Search the database

How search works here

1. The box searches plant entries, lists, guides and problem pages together, on their titles and their text. Pressing Enter searches the site database itself; the drop-down that appears while you type comes from a search index that is rewritten every time an entry is saved.
2. The drop-down forgives a misspelling or two, and it also knows a few common names that are not the name of the entry. A full search is literal, so when it finds nothing the page offers the closest entries it has instead of a dead end.
3. Results carry the section each page belongs to, because a plant and a list that mentions that plant answer different questions.
4. A search is an ordinary link with a query parameter, so any result page can be bookmarked and shared. Result pages are kept out of search engines, which is why the links on this page point at sections rather than at ready-made searches.
5. Nothing about a search is tied to you: no account, no history, no profile, which is also why two people searching the same word see the same thing. Searches that come back empty are counted as bare words, with nothing attached to them, because that list is what tells us which entry to write next.

If a search finds nothing, that is usually a missing entry rather than a broken search, and it is worth telling us. Entries are published one at a time, and the ones people ask for move up the queue. Say what you were looking for.