Show HN: Indigene – native plants for where you stand (indigene.app)
A good friend was visiting from Orlando over the summer and told me she was struggling to decide what to plant in her own yard despite her landlord being ok with it. That was enough of an excuse for me to kick off work on Indigene, which is aimed at giving folks just-in-time knowledge about what to plant based on their locale, sun exposure, soil conditions, and their own ecosystem support goals.
Candidly, as many of us have, I've also leaned heavily on LLMs (mostly Claude here) to bring this to life. Largely to avoid saying demonstrably false things, which might be an absurd statement. You can find the GitHub repository[2] a wild array of open data sources I've dug out and cross-referenced to ensure mistakes and hallucinations are unlikely to survive for long. But given today's Indigenous Peoples Day I figured it was past time I shared the projects and invited more scrutiny.
Being the Keep a Changelog guy, you can bet it has extensive release notes[3] generated from the project changelog. Those are also parsed into feature-specific guides so each also list relevant recent updates.
Lastly, I put together a post[5] that goes into a bit more detail on the story of the project and what I've learned along the way.
I really, really hope people here (and beyond) find it as useful and enlightening as I do.
PS: before it comes up, all the LLM usage for the project is documented[6] and used as warning system in every PR but I think there's a lot more I can do to further reduce it
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192566
[2]: https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene
[3]: https://indigene.app/release-notes/
[4]: https://indigene.app/guide/
[5]: https://constantvariable.net/blog/2026/indigene-native-plant...
55 comments
[ 13.3 ms ] story [ 94.6 ms ] threadWhich is logical I guess, if the goal is just to have native plants that grow naturally here. But I suspect few people are looking for this without any consideration to the ornamental and recreational qualities of the plants.
A few examples among many similar studies:
https://neobiota.pensoft.net/article_preview.php?id=118480
https://www.washington.edu/news/2002/04/18/wildflower-seed-m...
https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2016/...
https://wssa.net/2017/08/make-sure-your-seed-mix-is-tested-f...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8176916/
"See what sticks" is inherently biased toward fast spreaders that will outcompete and outspread other plants regardless of their ecosystem services. Even if they're natives.
But like the parent comment, I can't tell you that your own enjoyment isn't warranted in your own garden. The whole point of Indigene is to try and contribute to tilting the balance a bit more into being more aware and focused on the ecosystem benefits of what you plant or don't plant.
I think it's fine to have a human-centered mindset although the point of Indigene is to challenge that a bit and re-center the focus on the ecosystem services these plant provide. Ornamental and recreational qualities of a plant don't have zero value, but they definitely don't have 10 times the value of its ecosystem services.
But like everything, since the site is for humans, I do need to find a balance there. So point taken.
PS: swiftcoder and pavel_lishin had similar feedback about garden goals although with a different focus
I didn't use a cloud environment which is what I typically do on this project. I set it up to use OpenRouter to delegate to appropriate voice model for the narration (which still blows my mind, especially the French version as a native speaker). That cost barely $2 of credits.
The art direction was simply to remain coherent with both the tone and voice of the project but the visual identity and existing design and illustration elements.
All told I think the final cost was around $30 (at API rates) for the both the US English version and the French version. It was much cheaper to French, because it produced reusable HTML, CSS, and JS assets to animate the scenes in the video.
As someone who's done a lot of tedious video editing work and (lousy) motion graphics in the past for some educational content, it both terrified me (for all the hard-working folks who do this for a living) and made me realize how accessible producing this kind of video content is. It's a bit more palatable given the focus of this project, but I know many content producers, video editors & audio engineers (even voice actors!) who likely wouldn't find this exciting at all.
Given this project has no profit motive, I haven't paid artists (or programmers to make this hit home) to contribute to the project but if people find Indigene helpful (outside of me and a few friends) it's something I'd much rather do. I've done that in the past for Keep a Changelog for instance.
However, I don't think any of the stated goals lined up with my use case here - in this specific region, we're trying to deal with rapidly warming/drying summers, and I'd be looking for recommendations to help with soil water retention, shade, etc.
