About

A plant emergency room: a few questions that separate the likely causes, and the sourced care data behind the answer.

Last updated 15 September 2026

What this site is for

Most advice about a dying houseplant is a confident guess made from a photograph. The causes that matter, soil that has stayed wet, a pot that has stopped draining, a window that gives less light than it looks, are rarely visible in one. The diagnosis tool asks about them instead, and every plant page shows what published sources say about that plant's care, with the source and the date it was read.

Who writes this

Kerem Özdoğan — Editor, Why Plants Die

Kerem Özdoğan is a software developer based in Istanbul and the editor of Why Plants Die. He collects sourced care data from published horticultural sources, among them the RHS, US university extension services, the ASPCA and Kew, records where each figure came from and when it was read, and writes the questions that separate one cause of a dying plant from another. He has no affiliation with any nursery, retailer or plant brand.

How we are funded

Display advertising and, where a step names a kind of product, affiliate links. Neither affects a care figure or a diagnosis. No brand or shop can pay to change what a page says, to be named on it, or to have a competitor removed. The rules the pages are held to are on the editorial policy.

What this does not cover

This is not a plant clinic, a nursery or a laboratory. Nobody here has seen your plant, its roots or its pot, and a reading from a handful of answers is a starting point for looking, not a diagnosis you can rely on without looking.