Shrub and bush both describe a woody plant smaller than a tree, usually with several stems growing from its base, and in everyday gardening talk the words are interchangeable: a rose shrub and a rose bush are the same plant. The difference is that bush carries extra meanings shrub does not, such as wild uncultivated land, especially in Australia or Africa, or an amateurish way of doing something.
The core difference
As plants, shrub and bush mean the same thing; bush additionally covers wild land and, informally, anything amateurish.
- shrub — a woody plant smaller than a tree, usually with several stems growing from its base: they planted flowering shrubs along the front path.
- bush — a woody plant with multiple stems, smaller than a tree: she planted a rose bush by the front gate.
How to tell them apart
For the plant itself, there is no meaningful difference to worry about: shrub is the slightly more formal or horticultural word, while bush is the everyday one, and gardeners use both for the same rose, box, or hedge plant.
Where they split is in bush's extra senses. Bush can mean wild, uncultivated land, as in driving through the bush in Australia, and informally it can describe something amateurish, like a bush move. Shrub does not carry either of those meanings, and shrub can also work as a verb meaning to plant or trim shrubs.
