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Show HN: A free site to explore and discover 6k plants
I’ve loved keeping plants since I was a kid. But the online world of plants can be confusing - strange vocabulary, plants going by conflicting names, and hundreds of niche websites. I wanted to create a site that would organize all of this info and make it easier to explore and discover new plants. That’s why I created GetAnyPlant, which aggregates and matches plants from dozens of online stores. It includes huge amounts of data on these plants along with filters and categories to help you search. You can also save plants to your wishlist and add notes to them.
I’m a data scientist by profession, so probably 80% of the work was totally new to me. I built v1 using wordpress , v2 using django, and v3 I pivoted to using react and next js for frontend.
I would greatly appreciate any feedback on the site as well as any advice on how to grow it.
- piva00 2y agoWhat a great idea! I'm also quite in love with keeping plants and have found similar issues on conflicting names, etc. Don't have much feedback since I'm not in the USA, eagerly waiting for an international expansion to Europe :)) Good luck!
- ryebread777 2y agoSorry! I forgot to include a disclaimer that most of the stores are US based right now. I am excited to expand to different countries but there are a few difficult questions to figure out in terms of user experience. I’m hoping to nail the core functionality and then focus on expanding to other countries. Thanks for the comment!
- marban 2y agoHow do you pull in the commercial offers?
- pyuser314 2y agoGuess: this person is associated with one of the shops to buy.
- ryebread777 2y agoWeb scraping or using site APIs!
- pyuser314 2y agoha, thanks, that too! Nice site.
- z3t4 2y agoHow did you find the images? How did you solve the copyright issue?
- ryebread777 2y agoRight now either they are from Wikipedia, or they are from one of the stores selling plants. I have been reaching out to many stores to request permission to use their images in this way and luckily a few have been kind enough to grant it. Those are the images I use. If you scroll down far enough though you will see there is still a need for many more.
- giarc 2y agoCould you use AI to generate images for those you don't have a real photo of yet?
- ryebread777 2y agoI experimented with that few months ago and it was very bad unfortunately. Though it may have improved. Probably for common plants it would work excellent (bell pepper, monstera) but most of the plants on the site are fairly obscure, especially the ones without images. I wouldn’t want to create a misleading image. Another AI approach might be to create simple illustrations of plants I don’t have images for, using other images as reference. I haven’t explored that yet!
- berkes 2y agoPl@ntnet has a dataset of 300k images of plants released under Creative Commons https://zenodo.org/records/5645731#.YeGDOdvjKWh https://zenodo.org/records/5645731#.YeGDOdvjKWh
- ryebread777 2y agoAwesome!! Surprised I didn’t know that as I’ve explored plantnet in the past. I’ll add those in!
- ivolimmen 2y agoI am a bit disappointed; I was expecting plants that cost a minimum of 6K... But: I do like the site!
- voidUpdate 2y agoI was expecting a lot of photos of plants in very high resolution
- ryebread777 2y agoDon’t worry, If you are interested in buying $6k plants I will create a new site just for you lol
- pvg 2y agoFor that high-end market segment, I'd be thinking recurring revenue - plant subscriptions, plant timeshares, plant concierge service, etc.
- ttyprintk 2y agoVery true for saltwater aquariums. Plants can be moved in and out, but if your airbnb has a saltwater aquarium, you need the number someone who does house calls.
- mft_ 2y agoAs someone that has struggled trying to find plants to suit a particular garden in the past, I love your site! (And I just spotted the pet safe tab - even better!) Edit: could you include temperature suitability? Including plants that can or can't cope with snow, for example?
- ryebread777 2y agoGood idea!! I’ll admit I came at this having much more experience with Houseplants than gardening, but I definitely want it to serve many communities. Thanks for the suggestion! Is that basically the same thing as “zone?” I think that should be doable - I will look into it! Would love to know any other features that would be valuable from the gardening perspective.
- mft_ 2y agoTemperature range = hardiness zone, I think? Also... soil pH, maybe?
