Odd to see one of the best native plant communicators referenced on HN but I'll use to opportunity to mention a side project I'd been delaying diving in for years and finally committed to recently if there are folks here who want to not only learn to identify crucial native flora (and fauna) but contribute to restoring local native plants that are critical to ecosystems.
So, mini show HN: <a href="https://indigene.app" rel="nofollow">https://indigene.app is a browser-only, offline & mobile-friendly, no account, no ads, open source tool to help you find native plants that would thrive exactly where you are. I've tried to make it as thoroughly sourced as possible but focus heavily on folks that have less experience with gardening and native plants in general.
I've been adding coverage to a handful of US and French ecoregions for now (what I know) and you can already do plant lookups by GPS, postal code, and ecoregion). The app will help you identify you spot, sun, soil, and specific ecosystem support goals (wildlife, birds, erosion or runoff control, growth) and offer a sortable list you can fine-tune with requirements (max height/width, no thorns, pet safe, spread, zero watering, etc.).
There's a lot more in there I've wanted for years like bloom windows, host species counts, dependent native wildlife, growth-over-time charts, propagation tips, and tons of sourced references that overlap with a lot of the resources Joey Santore and other native plant folks reference.
None of this replaces useful tools like iNaturalist whose excellent open API I use to show what native plants look like in Indigene, but hopefully it encourages folks who have the means and the time to start rebuilding local ecosystems we've neglected or actively destroyed.
PS: because I can't help it, the app has detailed release notes gendered from its changelog at <a href="https://indigene.app/release-notes/" rel="nofollow">https://indigene.app/release-notes/. It also takes privacy & safety very seriously: <a href="https://indigene.app/privacy" rel="nofollow">https://indigene.app/privacy
I'm a Visiting Scientist at UC Berkeley focusing on AI for ecology.
Always great to see fellow technologists in this space!
For the past few years I've maintained a free open source project called Ecodash (<a href="https://ecodash.ai" rel="nofollow">https://ecodash.ai) covering the world's native plants, with trait filters.
While I'm also an entrepreneur and *do* believe there is a lot of financial opportunity in this space, I also really just want to see ecosystems thrive.
It’s so nice to know you’ve worked on this. I’m very curious what sources you used.
The most fun I had with Indigene was when I decided to add French ecoregions so my parents could use the app too. Most of the work is in this PR where I used a recently published study’s plant host species data to offer ecosystem value/services metrics since the Tallamy data doesn’t cover that: <a href="https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/pull/53" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/pull/53
That stuff reignitated the kind of deep data hunt fever I haven’t had since my COVID Tracking Project days when I was finding random ArcGIS dashboards and extracting data from their JSON calls to find some reliable case data.
I’m bummed I didn’t find your project before. I kept looking for something when I moved from Florida to Washington after converting my entire yard there. Having to learn a whole new ecoregion was rough and it made me think the barrier should be drastically lower for people who aren’t as motivated.
On the financial opportunity side, I hoped for a while that there may be a way to align our best interest as a species (and our ecosystem) with what our modern societies value but the last decade has made it clear to me that neither governments nor private enterprise are capable to remain as focused as they need to be. Plus leveraging worldwide public-funded science to make a living seems a bit odd if I can instead use my engineering expertise to not require unnecessary waste of resources (servers, more LLM tokens, etc.) as the ecosystem rapidly degrades.
olivierlacan · · focus · HN ↗
So, mini show HN: <a href="https://indigene.app" rel="nofollow">https://indigene.app is a browser-only, offline & mobile-friendly, no account, no ads, open source tool to help you find native plants that would thrive exactly where you are. I've tried to make it as thoroughly sourced as possible but focus heavily on folks that have less experience with gardening and native plants in general.
I've been adding coverage to a handful of US and French ecoregions for now (what I know) and you can already do plant lookups by GPS, postal code, and ecoregion). The app will help you identify you spot, sun, soil, and specific ecosystem support goals (wildlife, birds, erosion or runoff control, growth) and offer a sortable list you can fine-tune with requirements (max height/width, no thorns, pet safe, spread, zero watering, etc.).
There's a lot more in there I've wanted for years like bloom windows, host species counts, dependent native wildlife, growth-over-time charts, propagation tips, and tons of sourced references that overlap with a lot of the resources Joey Santore and other native plant folks reference.
None of this replaces useful tools like iNaturalist whose excellent open API I use to show what native plants look like in Indigene, but hopefully it encourages folks who have the means and the time to start rebuilding local ecosystems we've neglected or actively destroyed.
PS: because I can't help it, the app has detailed release notes gendered from its changelog at <a href="https://indigene.app/release-notes/" rel="nofollow">https://indigene.app/release-notes/. It also takes privacy & safety very seriously: <a href="https://indigene.app/privacy" rel="nofollow">https://indigene.app/privacy
legel · · focus · HN ↗
Always great to see fellow technologists in this space!
For the past few years I've maintained a free open source project called Ecodash (<a href="https://ecodash.ai" rel="nofollow">https://ecodash.ai) covering the world's native plants, with trait filters.
Code here: <a href="https://github.com/legel/ecodash" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/legel/ecodash
While I'm also an entrepreneur and *do* believe there is a lot of financial opportunity in this space, I also really just want to see ecosystems thrive.
Keep up the great work!
olivierlacan · · focus · HN ↗
The most fun I had with Indigene was when I decided to add French ecoregions so my parents could use the app too. Most of the work is in this PR where I used a recently published study’s plant host species data to offer ecosystem value/services metrics since the Tallamy data doesn’t cover that: <a href="https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/pull/53" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene/pull/53
That stuff reignitated the kind of deep data hunt fever I haven’t had since my COVID Tracking Project days when I was finding random ArcGIS dashboards and extracting data from their JSON calls to find some reliable case data.
I’m bummed I didn’t find your project before. I kept looking for something when I moved from Florida to Washington after converting my entire yard there. Having to learn a whole new ecoregion was rough and it made me think the barrier should be drastically lower for people who aren’t as motivated.
On the financial opportunity side, I hoped for a while that there may be a way to align our best interest as a species (and our ecosystem) with what our modern societies value but the last decade has made it clear to me that neither governments nor private enterprise are capable to remain as focused as they need to be. Plus leveraging worldwide public-funded science to make a living seems a bit odd if I can instead use my engineering expertise to not require unnecessary waste of resources (servers, more LLM tokens, etc.) as the ecosystem rapidly degrades.