pcplantdb

["georg parlow" <georg@websuxxess.com>]

hi geeks et al:

first a clearification of terminology, from  my side. imho there is no such
thing as a "medicinal guild" - guilds in my understanding are assemblies of
plants (and animals), that form a community in which every member has better
chances in the overall survival. we can work on incorporating as much
medicinal, edible etc. plants as possible, but if we use real and complex
guilds, there will always be some species involved, that serve no other
function but making the guild more stable by benefitting the other members
directly or indirectly.

>1.  What would be want the ultimate plant/guild database tobe able to
>acheive?  brainstorm *goals*, forget tech format for now. get specific
>(i.e. I want to be able to insert x,y,z criteria and design a medicinal
>guild for my local region...)

i feel a db like this would have to start with known guilds, so when i type
in a "main" species for my desired guild (usually a tree, i would reckon),
it tells me with which other species this one likes to guild itself (under
different climatic conditions the same species might guild up with different
complementary species). and then i want the db to give me possible
substitutions for each member of the guild - somehow ranked by propability
of success (this means: high propability = lots of similarities like same
family, same growth-type, same rooting preference (deep, shallow, etc), same
preferences for soiltype, climate, etc - decreasing propability by
decreasing similarities).

if this is christmas wishtime i would also ask for the programm (or some
person who did the research) to abstract some generalized rules for guilding
from the known guilds, as to be able to give me some suggestions for my
guilds, even if there are no known natural guilds for my desired species, or
only too few to make up a healthy guild.

and a cross linking to a db for plant ressources would be desirable - at
least addresses for activists and ngos that are active within the region
where the named plant is part of the natural (cultured or wild) flora, and
into the botanical garden network (academic exchange of genetic ressources).
the reference list as in pfaf could/should be supplemented with the contacts
for the people, who have previously worked with this or closely related
guilds.

if we also want to cater for the less experienced designers it would also
have a function, where i just type in the climatic/soil/exposure conditions,
and receive some suggestions for main guild species.

>Also specify fee (free or paid), format
>(web or cd rom)-- how this tool is accessed.

this is a tough question. of course i do not want to pay for anything and
give anything for everyone for free - but there is a lot of skill and labor
involved, and i am not convinced, that there will ever end up enough data in
the base for the project to fly. web is fine.

keep going
keep growing
georg