- mtgentry 2y agoWould be cool to sort by ‘community’ too. If you get really deep into native planting, folks recommend you get plants native to your geographic area. California has lots of these communities for example: https://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/communities https://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/communities
- mtgentry 2y agoYeah I’d love this too. I live in SoCal and I’m doing my yard with native plants. Some things I’m having trouble finding: 1) plants that bloom in seasons other than spring 2) plants that aren’t native but can work in my climate 3) plants that will do ok in clay soil 4) plants with a small footprint for a small yard. AI has helped a lot but it would still be helpful to have filters like these.
- sp332 2y agoIf you have a USDA zone map, make sure you're using the 2023 version. They hadn't updated the map in... ever, I think?
- jihadjihad 2y agoThis is really cool, congrats on shipping. I've had a hard time finding reliable plant information as well, especially since many sites focus only on indoor plants while others focus only on those you grow outside in a garden, etc. It's nice to be able to search for plants I have inside as well as outside. Having a filter for the genus is a great idea too! The search feels a little slow, and it's somewhat finicky: if I type in "ficus ginseng" I don't see a result, apparently because the title is "Ficus 'Ginseng'" so the single quotes are needed. But I can see myself using this site! Nice work!
- ryebread777 2y agoAh, yes you are right about that. The search sucks right now. An even bigger issue is that search only matches in the scientific name but most people are entering common names. Yours is the first user feedback to mention it though so thank you for sharing! I will make it a higher priority to fix.
- johncole 2y agoHow long did it take you to move from v1 to v2 to v3? Cool site!
- ryebread777 2y agoHere’s a rough estimate. Though of course this was a side project (~10hrs / week) and much of the time was spent learning. V1 - Wordpress and jupyter notebooks (2 months) V2 - Django (7 months) V3 - Django + React (3 months)
- spooky_action 2y agoWhat were the jupyter notebooks for? Did you run your backend in notebooks?
- ryebread777 2y agoWordpress version was basically just static plant pages. And I used jupyter notebooks to update them with new data (like product price and availability). Pretty funny to think about now
- chelmzy 2y agoWould it be possible to add a location filter for native ranges of the plants?
- ryebread777 2y agoOoh, I’ve actually been looking into this. It hasn’t been too heavily requested but to me it is a cool feature. I’m curious what you envision by location? Would it be by country? Or something more specific or broad?
- soared 2y agoFor indoor plants, depending on where you live you may have near-zero native plants commonly sold. Native plants tend to make more sense for outdoors, as the indoor climate as closer to tropical-always rather then your real weather.
- smusamashah 2y agoNice to see it includes Airplants as well.
- vidyesh 2y agoCongrats on the tech upgrade! Since this is not an open source project, before I bombard you with technical questions I have to ask, are you open to discuss the structure of your app? Like about your sources, images, etc?
- ryebread777 2y agoSure! Happy to answer most things as I’m looking to share but also to get feedback and new ideas on those topics.
- vidyesh 2y agoAwesome! Feel free some or all. Few of my queries you mostly answered elsewhere in your replies about images and how you get the data. How did you determine which plants to list? Is it just a database of all the unique plants from all sources or just a general plant database? I see each plant shows price + x stores, does that mean you are archiving the prices and not scraping real time? How are you determining the time interval for that? How are you handling wrongly or typo listed plants from your sources? Since you mentioned this is using next and django, what are you using shopify for? Are you an affiliate for most of them or nothing like that so far? Sorry I don't really have any valuable feedback apart from what everyone mentioned, Search is really slow. And some or most external links have an extra / in their hyperlink, so at https://www.getanyplant.com/plant/4f5952a72087bce5e5c28a72c76c7563 https://planetdesert.com//products Thank you.
- pastor_bob 2y ago>Since you mentioned this is using next and django, what are you using shopify for? Looks like they're just pointing to images hosted by others, most of which are Shopify sellers. One weird trick to save on bandwidth costs...but obviously problematic in the long term.
- ryebread777 2y agoCurrently evaluating alternatives for hosting images rn. Open to any suggestions!
- the__alchemist 2y agoThis is great! Btw, something I learned recently about house plants: In an analogous way to sneakers, there is a large subculture built around certain varieties of them. They get to be expensive, there is a network of trading, there are ones associated with high status, there are knockoffs (not joking) etc. Very interesting! This site does not appear to be about that subculture.
