Know the spot, but not the plant?
Select the properties you?re looking for from the list below to whittle down the 7415 plants in our database to just the one?s you?re looking for! Choose from even more properties and see more results on the search page.
Looking for a particular use or function? Or just feel like browsing?
If you're looking for a particular use or function, or if you just want to have a browse through the plants, follow the links below to browse plants by their various uses and functions.
Edible uses (see more)
Medicinal uses (see more)
Material uses (see more)
Recent Contributions
Polycultures, Guilds & Companions...
In addition to each plant being able to record interactions with other individual plants, users can also create polycultures or guilds of known plant combinations that work well together.
We are at the very start of our collection of polycultures with The Three Sisters set up as a quick example. You can create your own favourite polycultures here:
An open encyclopedia of plant information
There are plenty of sources of plant information online. So what makes Practical Plants different?
It belongs to all of us
Everything is editable by anybody, and licensed under a Creative Commons license to be used by anybody. This is incredibly important for the future as "social" websites claim ownership of our information. The data we create belongs to all of us in common, not any one person or organisation.
A specific focus for a broad audience
It's simple: if a plant has practical uses, inform how to propagate, cultivate, and use it. There is a natural bias towards environmentalism, sustainability, and against chemical agriculture, but the information is widely applicable.
It's practical
Covering edible, material and medicinal uses, design functions, propagation, cultivation, environmental preferences, interactions, polycultures (and so on...) Practical Plants provides everything you need to know to choose, grow, and identify plants.
The flexibility and strength of a wiki-base
Practical Plants articles are collaboratively edited, like a wiki, and contain embedded data which is machine readable. This enables advanced search capabilities while still presenting people with articles written to be read by human eyes, not fields of data intended for a machine.
Curious about getting involved?
Practical Plants opened it's virtual doors on 1st August 2012. There is much to be done cleaning up articles, adding more articles, polycultures, interactions, uses and so on. Check out our help pages or join us on the forums to ask any questions, give feedback and find out the latest news.