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  • From: Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>
  • To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [pcplantdb] Re: Guild rant
  • Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 11:12:31 -0600

More on guilds:

I think the information I would most like to have that I don't is that
of [documented] natural plant communities because there are likely to
be positive or at least neutral relationships between members. Even
if I don't understand what they are I can extrapolate from the natural
community to form groups of species that are likely to do well.
Having information about natural communities would allow some
virtualization of the process.

> Plant | Collection | Relationship Type
> White Oak | White Oak Guild | Guild member

This is just being fussy, but I think having two plants and a
relationship would make a more useful table. The complex part is the
knowing and describing the relationship. For example, what
relationship does a hawthorn have with an oak? It's not a negative
one, but in what way is it positive? Is it just positional? How do
you [concisely] describe a positional relationship? Also two plants
can have a number of different relationships. A nitrogen fixer could
have a positional relationship, a beneficial one, and perhaps others.
How do you know what they are and how do you represent them in a
database? This is where I think the designing with guilds becomes too
complex to be easily assisted with computers.

--
Chad Knepp
perl -e 'print pack"H*","7079674067616c617465612e6f72670a"'




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