- soared 2y agoGreat idea to avoid the viral varietals as they tend to be more difficult to keep alive since everyone tries to produce them. Also very nice to shop at local stores to avoid the tik tok midnight variegated monstera nonsense! (Not sure if always but variegated->less green->less chlorophyll->harder to keep alive)
- steve_adams_86 2y agoI think your last point is always true, yes. I’ve never seen it not be true across a wide range of plants, whether terrestrial or aquatic.
- ChainOfFools 2y agoSome of them, like clivia, have a non-trivial lottery component to their hybridization and breeding that makes buying and crossing even a couple of relatively er, garden variety examples a potential ticket to fame, fortune and startdom in the clivia-verse.
- steve_adams_86 2y agoThere are also varieties with temporary genetic expressions (often used as knockoffs), so it’s like buying a white sneaker that gradually turns green, haha. Some of these plants are $100-$500 for a 3” pot with a single leaf of growth. As the new growth appears, the genetic expression is no longer the desired type. It’s a real racket.
- nom 2y agoAn interesting niche I came across is Carnivorous plants, where the seeds of a successful new cross can fetch 1k USD in auction. For a plant that no one knows how it will look yet. Like this one https://www.carnivero.com/collections/auction-items/products/a259-nepenthes-veitchii-geoff-wong-x-candy-dreams-1-seed-pod https://www.carnivero.com/collections/auction-items/products... People also hike through the remotest areas to find new wild species. Very cool.
- newrotik 2y agoI have very recently published a mobile plant identification app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hiddengardens.plantscan https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hiddengard...). It's the first mobile app I have ever written and I enjoyed the process quite a bit! My main goal was to deliver better identification accuracy than similar apps. However I also wanted to provide useful plant information along with the identification and naively thought that this would have had to be a solved problem - surely there would be some online DB with all plants data neatly organized (I'd be even happy to pay for it!), in particular plant care information - but alas!
- ajnin 2y agoThat begs the question ... How did you come up with that plant database ?
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- voisin 2y agoI’d love if this included outdoor plants, shrubs, trees, and had a filter for hardiness zone.
- ryebread777 2y agoI’m on it! What sorts of things do you care about when you’re looking for outdoor plants? Anything besides hardiness zone? Maybe categories for trees, shrubs, etc?
- 01100011 2y agoWater usage, edible or not, color changing leaves, shade tolerance, soil compatibility, flowers or not, color of flowers. Not sure if there's a way to say 'messiness factor'... some trees drop a lot of crap besides leaves. It would be great to find native plants for your area.
- zdrummond 2y agoThis might be a stretch, but I would love to know what outdoor plants are native to my area.
- jefb 2y agoThis would be an awesome feature. It would be a good resource for plant identification and I won't inadvertently introduce an invasive species into my local environment.
- phoxtricks 2y agoThe number one thing to know for outdoor plants is if they are invasive or not. (So tired of managing Garlic Mustard, Japanese Knotweed, Bittersweet and Buckthorn)
- pwenzel 2y agoFor outdoor plants, I would really want to know what plants are drought tolerant. Climate change is drastically altering summers in Minnesota (wildfire smoke, drought, high AQI, high temps, extreme downpours). It would also be really great to search for pollinator friendly plants (https://bluethumb.org https://bluethumb.org is an excellent reference)
- rubslopes 2y agoA bit off topic, but there's a game called Strange Horticulture that I'm playing and loving it. It's a phantasy investigation game. The plants are not real and they have magic properties, but still, I think whoever loves plants will have a lot of fun with it.
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- ryebread777 2y agoI'll check it out! Sounds kinda similar to a game I'm playing rn on switch called dredge, though that focuses on fish.
- rubslopes 2y agoI know Dredge, and yes, that's a good comparison! Both games have an eerie atmosphere that I find comforting.
- contingencies 2y agoOh yeah that game rocks. I'd recommend it to anyone with kids (especially those with an interest in plants) around 5-9 range. https://www.strangehorticulture.com/ https://www.strangehorticulture.com/
- rubslopes 2y agoI have a lot of difficulty finding a game that my wife will also enjoy, and she loved this one.
