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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] Guild rant

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  • From: Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>
  • To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Guild rant
  • Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 12:26:56 +0000

Good to hear your voice again chad.

As an intellectual concept guilds are very sexy, but IMO a bit of an
oversimplification that has acquired a lot of popularity via Toby
Hemenway (Gaia's Garden), and not something that translates easily
into software. My definition of a guild is a group of species that
have positive relationships when arranged in a particular pattern.
The guild information consists of both the list of species and the
pattern of arrangement. I think guilds can get in the way by
overemphasizing a particular scale of subgrouping (the guild level) in
the design to the extent that other levels of scale are not as
available; such as the relationship that only two different species
might have on the smaller scale and on the larger scale, viewing the
relationships and functionality of the system as a whole. I also
think that guild focused design has the potential to endorse a
particular grouping as being an infallible and superior implementation
to the point of stifling the creative exploration of what could lead
to even better systems. The total complexity of the relationships
within a typical guild is staggering and can only be represented (or
understood for that matter) simplistically at best. I do think this
is worthwhile though and agree that a graph based mapping interface
would be an interesting and useful method of exploring these
connections. The hard part of creating a good software tool is IMO
collecting and entering the relationship data not creating the
interface. Guilds modeled after natural plant communities are also
highly bioregional and the translation from natural plant community to
guild is not usually obvious (and therefore not algorithmic), further
complicating an accurate software model. I do think that guilds are a
valuable design method that should be included in every
permaculturalists design tool kit, but I don't think any tool is an
adequate substitute for hands on experience and a sensitive intuition.

I must admit I'm a little in the dark about guilds too,
I've so far only found one documented example of a guild
on the net, the White Oak Plant Guild, and it would be great
to have some more examples. I do think that it would be
useful to have some consistent way of documenting guilds
and peoples observations of the interactions between plants.

That said I think the no 1 priority of the project is the
ability to add new information about plants and add new plants.

Ok, back to guilds. If we widen the concept of a guild
to be "a collection of plants and the relationships between them",
then we can use this to cover:
companion plants - a collection of 2 plants
observations of natural communities
the plants in my garden - useful for sharing our
experiences
relationships with insects, diseases etc.

I don't think its too difficult to implement a simple way
to represent guilds/relationships. For each guild
there could be a separate page, and each plant in the
guild could have a two way link with the guild.
A simple table like
Plant | Collection | Relationship Type
White Oak | White Oak Guild | Guild member
could do. At this stage I don't think we should do
anything more complicated. As Chad points points out
we don't really know enough about guilds and the
structure of the relationships to really attempt anything more.

On a side note, New Scientist recently published an
atlas which included Biomes which are "important ecological
communities or networks of communities that extend over large
areas." The following Biomes were identified
Ice, tundra permafrost, tundra interfrost,
boreal semi-arid, boreal humid, temperate semi-arid,
temperate humid, Mediterranean warm, medeterranean cold,
desert tropical, desert temperate, desert cold,
tropical semi-arid, tropical humid.
It would be fun to link plants to the Biomes they occur
in naturally.

As to platforms, I'd be quite happy to work with the Eden
code base (must have a detailed look at it some time).

ttfn

Rich
--
Plants for a Future: 7000 useful plants
Web: http://www.pfaf.org/ same as http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/
Post: 1 Lerryn View, Lerryn, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, PL22 0QJ
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