About Donum ∞ Dei
"Gift of God" — medicinal plants for everyone, sourced and open.
Vision
Donum Dei is a free, bilingual, offline-capable medicinal plants database — built for people who want to know what's actually in their tea, their salve, their garden. Every fact has a traceable source. Free to use, no sign-up. No medical advice. No promises of healing. Just curated, evidence-backed knowledge from public-domain classics and regulatory monographs.
Inspired by Hildegard of Bingen, Pastor Künzle, Madaus, and modern phytopharmacology. Structured as an interactive map + table + quiz + permaculture planner.
What you can do here
Browse 281 plants, filter by use & season.
Search across names, constituents and descriptions — works offline.
From symptom to plant — curated, with sources and safety notes.
Where each species occurs naturally — on an interactive map.
Climate zone + garden type → personalized planting plan with bed layout.
Weekly view of garden tasks, exportable as .ics.
Good & bad neighbors — which plants get along.
Indoor- & pot-friendly species for windowsill and balcony.
Learn species, effects and toxicity the playful way.
Ready-made plant sets and permaculture principles for the self-sufficient garden.
As of August 2026
The 100 % Story
Donum Dei grew through 20 documented "waves" from 0 to 223 fully detailed plants. Each wave deepens 4–14 plants per cycle, merging Commission E, EMA HMPC, ESCOP, PFAF, Hildegard, and clinical-study data. Per plant: 4–8 uses, 5–15 constituents, full safety section, harvest notes, and companion-planting recommendations.
Waves XIX + XX (May 2026) lifted the database from 90.1 % to 100.00 % depth — 22 parallel sub-agents authored 22 new in-depth profiles in a single day, of which 14 were indoor/aromatic and 8 toxic plants. A briefing template (v1.12) with a mandatory "umlaut rule" prevented the drift that plagued earlier waves.
In late May 2026 a source-ID schema normalization followed: 775 redundant Wikipedia placeholders were removed
across 222 plants; 33 plants with bot-specific ID schemas were normalized to a unified
src_<type>_<plant> convention.
How we verify data
- EMA HMPC monographs for well-established use + traditional use as the regulatory backbone.
- Commission E monographs (BfArM, 1985–1994) as historical reference.
- ESCOP monographs for European phytotherapy consensus data.
- CrossRef DOI verification for every cited clinical study (HTTP-200 check).
- PFAF (Plants for a Future) for permaculture and folk uses.
- Public-domain classics: Hildegard, Künzle, Madaus, Henriette's Herbal — direct quotes only from public-domain originals.
- Wikipedia DE/EN as base lexicon with crosscheck.
- Sub-agent pipeline: every wave is steered by a brief template (v1.12) with explicit anti-hallucination rules.
- Verification pass after every wave: 5 audit agents check in parallel for invented sources + overstated evidence levels.
Tech stack
- • Astro 6 static site with i18n DE/EN
- • React 19 + TypeScript for interactive components (bed planner, quiz, filters)
- • Tailwind CSS 4 for styling
- • Leaflet + OpenStreetMap for location maps
- • Zod schema validation for all 297 entry JSONs (plants + mushrooms)
- • Vitest with 297 tests
- • Pagefind full-text search (offline-capable, no backend)
- • PWA via @vite-pwa/astro for offline capability
- • Cloudflare Pages hosting (GitHub: jpeter00995-del/Donum_Dei)
License + author
Code: MIT license. Texts and curated data: free to use with attribution (CC-BY-4.0 for own curation). Embedded public-domain quotes come from works whose copyright has expired (Hildegard, Künzle, Madaus, Wichtl originals). Images: exclusively Wikimedia Commons under CC-conformant licenses with proper credits.
Built by Maikel Ganske (Varna, Bulgaria) — solo developer, self-sufficiency enthusiast, working on the database since 2024.
Frequently asked
Is Donum Dei free? ▾
Yes, completely. No sign-up, no ads, no trackers, no cost. The code is open source (MIT).
Can I use the site offline? ▾
Yes. Donum Dei is a PWA — after the first visit the database and search work without an internet connection. On mobile you can add it to your home screen.
Is the medicinal information medically reviewed? ▾
Every fact is sourced (EMA HMPC, Commission E, ESCOP, clinical studies, public-domain classics). This is not medical advice — it is curated, traceable knowledge for education and documentation.
Where do the images come from? ▾
Exclusively from Wikimedia Commons under CC-conformant licenses, with full image credits.
I found an error — what should I do? ▾
Very welcome. Use the feedback page or report it directly in the GitHub repository.
⚠️ Important
This database is for educational and documentation purposes only. It does not replace medical advice, diagnosis, or therapy. Medicinal plants can cause interactions, allergies, and poisoning. For health concerns: consult a physician or pharmacist. Wild foraging only with reliable identification — many species are easily confused with dangerous look-alikes.