About Plant Compendium

Plant Compendium is a reference for houseplant owners who want more than three sentences and a stock photo. Every plant page covers 15+ data points on care, plus pet safety cross-checked with the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center.

Who builds this

Plant Compendium is built and edited by Tochirun, a biologist trained at the Faculty of Biology, Universitas Jenderal Soedirman (Unsoed) — a recognised Indonesian science institution. Coursework covered mycology, ecology, and applied biology. Recipient of an Indonesian Ministry of Research Program Kreativitas Mahasiswa Penelitian (PKMP) grant for research on breadfruit fermentation technology.

Based in Indonesia, where the tropical climate lets us grow a lot of the houseplants the rest of the world buys — Monstera, Philodendron, Pothos, Calathea, Hoya — so writing about how they grow and what keeps them happy comes from hands-on experience, not just research.

Read full author bio →

Editorial standards

We hold ourselves to the kind of standard a biology degree teaches: cite or don't claim.

• Every pet safety claim cites the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center as the primary source. We link to the specific plant entry where possible.
• Every care guide cites at least one botanical authority — the Royal Horticultural Society, Missouri Botanical Garden, USDA, or peer-reviewed horticultural literature.
• AI-assisted drafting is allowed, AI-only publishing is not. When AI tools help draft content, every page receives manual editorial review for accuracy, voice, and consistency. We do not publish unedited AI output.
• Specific numbers preferred over vague ranges. "Water every 7-10 days" is more useful than "water when dry"; "10,000-20,000 lux" is more useful than "bright light".
• Honest about uncertainty. When sources disagree or evidence is thin, we say so rather than pick the most confident-sounding answer.

Editorial process

1. Source review. Each plant entry starts with the ASPCA toxic-plant listing (for pet safety) and the RHS or Missouri Botanical Garden entry (for care baseline). We cross-check at least two sources before drafting.
2. Data extraction. Specific values — light lux ranges, water frequency in days, humidity percentages, mature size in centimetres — go into our structured plant database. The same data drives every page about that plant.
3. Drafting. AI assists with first-pass writing for descriptive sections. Editorial voice, opinions, and judgements are written by hand.
4. Editorial review. Every page is read in full before publishing. We check for citation accuracy, voice consistency, and the absence of common AI tells ("delve", "navigate", "leverage", filler hedge phrases).
5. Update cycle. Care pages are reviewed at least annually. The last_reviewed date on every page is the actual date of the last manual check, not the most recent automated rebuild.

What we do not cover (yet)

Honest disclosure — these are areas outside our hands-on experience:

• Outdoor gardening at scale, commercial farming, landscape design
• Edible vegetable and herb cultivation for consumption
• Rare collector plants beyond mass-market houseplant species
• Orchid speciality care (a planned future expansion)

Image attribution

Plant photos sourced from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licenses (CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA), with credit linked on every image. If you spot a missing or incorrect attribution, please let us know.

Affiliate disclosure

Some product links are affiliate links — we may earn a small commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you. This never influences which plants or products we recommend. Our Amazon affiliate relationship is disclosed at the point of each link.

Get in touch

Spotted an error? Want a plant added? Have a partnership pitch? hello@plantcompendium.com goes straight to Tochirun's inbox via Cloudflare Email Routing — no auto-responder, every email is read.