Filter desert-adapted trees, shrubs, cacti, succulents and perennials by sun, water need, mature size, pet safety and bloom season, from University of Arizona Extension and AMWUA plant lists.
The spot you are planting
What you want from it
Every card names the list its figures came from. Pet safety is from the ASPCA database alone, and “not listed” there is not the same as safe, which is why it is difficult to say and easy to read.
Plants that fit
70 plants
The whole list, before any filter. Sun, water, size and bloom come from the AMWUA and ADWR plant lists; pet safety comes from the ASPCA.
Parkinsonia florida
Not listed by the ASPCA
Arizona’s state tree and the fastest way to get real shade on a bare lot. Green bark does some of the work of leaves, which is why it looks alive in winter.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Parkinsonia microphylla
Not listed by the ASPCA
The upland species, slower and stiffer than blue palo verde. Better on a slope and in thin soil, worse on irrigation.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Parkinsonia × ‘Desert Museum’
Not listed by the ASPCA
A hybrid with almost no thorns and a longer bloom than either parent. The usual choice for a courtyard palm to a front door.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Prosopis velutina
Not listed by the ASPCA
The best summer shade on the list, and the tree to plant if you want a hammock under something. Give it room: the roots will find a lawn and a sewer line.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Olneya tesota
Not listed by the ASPCA
Very slow growing and very long lived. It keeps its leaves through winter, which makes it the tree for a yard that has to look planted in January.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Chilopsis linearis
Not listed by the ASPCA
Not a willow and not a desert plant in the strict sense: it grows along washes. Flowers for months, and the seed pods are the reason to cut it back hard in winter.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Dermatophyllum secundiflorum
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
Violet flowers that smell like grape soda, on a dense evergreen shrub you can train as a small tree. The seeds are toxic, and they are the size of a bean, worth knowing before one lands in a yard with a dog.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Vauquelinia californica
Not listed by the ASPCA
A dense evergreen screen or small tree that never looks dusty. Slow, tidy and unphotogenic, which is why it gets planted where the utility box is.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Pistacia chinensis
Not listed by the ASPCA
The Valley’s reliable autumn colour, and the one tree here that turns red and orange rather than brown. Male trees are the ones to ask for: the females carry the fruit.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Fraxinus velutina
Not listed by the ASPCA
The fastest shade on this list and the thirstiest. It is on the high water list for a reason: in a low-water yard it will look tired by July.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Acacia stenophylla
Not listed by the ASPCA
Long drooping leaf-like stems give a weeping shape without any water demand. It is a narrow tree, which makes it the one for a strip between a wall and a drive.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Acacia salicina
Not listed by the ASPCA
A rounded evergreen canopy that takes reflected heat off a west wall. Fast, and it seeds itself: the pods come up wherever the water goes.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Acacia aneura
Not listed by the ASPCA
An Australian acacia with stiff grey foliage and a very upright habit. One of the most drought-hardy trees here, and one of the slowest.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Vachellia farnesiana
Not listed by the ASPCA
Puffball yellow flowers that scent the whole yard for a fortnight. The thorns are real, so plant it away from a path.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Tara cacalaco
Not listed by the ASPCA
Flowers in the cool months, when almost nothing else does, and holds bronze seed pods all winter. Needs a warm wall to be at its best.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Acacia willardiana
Not listed by the ASPCA
Papery white bark that peels, and very little leaf litter. It is a Sonoran native that reads as a sculpture more than a tree.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Ebenopsis ebano
Not listed by the ASPCA
Dense, dark and thorny, with cream flower spikes in early summer. The best nesting tree on this list, and hard to prune into anything but a tree.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Vitex agnus-castus
Not listed by the ASPCA
Blue-violet flower spikes in the worst heat of the year, when the bees need them most. It wants a little more water than the natives around it.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Syagrus romanzoffiana
Not listed by the ASPCA
Not a desert palm at all. It is on this list because it is planted here constantly and then struggles; it wants water and afternoon shade, and it drops fruit.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Washingtonia robusta
Not listed by the ASPCA
The tall thin palm in every Valley skyline photo. Very drought-hardy once established, and the dry fronds are the fire hazard that gets mentioned every June.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Larrea tridentata
Not listed by the ASPCA
The plant that defines the Mojave and much of the Sonoran, and the smell of rain in the desert. Needs no irrigation at all once established, and almost no water before that.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Encelia farinosa
Not listed by the ASPCA
Silver-grey mounds covered in yellow daisies for six weeks in spring. It drops its leaves in a bad drought rather than dying, which looks alarming and is not.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Leucophyllum frutescens
Not listed by the ASPCA
Flowers in response to summer humidity, which is why it is bare for months and then purple overnight after a storm. Also sold as cenizo and under cultivar names such as ‘Green Cloud’.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Calliandra eriophylla
Not listed by the ASPCA
Pink powder-puff flowers on a plant that needs almost nothing. It will flower again after summer rain if the monsoon is a good one.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Calliandra californica
