A perennial plant or perennial (Latin per, "through", annus, "year") is a plant that lives for more than two years. This term applies specifically to winter hardy perennial herbaceous plants. Scientifically, woody plants like shrubs and trees are also perennial in their habit.

Perennials, especially small flowering plants, grow and bloom over the spring and summer and then die back every autumn and winter, then return in the spring from their root-stock rather than seeding themselves as an annual plant does. These are known as herbaceous perennials. However, depending on the rigors of local climate, a plant that is a perennial in its native habitat, or in a milder garden, may be treated by a gardener as an annual and planted out every year, from seed, from cuttings or from divisions.

Perennial plants can be short-lived (only a few years) or they can be long-lived, some woody plants like trees which can live for over 4,000 years. They can vary in height from only a few millimeters to over 100 meters tall. They include a wide assortment of plant groups from ferns and liverworts to the highly diverse flowering plants like Orchids and Grasses.

Plants that flower and fruit only once and then die are termed monocarpic or semelparous. Although, most perennials are polycarpic, flowering over many seasons in their lifetime.

Perennials grow structures that allow them to adapt to living from one year to the next through a form of vegetative reproduction rather than seeding. These structures include bulbs, tubers, woody crowns, rhizomes plus others. Annuals produce seeds to continue the species as a new generation while the growing season is suitable, and the seeds survive over the cold or dry period to begin growth when the conditions are again suitable. Many perennials, in contrast, have specialized to survive under extreme environmental conditions: some have adapted to survive hot and dry conditions, or to survive under cold temperatures. Those plants tend to invest a lot of resource into their adaptations and often do not flower and set seed until after a few years of growth. Many perennials produce relatively large seeds, which can have an advantage, with larger seedlings produced after germination that can better compete with other plants or more quickly develop leaves for photosynthesis. Annuals tend to produce many more seeds per plant since they will die at the end of the growing season, while perennials are not under the same pressure to produce large numbers of seeds but can produce seeds over many years.

In warmer and more favorable climates, perennials grow continuously. In seasonal climates, their growth is limited to the growing season. For example, in temperate regions a perennial plant may grow and bloom during the warm part of the year, with the foliage dying back in the winter. These plants are deciduous perennials. Regrowth is from existing stem tissue. In many parts of the world, seasonality is expressed as wet and dry periods rather than warm and cold periods.

With their roots protected below ground in the soil layer, perennial plants are notably tolerant of wildfire. Herbaceous perennials are also able to tolerate the extremes of cold in temperate and Arctic winters, with less sensitivity than trees or shrubs.

Knowing your planting zone can be very useful when you are planning your garden and flower bed areas. Gardeners should compare their garden climates with the climate where a plant is known to grow well. Most plants are marked with a zone number which on a map show where various plants can adapt. Using the Zone Map is really very simple. Find your geographic location on the map and find the corresponding color to that location by looking at the map key. That number designates the zone in which you live and therefore the plant that will survive at that location. You might find a range of zones, the lower of the zone numbers tells you the lowest recommended zone in which that plant can survive. It is possible that a plant might thrive outside a labeled zone area.