pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

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"'