Not listed by the ASPCA
The larger, redder Baja relative of the fairy duster, and the better hummingbird plant. Flowers almost continuously from spring to the first cold snap.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Simmondsia chinensis
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
The oilseed plant, and a dense grey-green screen that takes reflected heat off a wall. It needs a male and a female to set the acorn-like seed, and the seed is the toxic part.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Nerium oleander
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
The hedge that lines every freeway in the Valley, and one of the most toxic plants in the common landscape: every part of it, fresh or dried, for people as well as animals. Worth knowing before it goes along a fence line a child can reach.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Cascabela thevetia
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
Peach-coloured trumpets on a plant that flowers almost all year in a warm spot. The fruit looks like a small green apple, and that is the problem with it.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Lantana camara
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
Unbeatable butterfly plant and a genuinely tough shrub in heat, both true. It is toxic to pets, and the unripe berries are the part an animal finds first.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Tecoma × ‘Orange Jubilee’
Not listed by the ASPCA
Orange trumpet flowers for six months, and a magnet for hummingbirds and bees. It dies to the ground in a hard freeze and comes back from the base.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Tecoma stans
Not listed by the ASPCA
The yellow cousin of Orange Jubilee and equally generous with flowers. It freezes back further, so it is better in a warm pocket of the yard than out in the open.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Justicia californica
Not listed by the ASPCA
Red tubular flowers in the cool months, timed for hummingbirds arriving back through the Valley. It is leafless for part of the year and does not look dead.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Ruellia peninsularis
Not listed by the ASPCA
Purple flowers almost continuously and keeps its leaves through winter. It is one of the few flowering shrubs here that will take afternoon shade.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Dalea pulchra
Not listed by the ASPCA
Small blue-purple pea flowers on silver foliage, and the most bee-visited small shrub on the list. Needs no more water than the creosote beside it.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Ericameria laricifolia
Not listed by the ASPCA
Bright yellow daisies in October, when the yard has given up on colour. The foliage is sticky and smells of turpentine when it is crushed, which is either the appeal or the objection.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Senna nemophila
Not listed by the ASPCA
Fine green leaflets and yellow cups for a few weeks in spring. It is a larval host for sulphur butterflies, which is the reason to plant it even if the flowers are brief.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Justicia spicigera
Not listed by the ASPCA
Orange tubes and a soft, almost tropical look, which is unusual here. It is one of the few flowering plants on the list that wants shade rather than tolerates it.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Hesperaloe parviflora
Not listed by the ASPCA
Not a yucca and not red in every form. Six-foot flower spikes for months, and it is the hummingbird plant most often planted in a parking lot island.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Dasylirion wheeleri
Not listed by the ASPCA
A fountain of toothed grey leaves that needs no irrigation after its first summer. The old leaves stay on the base, which is where small animals nest.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Nolina microcarpa
Not listed by the ASPCA
A grass in name only: it is a succulent with stiff upright leaves. Tougher in shade than most of the list and completely unfussy about the wind.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Fouquieria splendens
Not listed by the ASPCA
Cane stems that leaf out after rain and drop the leaves again when it stops. A bare ocotillo is a normal ocotillo, and a staked one is a plant that was planted wrong.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Asclepias subulata
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
Leafless grey stems with cream flowers, and the plant monarchs need. The milky sap is the reason it is toxic, and the reason no animal eats it.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Agave americana
Not listed by the ASPCA
The large grey agave of the old Arizona yards. It flowers once at the end of its life, on a stalk like a telephone pole, and then the whole plant dies.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Agave parryi
Not listed by the ASPCA
Blue-grey rosettes and a very tidy edge for a planting bed. It is the agave to use where the century plant would outgrow the space.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Aloe vera
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
The burn plant everyone keeps by the door, and toxic to cats and dogs if they chew it. It wants bright light and a wall against the cold: it is one of the first plants here to be hurt by a freeze.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Portulacaria afra
Not listed by the ASPCA
A red-stemmed succulent that reads as a small tree, and the easiest large succulent to grow. Red margins on the leaves are a sign it is getting enough sun.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Crassula ovata
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
The houseplant that becomes a shrub outdoors here, in a sheltered spot. Old specimens flower in winter, which indoor ones almost never do.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Euphorbia tirucalli
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
Pencil-thick stems that turn coral-orange in cold weather, which is the whole point of it. The milky sap is a serious irritant and the plant is toxic to pets.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Cycas revoluta
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