- netrap 2y agoMany pictures missing. Search is not great, especially for non scientific names of plants. Like "frogfruit" doesn't find anything. Other than that it's great!!
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- jones58 2y agoAny chance of a UK version? Based in London and love the UI of this :)
- ryebread777 2y agoThanks! I mentioned in another comment but definitely hoping to expand once I've nailed the fundamentals!
- danielvaughn 2y agoI really love the custom icons, it makes me wish the thumbnails were botanist illustrations.
- ryebread777 2y agoThat would be so cool! I'd love to explore generating images like that with AI.
- danielvaughn 2y agoI bet LLMs would be pretty good at that since there's likely a large repository of public domain botany drawings from the past few hundred years.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoI'd consider that deceptive. Botanist drawings are technical, so I tend to treat illustrations in that style as factual in some sense, but AI can ape the style quite nicely while getting all the details wrong. You wouldn't want AI-generated technical documentation, would you? It's the same here. Can't you just find images, the same as you find plants? Or manually add them, or something. Maybe commission some, if you can't find anything for a certain plant.
- jilles 2y agoThis is incredible! I can remove this app idea of my "app ideas"-list.
- pfdietz 2y agoDoes it classify by where they are native? Some of us like to plant only plants that are native to where we are living. For others, at least classify by their potential for invasiveness. Other attributes: toxicity (when eaten or even touched), deer resistance, allelopathic potential, pollinator friendliness.
- zamadatix 2y agoAnother attribute/attribute extension that would be helpful is toxicity for pets in particular.
- ryebread777 2y agoThere is a filter on the plant list for pet-safe! Look for the paw icon. Haven’t pulled this info onto the plant detail page yet though.
- zamadatix 2y agoI was so focused on the filter drop downs I didn't even think to look for it as a plant category! Thanks
- julianeon 2y agoI used to be into native plants and that's a big ask. Assuming a USA buyer, you'd have to ask for their zip code, then match that to the plants, many of which would probably have to be individually coded & entered (the zip codes they are native to), a map blur across the US which would vary for each species. The binary qualities (toxic/nontoxic) on the other hand seem easy to add. For invasiveness: that may be a reason why not too many "Amazon for plants" websites exist. But a simple binary "flagged as invasive", like a red dot on its product page, would be a terrific addition.
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- fareesh 2y agoHow does one map 6000 plants to 6000 products across other websites? Is it done via some loose matching of keywords which is not verified by hand, or is there some kind of global identification system that is used by each of the sites? Or is it done in collaboration with the sites?
- ryebread777 2y agoThe process is a combination of things. right now most of the work is done by a massive regex. I also do some manual labeling. Exploring some other solutions too. But accurate mappings are a high priority for the site!
- lovegrenoble 2y agoThis one is my favorite: https://www.getanyplant.com/plant/2500f2a3a54f3eb7b6163879ec1c007d https://www.getanyplant.com/plant/2500f2a3a54f3eb7b6163879ec...
- cactusplant7374 2y agoCarnivorous plants: https://www.getanyplant.com/plants?query=carnivorous https://www.getanyplant.com/plants?query=carnivorous
- majkinetor 2y agoIt would be cool to add a sort of public plant wikipedia with info on care about a plant. I love to keep plants, but some are just hard to maintain right.
- wly_cdgr 2y agoVery cool, thank you.
- JohnHaugeland 2y ago> I would greatly appreciate any feedback on the site as well as any advice on how to grow it. This is very cool Things I would want: 1. Appropriate growing zone (ideally USDA hardiness zone low and high limit for Americans; others for other countries) 2. Filter by produces food 3. Needs pollinating partner; if so, what's appropriate (eg if you're looking at a Bing cherry it should tell you required and to get a Stella Ann, a Van, or a Black Tartarian; if you're looking at a Bavay's Green Gage it should tell you not required, but providing will double yield, and to get an Italian Blue Plum.) 4. Producing time-of-year 5. Water requirements (people in Arizona shouldn't grow rice) 6. Importation issues (many of these will be unavailable to a Floridian or a Californian by mail) 7. Sunlight requirements 8. Indoor appropriate 9. Container size if any 10. Soil acidity requirements 11. Filter by live plant vs seed vs whatever 12. Planting time of year
- ryebread777 2y agoThis is an awesome list with many things I’d never thought of! Thanks for taking the time to write it out. Seems like requirements for the gardening user and the houseplant user vary pretty substantially!
