Editorial policy

These are rules the build enforces, not intentions. Each one is checked in three places: a constraint in the database, a gate in the generator that writes pages, and a linter in continuous integration that reads the published site over HTTP. Each catches what the others structurally cannot.

No care figure is published without a source and a date

Every figure names where it came from and when it was read. The database refuses to store a row that cannot, which means the rule holds even when something writes to it that nobody has thought of yet.

Where sources disagree, the page says so and names both

This is the norm in houseplant advice rather than the exception, and it is the reason this site exists. Neither source is marked correct. They are often answering slightly different questions, which the mapping table goes into.

Banned language

Advice stated as certainty, the words “never” and “always”, and any guarantee of an outcome. A page using one of them is refused at the point of writing rather than corrected later.

Two more are banned that the brief did not name, because they are this subject’s particular lie: calling a plant impossible to kill, and saying it thrives on neglect. Both are sold as reassurance, both are read as permission, and neglect is the most common cause of the failures documented here.

Every page says what it does not cover

A section with that heading is mandatory and its absence refuses the page. A reference work that will not state its own limits is asking to be trusted further than it has earned.

A toxic plant carries its warning

Rendered from the data, above the fold, on every plant page. It is not written into the prose, because prose can be edited and this must not be removable by editing.

There are three states, not two. “Not assessed” means none of the sources this site reads has published an answer, and 328 of the 468 plants here have no published assessment of their toxicity to cats. It is shown differently from “listed as non-toxic”, because telling somebody their cat is safe when nobody checked is the worst thing this site could do.

Photographs fail closed

A Creative Commons grant is a contract paid in credit. A photograph renders only when the licence permits commercial use and the row carries the licence name and, where the licence asks for one, the photographer. Missing either, nothing renders.

What this does not cover

These rules govern how figures are published, not whether the sources are right. This site can show you that two authorities disagree and who they are. It cannot tell you which of them is correct about your plant.