaf out green after rain and go bare in drought, tipped in spring with brilliant crimson flame-shaped flower clusters. A signature silhouette of Sonoran and Chihuahuan hillsides and a hummingbird magnet.
✿ Blooms Mar – Jun
CactaceaeClaret cup cactus
Echinocereus triglochidiatus
A mounding hedgehog cactus that lights up with waxy scarlet cup flowers in late spring — one of the few cacti hardy enough for the cold high desert and a top hummingbird plant.
✿ Blooms Apr – Jun
AsteraceaeRubber rabbitbrush
Ericameria nauseosa
The quintessential late-summer roadside shrub of northern New Mexico — silvery, flexible stems topped by a haze of golden flowers that carry the mesa gold from August into October.
✿ Blooms Aug – Oct
CactaceaeEngelmann's prickly pear
Opuntia engelmannii
The broad blue-green paddle cactus with yellow-to-orange flowers and edible magenta fruit (tunas). The most widespread prickly pear across southern and central NM.
✿ Blooms Apr – Jun
BignoniaceaeDesert willow
Chilopsis linearis
Not a true willow — a small desert tree with willow-like leaves and orchid-shaped pink-to-burgundy trumpet flowers that hummingbirds work all summer. A signature of washes and low-elevation NM landscapes.
✿ Blooms May – Sep
AsparagaceaeParry’s agave
Agave parryi
A tight, almost geometric rosette of chalky blue-gray leaves edged with dark teeth and tipped by a single black spine. One of the most cold-hardy agaves — native to the mountains of the Southwest — and a sculptural anchor for high-desert gardens.
✿ Blooms Jun – Aug