Serious plant collectors and gardeners are always seeking out specific plants. This can be a time-consuming, sometimes difficult task using standard search engines. That's where plant finders come in handy. And surprisingly, the best plant finder in the US is largely unknown to most gardeners, expert or novice. Once called Anderson's Plant Finder, The University of Minnesota's Plant Information Online database helps users find any plant they are looking for nationwide. It contains small and large vendors and provides location information and URLs where applicable.

Anderson's has been invaluable for my plant search needs ever since I first learned about it over a decade ago. Users can search for material by nursery or plant. It's also possible to search for articles and images of specific plants. Most recently I was having trouble finding seed for the native gray goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis). Anderson's gave me exactly what I was looking for in seconds. No other database can do that with such efficacy.

The University of Minnesota's Plant Information Online database is very easy to search and yields excellent results.

Lots of superb plant databases, like Anderson's, don't show up on Google, Bing or Yahoo search engine results because of the way the data is stored. Search engine bots can't pick up embedded data, however vast, so many stellar gardening databases go largely unnoticed unless mentioned or promoted on gardening blogs or bot-searchable Websites.

If you're a big plant geek that's always searching for specifics, check this plant finder out.