The alternatives (get it? https://indigene.app/alternatives) section focuses a bit more on the swapping non-natives or turf grasses that do poorly or require intense irrigation during heatwaves, but I really like the idea of adaptation planting.
Generally most natives are inherently better suited for heat waves and warming/drying summers since they tend to need little to no watering once established, but I agree it'd be nice to get a subset of plants that can create shade and help create a bit of an oasis.
Congrats on the launch!
And for now Indigene only has a group category for Jays, turkeys & woodpeckers: https://indigene.app/wildlife/acorn-birds
Ditto on that "good for wild turkeys" idea.
For deer hardiness, do you mean a way to find more deer hardy plants directly?
Love the idea for fast growers, especially to counter boxstore-bought yews and other non-natives people pick up because they want fast-growing shrubs for privacy hedges.
Bloom-timing is a cool one too, I already love the info I get from the propagation section (https://indigene.app/planting) on timing specific techniques and I added plant-specific propagation timing fairly recently (https://indigene.app/plants/symphoricarpos-albus#propagation), but having something equivalent for what to expect in a given season so you might have overlapping ecosystem support instead of one big bloom and nothing for months.
Thanks so much for all these great ideas!
Biggest obstacle for me is the giant invasive Ailanthus tree in my back yard. Apparently its roots produce allelopathic chemicals, and I’m finding that some native plants are unaffected (spicebush, wood fern) but others can’t cope at all (asters, cup plant).
I can’t find much if any info on this, so it’s been an ongoing experiment.
Also as an aside, it’s possible that the problem for your cup plant and asters is shade, not chemicals. There are a lot of species of aster so I can’t say for sure there, but cup plant is a prairie species that absolutely wants full sun.
Either way though, please, please, kill your tree of heaven.
Source: My wife does this for a living.
Was that not clear when you landed on the homepage? You can use your device location, zip code or town name to find natives specific to your location that way. It should find the region without you have to parse anything.
however
i think for an experienced developer using claude the app itself would be easy to build
it is the underlying domain knowledge of "what plant actually grows where" is the actual hard part and im not getting the impression that your system is reliable in that area yet
Maybe. But if everyone has to vibe code this themselves, it would be a hugely inefficient endeavour. Better to share these projects and help others!
You'll note I'm not reinventing things, most of this project is connecting dots between open science and already amazing projects like iNaturalist. But if you're familiar with it, you might also be frustrated with its extremely simplistic approach to identifying natives.
The reason I suspect is why your last point exists, except I've spent an inordinate amount of time and effort ensuring that Indigene doesn't claim a plant is native to a region (vs. a whole continent) when it's not. That makes it less comprehensive than other resources, but unless you can point to specific issues it doesn't make it less reliable.
I can't make you care, but if you might this is where I'd look if I were skeptical:
https://indigene.app/sources
https://indigene.app/confidence
https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/blob/main/DATA_SOUR...
https://indigene.app/plants/penstemon-digitalis (example of a status conflict)
https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/blob/main/app/scrip... (which is what does this status checek)
And if you care to call me out on any GIS mistakes (given my own lack of expertise in that area) this where you're likely to find mistakes: https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/blob/main/app/scrip...
I'm working on something VERY similar, but focused on a particular country, so I'm in the weeds (hah) on this and here's my feedback:
* I absolutely do not trust the data provenance here, and reading through all your links doubly so. You cannot trust claude to do analysis. Not only does it misattribute often, but fake sources and poor interpretations seep in. Without url sources tied to each claim it's inevitable that it rots. You'll have no way to keep track of claims across plants, and over time things slip.
I did see your data structs in github, but a lot of it is just LLM summaries of what it read. This isn't bad (and at some point necessary), but Claude in particularly is notorious on tasks like this, that don't pass human evaluations.
HOWEVER, that said, it's probably okay because it's not a life or death subject. Claims like "full sun" aren't very usable as is, and these can just serve as pointers for people to go research plants on their own.
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Excited to see where you get to!