Not a palm and not a plant to keep in a yard with a dog. The ASPCA treats it as one of the most dangerous common ornamentals: the seeds and the whole plant are severely toxic, and it receives a large share of pet poison calls.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Beaucarnea recurvata
Non-toxic (ASPCA)
A succulent, not a palm, with a swollen base that stores water. It is on the ASPCA non-toxic list, which makes it one of very few statement plants on this list that is.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Schlumbergera truncata
Non-toxic (ASPCA)
A jungle cactus rather than a desert one, so it wants shade and more water than anything else here. It is on the ASPCA non-toxic list and flowers at Christmas on a patio.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Dypsis lutescens
Non-toxic (ASPCA)
Clumping, soft-leaved and non-toxic, which is why it is the standard patio palm for a covered courtyard. It scorches in full afternoon sun and cannot take a freeze.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Penstemon eatonii
Not listed by the ASPCA
Scarlet tubes on tall stems, and one of the first things to flower in a Valley spring. It is short lived (three or four years) and best treated as something that reseeds itself.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Melampodium leucanthum
Not listed by the ASPCA
White daisies with a dark centre on a mound the size of a dinner plate. It sulks if it is watered or fertilised too much, which takes some getting used to.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Chrysactinia mexicana
Not listed by the ASPCA
Aromatic dark-green foliage and small yellow flowers over a very long season. It stays neat without shearing, which is what separates it from most of the daisies here.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Tetraneuris acaulis
Not listed by the ASPCA
Golden daisies on a tuft of grass-like leaves, and flowers for most of the year. The standard small accent for the front of a low-water bed.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Baileya multiradiata
Not listed by the ASPCA
Woolly grey leaves and yellow flowers almost all year, on road verges as well as in beds. It is short lived and seeds itself, so the patch moves around the yard.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Sphaeralcea ambigua
Not listed by the ASPCA
Apricot-orange cups over grey foliage, and a plant that will flower almost anywhere. Cut it to the ground after the spring flush and it comes back bushier.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Salvia greggii
Not listed by the ASPCA
Red, pink or coral flowers over aromatic leaves, and the longest flowering season of any shrubby perennial here. Hummingbirds work it for eight months.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Carnegiea gigantea
Not listed by the ASPCA
Arizona’s signature cactus and a very long commitment: a saguaro may take decades to grow an arm. Also the one plant on this list you should never take from the wild; it is protected in Arizona.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Ferocactus wislizeni
Not listed by the ASPCA
A ribbed barrel that leans south as it ages, which is normal and not a sign of trouble. Orange flowers ring the crown in late spring.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Echinocactus grusonii
Not listed by the ASPCA
Almost extinct in its native Mexico and everywhere in Valley landscaping. The pale spines glow in low sun, which is why it is usually planted where an uplight can find it.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Opuntia engelmannii
Not listed by the ASPCA
Yellow, peach or magenta flowers on flat pads, and edible fruit if you get there before the birds. It grows from a single pad dropped on the ground, which is how it spreads.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Echinocereus engelmannii
Not listed by the ASPCA
Low clumps with magenta flowers that open for a week and no longer. It will take a little shade, which makes it usable on the east side of a wall.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Stenocereus thurberi
Not listed by the ASPCA
Many columns from one base, and among the most frost-tender cacti here, so it needs a warm south-facing wall away from cold air that pools. It flowers at night.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Antigonon leptopus
Not listed by the ASPCA
Cascades of pink flowers over a pergola in the hottest part of the year, then brown and gone in winter. It climbs by tendrils and needs something to hold on to.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Bougainvillea × buttiana
Toxic to pets (ASPCA)
The most photographed plant in the Valley, and the one people kill most often by watering. It flowers hardest when it is kept on the dry side. Toxic to pets, and the thorns are hidden.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Rosa banksiae
Non-toxic (ASPCA)
A thornless climbing rose that covers a wall in yellow or white for three weeks in spring and then does nothing for a year. On the ASPCA non-toxic list, which is rare for something this size.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Muhlenbergia capillaris
Not listed by the ASPCA
A cloud of pink seed heads in October and November, on a plant that looks like plain green grass the rest of the year. Leave the seed heads standing through winter.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
Salvia rosmarinus ‘Prostratus’
Non-toxic (ASPCA)
Dense evergreen mat, blue flowers in late winter, and usable in the kitchen. It is on the ASPCA non-toxic list and takes reflected heat from a south wall.
Figures: AMWUA plant list Pet safety: ASPCA
No plant in this list matches all of those at once. Loosen the sun or water filter first (those two remove the most) or clear the filters and start again.
A plant list is only as useful as its willingness to say where the numbers came from. The plant encyclopaedias that dominate search results are written once and never dated; they will happily tell you a shrub reaches eight feet without saying which desert, which soil or which water regime that eight feet describes. This tool works differently. Sun need, water use, mature height and spread, leaf habit and bloom season are taken from two Arizona lists that publish exactly those fields: the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association's Landscape Plants for the Arizona Desert and the Arizona Department of Water Resources' low-water-use plant list, which was compiled by the same technical committee. Both were built for this valley, and both print ranges rather than single figures.