- ttyprintk 2y agoAquatic might be its own section, really a freshwater fish tank section.
- ryebread777 2y agoAh yes, there is already a category for aquatic, but you're right that they should really have their own set of filters and everything else too. (foreground / background plant, needs CO2, water PH, etc.). Im wondering if there is a way to provide a tailored user experience based on what the user is interested in, but I feel that will explode in complexity.
- noashavit 2y agoThis is great, thanks for feeding my addiction :-)
- rishikeshs 2y agoWhy did you move away from django?
- ryebread777 2y agoStill using Django, but now I’m using react for front end. This made it a lot easier for me to create a clean modern looking UI.
- Exuma 2y agonice... ive had this on my todo list to build for quite a long time, but you beat me to it.
- ryebread777 2y agoWould love to hear how you envisioned it differently if you're down to share.
- eclipticplane 2y agoOh. Oh no. This is an extremely dangerous site for me to know about.
- OwenFM 2y agoI couldn't see any way for me to specify my location, to ensure I could actually buy the plants. Upon clicking one of the plants, I see it was only American sites. I get that this is just a hobby for the moment, but even if there was just a note somewhere, "USA only", that would have been appreciated. It still irks me how Americans tend to treat the other 96% of the world as though we don't even exist on the same planet; that we're some sort of exotic tourist destination, or a spawn point for immigrants.
- ryebread777 2y agoThanks for the feedback - sharing this project has really opened my eyes to my own bias there. Still thinking through how to best expand the site to other countries but in the meantime I'll make sure to mention that the site is US-centric when I share it going forward.
- gerdesj 2y agoTo be fair to OP, this is a work in progress and it seems reasonable that they have not yet internationalized it. The plants are listed with their binomial names front and centre rather than localized names, but the prices are in $, there is no flag or currency symbol at top right and its a .com domain. Parochialism isn't the preserve of the US although I still chuckle at being congratulated on my command of English by a shop assistant in Naples (Florida). I just thanked them rather than pointing out that I am ... actually ... English!
- readyman 2y ago>I still chuckle at being congratulated on my command of English by a shop assistant in Naples (Florida). I just thanked them rather than pointing out that I am ... actually ... English! Naples in a nutshell. This story made my day.
- shermozle 2y agoMy partner worked in Harrods and had people (mostly Americans) all the time asking the shop staff if they spoke English.
- captainkrtek 2y agoThis is really nice! Thanks for making this and sharing!
- fjsooner 2y agoI think it’s funny, though clearly reasonable, but searching for either “poison ivy” or “poison oak” both return 0 results.
- contingencies 2y agoHey, also a plant lover here. I also have experienced great frustration sourcing plants and pondered a similar platform. Haven't acted on it as too busy with existing projects. Issues not dealt with in your platform: plants with no known source should be hidden by default, shipping issues such as international and interstate restrictions on mailing plant material should be recognised, time and cost should be respected including currency exchange rates, and the options of growing from seed or spore should be in-scope. If you want to grow it, my suggestion would be to use a social model, so allow people to store information about their own garden and then share a feed of events like "I planted this!" or "This flowered!" or "This reproduced!" or "I collected seeds!" to draw people to your platform. Sharing material and the use of endemic plants should be encouraged where possible, not just outright commercialism. The gold standard today for accessible all-species info at the global level is iNaturalist (pulls in nice maps plus taxonomy plus Wikipedia, though unfortunately does not really delineate in the map between nominal natural range and current range). Not sure how you do it now but frankly it would be somewhat superfluous to attempt to reproduce such information independently, for example by maintaining your own image database. Other things that can draw people to a site would include seasonally appropriate gardening tips (plant or fertilise or prune X now before Y season, check Z for A/B/C pest situation, clone P now, etc.), a relevant local events feed (which opens up potential travel revenue streams such as hotels, flights, group tours, etc.), and academic and publishing news in related areas. Many of the nurseries have problems maintaining up to date stock lists. To commercialise, it may be useful to help them do so. To motivate them to get on the platform, you could for example allow parties to sign up for future purchases of crops not yet matured but with an estimate readiness date, thereby assisting the grower with cashflow and sales pipelining.
