It started with one plant.
A Platycerium willinckii, mounted on a cedar board, hanging in my living room. I bought it on impulse from a local nursery. Within a week, I was hooked. Within a month, I had seven. Within three months, I was rearranging furniture to make room for more.
If you've never kept staghorn ferns, it's hard to explain the obsession. They're ancient, alien-looking plants that grow shields and antler-shaped fronds. Each species is different. Each specimen has personality. Watching a new shield frond slowly unfurl over weeks is the most meditative thing I've ever experienced.
The problem? Keeping track of them.
The App That Started It All
I was taking photos of every new frond, scribbling care notes in random places, and losing track of when I last watered what. So I did what any obsessed developer would do: I built StaghornPal, an iOS app to create digital ID cards for each plant, log care activities, and track growth over time.
It worked beautifully for my own collection. But then something unexpected happened.
Collectors who downloaded the app started reaching out. Not with bug reports or feature requests, but with questions:
- "What's the difference between P. willinckii and P. bifurcatum?"
- "My fern's shield frond is turning brown. Is that normal?"
- "How do I mount a staghorn on driftwood?"
- "Where can I find reliable info about hybrid cultivars?"
These weren't app problems. These were knowledge problems. And I realized that the Platycerium community was scattered across Facebook groups, Reddit threads, and outdated forum posts. There was no single, reliable, well-organized resource.
Building StaghornFern.org
So I built StaghornFern.org — a free, open knowledge base dedicated entirely to Platycerium care.
The site has three core sections:
- Species Index — Detailed profiles for 18+ native Platycerium species, each with care difficulty ratings, light requirements, watering frequency, and identification tips.
- Cultivation Guides — Practical articles on watering, lighting, mounting, pest control, and everything a beginner or intermediate grower needs to know.
- Hybrid Database — A reference tool for hybrid cultivar parentage and lineage, something that previously only existed in collectors' personal notebooks.
Everything is available in English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese — because the most active Platycerium communities span Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and the English-speaking world.
Why Not Just Put It in the App?
Fair question. I considered it.
But educational content doesn't belong behind an app download. If someone Googles "how to water a staghorn fern," they should find a clear answer immediately — not an App Store link. The knowledge should be free, searchable, and accessible to everyone, whether or not they use StaghornPal.
This is something I feel strongly about at ElevenApril. Our apps are tools for doing. Our content is for learning. They complement each other, but they serve different needs.
"An app helps you do things. A knowledge base helps you understand things. Both matter, but they shouldn't be the same product."
What I Learned Building a Knowledge Site
Building StaghornFern.org taught me things that building apps never did:
- Content is harder than code. Writing a clear, accurate guide on staghorn fern mounting techniques took more research and revision than building the feature to log mounting events in the app.
- Structure matters enormously. A species profile needs to answer specific questions in a specific order. Beginners need different information than advanced collectors. The information architecture is the product.
- Community knowledge is fragmented. The best information lives in people's heads, in Facebook comments, in local plant society newsletters. Gathering, verifying, and organizing it is real work.
- Multilingual content is a multiplier. Some of the best Platycerium growers communicate primarily in Chinese. Making the site trilingual wasn't just nice to have — it was essential for accuracy.
The Bigger Picture
At ElevenApril, we build apps for people who care deeply about something — whether that's their life goals, their health, or their plants. But caring deeply about something means wanting to learn, not just to track.
StaghornFern.org is our first experiment in building a knowledge resource alongside an app. It won't be the last.
If you're curious about these beautiful, ancient plants, start with the beginner guides. If you already have a collection, the species index might help you identify what you've got.
And if you want to track your growing collection with care logs and growth timelines, well — that's what StaghornPal is for.
Have questions about staghorn fern care? Visit StaghornFern.org or drop us a line.