That last point is the one worth dwelling on. A mature size is not a property of a species; it is a property of a species in a place. Give a velvet mesquite deep soil and an irrigation line and it will be a bigger tree than any list says; plant the same tree on rainfall alone in thin caliche and it will be smaller. The published lists answer this by giving a range, and this tool stores the range and prints the range rather than picking the middle of it and pretending to a precision nobody has. The one thing the tool will not do is invent a number to fill a gap: where a source gives two figures, two figures are what appear on the card.
Almost every plant page on the internet has a line about whether a plant is safe for pets, and most of those lines are copied from other plant pages. There is one source that stands behind them, and it is the ASPCA Animal Poison Control's toxic and non-toxic plant database. This tool uses that database and nothing else for pet safety, which sounds like the obvious thing to do until you try it and discover that most desert natives are not in the database at all.
So the pet field has three states, not two. A plant is toxic, or it is non-toxic, or it is not listed, and the third state is the one that matters. Of the 70 plants here, the ASPCA lists 5 as non-toxic and 11 as toxic, which leaves 54 plants in the gap. Blue palo verde is in the gap. Desert willow is in the gap. Creosote, ironwood, Texas ebony and almost every cactus here are in the gap. Marking those as safe would turn a missing database entry into a veterinary claim, which is the one thing a plant list must not do. The card prints the gap instead, and the filter is built around it: you can remove every plant the ASPCA lists as toxic in one action, and if you want the stricter answer you can ask for only the plants the database positively lists as non-toxic, which is five of the 70, and worth seeing as a number.
The 11 plants the ASPCA does flag are the ones worth knowing by name, because they are the popular ones. Oleander is on every freeway embankment in the county. Lantana and bougainvillea are two of the best butterfly and hummingbird plants you can buy. Sago palm is a patio plant in half the older yards in the Valley, and it is one of the most dangerous ornamentals the ASPCA carries: the whole plant is toxic, and it takes a large share of pet poison calls. A plant being common is not evidence that it is safe.
The four filters on the left are the four questions a person actually asks with a plant in their hand and a hole in the ground: how much sun does this spot get, how much water am I willing to give, how much room is there, and what do I want it to do. Sun, water and size are the three that remove the most plants, which is why they sit at the top. Bloom month and plant type are the two that let you reach a decision rather than a shortlist: if you want something flowering in October, the bloom filter answers that directly.
Water use is the filter to treat with the most care, and the limits list says why. “Low” is a classification for a mature, established plant on the plant list's own terms; it is not an interval and it is not a promise that you can plant something and walk away. Almost everything here needs watering every few days through its first summer. The classification starts to mean something in the second year, and it is the Hydrozone Yard Planner, not this tool, that turns it into a schedule.
It does not know your yard. It cannot see whether the spot is in morning sun or afternoon sun (which, in Phoenix, is close to the difference between two different climates) or whether the corner is a heat trap by a west wall, or where the cold air pools on a January night. It does not know your soil, and caliche is a plant's problem long before it is a drainage problem. And it does not know what is already growing there, which is the question that decides whether a plant will establish at all.
What it does is put 70 plants in front of you with their sun, water, size, bloom and pet status attached to a named source, filtered down to the handful that fit the spot you described, and it tells you plainly which of those plants are toxic, which are listed as safe, and which are simply unknown.
Sun need, mature height and spread, leaf habit and bloom season for every plant in the list, taken from the ranges the list publishes plant by plant. Its water-use rating is the basis of the Water column too, with one difference worth stating: AMWUA publishes four categories (Very Low, Low, Low to Moderate and Moderate) and this page groups them into three so a plant can be filtered against the ADWR list as well, which uses its own words. The grouping is this site's. A plant shown here as Low may be Low or Low to Moderate on AMWUA's own page, and the AMWUA entry is the one to check.
The companion regulatory list, compiled with the same AMWUA technical committee. Used to check water-use classification and cold tolerance, and because a plant on this list is the one an Arizona municipality recognises as low-water-use.
Which of these plants are toxic to dogs, cats or horses, which are listed as non-toxic, and (the point of the third state) which are not in the database at all. No pet-safety statement on this page comes from anywhere else.
Horticultural background for the naming, the growth habits and the notes about frost tenderness and invasive roots, and the source behind the planting guidance this tool links out to.
Every figure this tool uses was read from the source named above on 11 October 2026. Anything still waiting on a check is listed in the site's data notes rather than shown here as if it were settled.
Before you rely on this
This tool works from climate normals and published guidance, not from live weather. It describes a typical day for the month or date you chose, which is useful for planning and useless as a forecast.