Solomon's seal is a well-known garden plant, but the genus covers a wider range of plants. The familiar ones have arching stems, perhaps a metre tall, with opposite pairs of leaves and a pair of flowers hanging from each each leaf axil. There are many variations on this theme, but less well known are some elegant plants, much smaller, some with quite deep pink flowers. There are also a few really dwarf alpines, in which the pink flowers emerge flat on the ground, and when a colony is in flower it looks like fallen cherry blossom. Heteropolygonatum is a very closely related genus, separated on technical grounds.

Polygonatum orientale (polyanthemum) has white flowers tipped with green, hanging in pairs on short stems below the opposite pairs of leaves that line the stems.