pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

John Schinnerer wrote:

Great comments, I can see you've been doing some thinking.

> I've had an idea for a place to start, functionally speaking - perhaps it's a
> way to approach creating a core of an extensible system.  Anyhow, bear with me
> as I start from zero:
>
> What we call 'guilds' in permaculture are groupings of patterns we've observed
> in 'natural' systems.
> SNIP
> They then realized that with some knowledge of plant 'families' and
> associations and similarities and differences and so on, they could substitute
> one plant for another in these guilds.  They might even be able to create
> entire guilds from human-chosen plants, attempting to imitate adequately
> enough (or even improve upon) whatever it was they thought made a guild a
> "good thing" out there in the world.
>
> So now we have a concrete application emerging from these observations -
> manipulate a "known guild."  This seems like a basic PC thing to support and
> has already been mentioned as a possible goal of this project.
>
> So - a place to start DB-wise - very simple explanation:
>
> Build up a database of observed ("known") guilds.
>
> Also build up a database (a conceptual separation - not necessarily two
> separate DBs) of lots and lots of plants.
>
> Implement logic to take a "known guild" in the DB and provide info on plants
> that could be substituted into that guild.

Yes, great. I've come to a similar conclusion on this one in the
White Oak Plant Guild
        
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/pcplantdb/showthing.php?BOTNAME=White+Oak%2FHazelnut+community

I've divided things up so the Guild can have
        Natural Guild Members           - grow in wild
and     Cultivated Guild Members        - versions for humans

Building on what you have written I can see that we might have
        Natural Guilds  - guilds observed in wild
        Cultivated Guilds - guilds used by PC people
with some sort of linking between the two.

We might also want a "search for related plants" button
to find closely related plants. Maybe same genus or same family.

I can see that a visual interface wight be much better for
assembling these things the rather static web forms interfaces
which lack on the input side.

I can also see a need for Chad's style searches which give
a 1 paragraph description of the plant, this would make
selecting alternative plants easier.

> Some elaboration:
>
> "Known guild" data will identify individual plants in the guild as well as how
> a given plant fits into the guild (e.g. interrelatings in the guild).
>
> The logic will take a specified plant in the known guild and search individual
> plant info to match specified similarities and differences for the
> substitution plant(s).  For example, same climate zone and rainfall and
> shade/sun tolerance but different soil type and produces human-edible food. 
> Or, one climate zone colder with more rainfall and less sun and produces
> animal fodder and fixes nitrogen.  And so on...

Indeed. Its actually very easy to add these characteristics
to Guilds (use the "add new section" part of the main page).

> I'll leave it at that - that's a big chunk already to actually detail out,
> spec, design and implement.

The spec is quite a big thing, I've done some specing wiki
but a lot more though and detail is needed.

> It's also small and simple enough to seem doable at a basic level.  It can be
> made more complex incrementally - we don't have to have the kitchen sink level
> of plant and guild relevant data to get a model working.

Indeed.

Rich

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