Care basics for the most popular houseplants — light, water, humidity, and whether they're safe around pets.
Care needs vary with your home and season — use this as a starting point and watch your plant. Pet-safety follows general ASPCA toxicity guidance; if your pet may have eaten a plant, contact your vet.
Every plant in the guide is described with the same fields, so two species can be compared without translating between different care sheets.
Low light means a spot a few feet back from a north-facing window; bright indirect means a room that stays light all day but where the sun never falls on the leaves; direct means a south-facing sill. Most problems blamed on watering are really a light problem, so match the light tag to the room you actually have and adjust everything else afterwards.
A low water tag means letting most of the pot dry out between drinks, medium means watering once the top inch or two is dry, and high means keeping the mix evenly damp. Check with a finger rather than a calendar, because the same plant drinks far less between late autumn and early spring than it does in summer growth.
Each entry is flagged pet-safe or toxic, following the widely-cited ASPCA toxicity listings. Toxic here usually means unpleasant rather than lethal — mouth irritation and stomach upset from calcium-oxalate crystals is the common case — but a flagged plant still belongs out of reach of a cat or dog that chews. If a pet has already eaten part of a plant, contact a vet rather than waiting to see what happens.
The search box matches common and botanical names, and the Low light, Pet-safe and Beginner-friendly chips narrow the grid to plants that suit the room and the household you have. If you already own a plant but do not know what it is, the plant identifier names it from a photo, and the tree identifier does the same for anything woody in the garden.