pcplantdb

[Richard Morris <webmaster@pfaf.org>]

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
--
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