What is wrong with my plant?
Three questions, and the causes in the order they are likely
Pet safety follows the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plants list. Safe means not poisonous, not edible. If an animal has eaten a plant, telephone a vet.
- One. Which plant
Or carry on without it.
- Two. Which part of it
- Three. What you can see
Choose a part of the plant and the list will narrow.
How the ranking is worked out
Each symptom in the journal carries its causes in the order they are usually to blame, which comes from the horticultural sources named at the foot of every ailment page rather than from our own opinion. That general order is what you see when you have not told us which plant you have.
When you do name the plant, the journal reads that plant's own entry. Every entry lists the ailments that particular species is prone to, with the cause the journal has recorded for it and the fix that works on it. Where the entry names the same cause the symptom page does, that cause moves to the top and the entry's own words are shown with it. A dragon tree and a monstera both drop yellow lower leaves, and the reason is usually age for one and watering for the other, which is exactly the sort of thing a general list cannot tell you.
Nothing is ever hidden. Every cause stays on the page in its original order below the ones that were lifted, because the second most likely cause is right often enough that removing it would be dishonest.
What this cannot do
It cannot see your plant. It works from what you tell it, so if the symptom you choose is not quite the one you have, the answer will be about a plant you do not own. Go back a step and choose again rather than making the answer fit.
It also cannot diagnose a plant that has several things wrong at once, which is common: a plant in a dark corner watered on a summer rhythm through winter will show three symptoms from one cause. If two of the pages you read point at the same thing, that is your answer.
Your answers stay in the address bar and nowhere else. Nothing about the plant, the room or the search is stored or sent, and the link is safe to send to somebody who might know more than we do.