Trees & Plants Symbols & Their Meanings
23 trees & plants symbols explained — meaning, origin, spiritual significance, and how each one is used today.
Alder
The alder symbolizes courage and the bridge between land and water. The tree of foundations, resistant to rot, a…
🍎Apple Tree
The apple tree symbolizes love, immortality, and otherworldly gifts. The fruit tree of Avalon, and its symbolism…
🌳Ash
The ash symbolizes connection between worlds and cosmic order. Yggdrasil, the Norse world tree, was an ash, and …
🎋Bamboo
The bamboo symbolizes flexibility, rapid growth, and empty-hearted humility. The scholar’s plant of East Asia, a…
🌳Banyan
The banyan symbolizes immortality and sheltering community. The tree that becomes a forest, and its symbolism ha…
🌳Baobab
The baobab symbolizes endurance, memory, and African ancestral wisdom. The upside-down tree of life, and its sym…
🌳Birch
The birch symbolizes new beginnings, purification, and gentle resilience. The pioneer tree, first to reclaim ope…
🌲Cedar
The cedar symbolizes purification, protection, and sacred space. The temple wood of ancient civilizations, and i…
🌸Cherry Blossom
The cherry blossom symbolizes the beauty and brevity of life. Japan’s sakura, symbol of mono no aware, and its s…
🌲Cypress
The cypress symbolizes mourning, eternity, and the soul’s journey. The graveyard tree of the Mediterranean, and …
🌳Elder
The elder symbolizes protection, endings, and the fairy tree. Sacred to the Elder Mother of folklore, and its sy…
🌳Fig Tree
The fig tree symbolizes abundance, knowledge, and enlightenment. The Bodhi tree was a sacred fig, and its symbol…
🌳Hazel
The hazel symbolizes wisdom, inspiration, and poetic fire. The tree of knowledge in Irish myth, and its symbolis…
🌿Holly
The holly symbolizes protection, goodwill, and winter endurance. The evergreen king of the dark half of the year…
🌿Ivy
The ivy symbolizes fidelity, persistence, and intertwined bonds. The climber that outlasts its host, and its sym…
🌸Magnolia
The magnolia symbolizes dignity, perseverance, and ancient beauty. A flowering tree older than bees, and its sym…
🍁Maple
The maple symbolizes balance, promise, and sweet reward. The tree of generosity and Canadian identity, and its s…
🫒Olive Tree
The olive tree symbolizes peace, victory, and divine blessing. Athena’s gift to Athens, and its symbolism has re…
🌴Palm Tree
The palm tree symbolizes victory, peace, and tropical abundance. The ancient symbol of triumph, and its symbolis…
🌲Redwood
The redwood symbolizes majesty, longevity, and reaching for heaven. The tallest living things on Earth, and its …
🌳Rowan
The rowan symbolizes protection against enchantment. The mountain ash, guardian against ill wishes, and its symb…
🌳Willow
The willow symbolizes intuition, grief, and lunar feminine energy. The moon’s tree of poets and healers, and its…
🌳Yew
The yew symbolizes death, rebirth, and immortality. The ancient graveyard tree of transformation, and its symbol…