What a plant really does — not garden folklore.
Most of what you read about a plant’s “job” in the garden gets copied from site to site with nothing behind it. We sort those claims into three buckets, and we tell you which one each falls in.
Traits we can back up with data
Native nitrogen fixers to start with
Browse all natives →
Every plant page carries these under Functional traits, each with its source.
Garden & land-use roles
We work each role out from traits we already have, and label it either derived (an estimate) or documented (a real measurement), with a link to the method behind it. A role only shows up when the plant has the data for it, and you’ll find it on the plant’s page.
Learn the techniques
What we don't do — and why
No companion-planting matrices or "dynamic accumulator" lists — they're folklore (rarely evidenced) and usually copyrighted compilations. Where a famous list has an honest proxy, we compute it instead: "dynamic accumulator" becomes measured leaf nitrogen from TRY, labeled as derived. We’d rather show you the real trait and its source than repeat a claim we can’t stand behind. 31,673 taxa total.