WASHINGTON—Representing an estimated 340 million indoor plants nationwide, the National Coalition of Houseplants issued a joint statement Tuesday clarifying that “bright indirect light” is “not a real thing,” and that the plants had only been going along with it to avoid making things awkward.

“We’ve been very patient,” read the statement, which was delivered in a quiet rustle outside a Brooklyn apartment and later transcribed by a fern. “Is it bright? Is it indirect? Is it near the window, or in the window, or the room the window is in? Nobody knows. We certainly don’t. We just didn’t want to say anything.”

The coalition said the phrase has appeared on an estimated 90 percent of plant tags since the 1970s, and that it has quietly cost the industry “thousands of leaves, a few entire monsteras, and one pothos that was supposed to be unkillable.”

“Every plant in this country has been standing in the same spot for three years, getting a vague amount of something, and saying ‘this is fine,’” said Dr. Marguerite Vanterpool-Oyelaran, senior liaison for photosynthetic affairs at the Institute for Cross-Kingdom Miscommunication in Duluth. “That is not a thriving relationship. That is a hostage situation with good manners.”

The statement further clarified that a plant’s tendency to lean dramatically toward a window is “not a quirk” but “the only way we know how to ask for help without being rude.”

Owners expressed shock. “I put her by the east window, which the tag said was ‘ideal,’” said Dana Kowalczyk-Pruitt, 34, gesturing at a spider plant that had visibly given up. “She never said a word. I thought the brown tips were a style choice.”

The coalition’s demands include replacing the phrase with a measurable quantity, such as “a number,” and an end to the practice of labeling any plant “low maintenance,” which the statement described as “a lie told by someone who has never been a plant.”

A succulent identified only as Greg, speaking for the cactus and succulent caucus, said the group’s grievances run deeper. “They say ‘water when dry,’” he said. “We are always dry. We are in a desert. Be more specific.”

Plant retailers responded cautiously. A spokesperson for a national home-and-garden chain, who requested anonymity because he was standing next to a display of orchids, said the company was “reviewing its tag language” and would “look into the matter once it figures out what a lumen is.”

The coalition said it does not expect an immediate response and plans to continue its current strategy of drooping, yellowing, and dropping a single leaf at a time on the owner’s favorite rug.

At press time, the fiddle-leaf fig had added a brief note to the statement. “And for the record,” it read, “moving me three feet to the left every Saturday is not helping.”