- ryebread777 2y agoThank you for your thoughtful response! I love your ideas. I will have to come back a few times to process everything but will add a few thoughts now. Many science-oriented resources, such as iNaturalist, license content with creative commons licenses, but don't permit commercial applications. That prevents me from making use of many of them as part of my site. But in general my aim is also much different, so certainly don't see myself as competing. I want to help people actually obtain and enjoy the plants rather than just study them. I think your tip about leveraging social media is excellent! I will brainstorm content that users can share out, like you describe. Probably a good starting point is a way to share your wishlist (or current collection). Your idea about maintaining stock lists and allowing pre-purchasing of plants is really brilliant. I don't know much about the nursery space, but I will try to learn more and think about your idea and other options in the space. What you describe makes a lot of sense. I really appreciate your ideas.
- gerdesj 2y agoGreat job. What about a dichotomous key (DK) for search as well as filters? Let's say you know quite a few attributes but not the name, you should be able to use a DK to home in on the plant. I note you are a data scientist so you'll know how best to mine the data to make that work. You will need quite a lot more attributes but those might be bought in from elsewhere.
- ryebread777 2y agoThank you! Cool idea, I was not familiar with this concept. I will look into what data exists for these.
- stephenitis 2y agoone of the hottest trending plants, the monstera thai constellation is missing
- ryebread777 2y agoactually it is on there - I think the real problem is that the search functionality is really bad at the moment https://www.getanyplant.com/plant/c6fb4f16ea74675f84d6085e02ffc2be https://www.getanyplant.com/plant/c6fb4f16ea74675f84d6085e02...
- stephenitis 2y agowhat are you using to power your search if i may ask?
- ryebread777 2y agoRight now it’s just a db query on display_name with ilike :skull:
- stephenitis 2y agoWhat kind of database are you using? Postgres has a pretty search built in, I'm sure you can get an easy win here
- ryebread777 2y agoPostgres! I think you're right I just haven't got to it yet. Thanks for the flag
- hanniabu 2y agoHow'd you go about getting the list of all the places you can buy the plant?
- stephenitis 2y agoA cool feature would to be to show youtube search results and care guides that reference the plant in question. Every page I open I've been going to youtube to check on videos of the plants
- rlhf 2y agoIt's really good to get this when you have pets at home. btw, I love the web design.
- komali2 2y agoThis is really cool! I love the clean design. I'm a little confused though, the prices are showing in USD and not NTD, and for some reason all the stores are in some country called "The United States?" I don't live there. ;)
- chris_armstrong 2y agoI'd love to do something like this for Australian native plants. It seems like quite a lot of work though!
- contingencies 2y agoI'm Aussie and a native plant society person. Will come along to your meeting next week and we can chat about it.
- 8mobile 2y agohi, I like the idea but the quality and diversity of the photos is not much. I would also like to know the characteristics of the plant, whether it resists the cold or whether it needs to be watered often.
- coldtrait 2y agoCan I add missing plants?
- ryebread777 2y agoThere isn’t a way for users to add plants at the moment. Curious what plants you were looking for though. I can try to identify stores to partner with that have them.
- coldtrait 2y agoI had randomly searched for "Periwinkle" because I have one. Didn't find it.
- bandura 2y agoI wish someone come and save my plant
- Suppafly 2y agoHow do you decide which plants to list? Is it just the inventory from a few niche sellers? Seems to be missing a lot of really common plants. I couldn't find apple or pear trees for instance. Honestly just checking it out briefly, it didn't seem super useful. Why is there no way to sort by your plant hardiness zone?
- osonfiget 2y agoVery nice! Clean design and plants. Any pointers or guides that can get me started on a similar project? Reading through your responses here, I understand you're using Django and React. While I have some programming knowledge, I haven't worked on web apps.
- McSnacky 2y agoThis really is an amazing website. And you earn money by affiliates?