- host plants (e.g. European caterpillar counts via Gaytán et al: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.73004)
- food sources
- pollen interactions
- broadly documented wildlife & plant dependencies
- etc
What is your skepticism based on? If you've identified a gap I'd be very obviously interested to close it. But if you think I'm allowing Claude to editorialize without verification, then I can assure you I'm not. I've definitely caught it trying to skip steps and "leave out" verification steps, especially for new region coverage where we have insufficient data for a clear cut boolean answer.
And like everything, I keep expanding the rings of what I cross-reference for each region. Hopefully the more keen eyes on this project will mean folks can spot fallacies and holes. But to be frank, I'm in this for the long run so I very mulch welcome it :-)
PS: https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/blob/main/DATA_SOUR... might be a good one to focus on if you hadn't picked it up yet
- Pacific Northwest
- Southern California
- Central California Coast
That's what I get for trying to limit myself to client-side APIs but I'll take your repro and try to address it. Here's the tracking issue if you're interested: https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/issues/251
I don't get your location, your browser does since everything is client-side by the reverse geocoding API definitely does for the map (and you can't take my word for it) so let me see if I can make this less annoying.
No point of trying to be privacy-conscious if the alternative is a pain in the ass, no argument there.
Edit: now covered in https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/issues/251 as well
For people with degraded ecology though this is a great resource.
Curious which regions you looked into.
Click twice on a filter to flip it to exclude instead? I can noodle on it for sure.
Did you try the print stylesheet? I did some work on it a few months ago but I really like the idea of being able to print out instructions, especially for the propagation technique pages.
And I think the click-to-exclude would be fine!
https://woodyinvasives.org/
Other super fun fact, do you know there are standards for needle punctures? hexarmor is expensive but its about the only thing I've found that will stop autumn olive woody thorns. They will punch through canvas and leather. Probably also useful for locusts.
https://www.floridainvasives.org/for-homeowners/
I told her guidance on "unplanting" invasives is definitely something I want to tackle but it can be tricky to navigate so the first update is this PR (https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/pull/247) providing better guidance on whether, when, how to "unplant" invasives and whose permission you might need.
Definitely curious about any and all invasive management resources so thanks fo the https://woodyinvasives.org link, I don't think I was aware of that one yet!
In the middle we're simply delaying. And each plant x biome has slightly different advice. We had a hard winter last year, and the damage done to autumn olive here in West Michigan was excellent. If we had consistently cold winters it wouldn't be a problem this far north, alas climate is going the other direction. If we had a native fungus like we have for our swamp alders, or a disease to prevent sprouting, the alders and the ash would out compete it.
As it stands the "best" way to remove large trees is via tractor due to its shallow roots, with dry summer tricloyr sprays on the root edge resprouts. (and never, ever backhoe it out, the disjointed root system splits and no longer spreads the triclopyr). And we have to worry about the permaculturists introducing things like seabuckthorn, another Elaeagnaceae that will probably be worse.
Garden design is painting with life beings, substrate, and time.
Not all must be free. I would strongly advice to just pay a few bucks to somebody with experience for a quick consulting job.
AI can't match what a skilled human that learned falling in every possible mistake. A wrong garden design may make your next thirty years pretty miserable removing invasive plants to protect the delicate ones, and even cost a lot of money trying to fix it. Sometimes just to live in the safest, blandest, more plain trophy garden possible.
As a bonus befriending a real plant lover and collector can be also a treasure of rare green gifts.
Landscape designers who are familiar with natives don't cost "a few bucks". I've hired one and not even in a particularly expensive area (Central Florida) just a year ago. So I think we have a different target audience in mind. If you're ready to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on native landscape design assistance, Indigene is unlikely to be the thing that pushes you to action. You've already been convinced.
On the other hand, encouraging people to iteratively rewild home gardens with natives with the the Doug Tallamy "Homegrownt National Park" (see https://indigene.app/homegrown) frame of mind isn't something that's hinged on whether a garden would earn landscape design trophies. A few native plants can already have an outsized impact on the native wildlife ecosystem in a given area.
I'd second your pitch for befriending folks that are also into native plants (or any plants) however. That can start with planting a handful yourself and offering seeds or cuttings to neighbors too.