pcplantdb

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> I think it would be only marginally useful for every plant which has
> either a positive or negative relationship with White Oak to be tagged
> as such in the database. Because even though that info would be useful
> if I wanted to build a White Oak guild, what if I wanted a Red Oak guild?
> It's most likely that all the White Oak relationships would be relevant,
> but a search wouldn't return any of them.

I see your point.  My mental model (as opposed to the way I wrote it ;-) was
actually more like what you're saying here:

> Instead, I would think it better to define all the characteristics of
> White Oak and the other plants and then run an analysis of the data to
> find potential synergies.

This would be a natural for an object DB (query the objects for desired
characteristics).

> I think analysis of relationships between various plants (and animals)
> needs to be run at a deeper level to be useful.

Yes...I just found an old article in PC Drylands Journal by Joel Glanzberg
(#14, spring 1991, "Permaculture: a way of seeing").  It has a sidebar called
"A knot in the flow called a guild" where he describes a local guild he
observed and how he thinks it came to be through a process of actions of
animals and plants over time.  It's a very complex, clearly non-linear,
wholistic and 'chaos-based' process.  I think to understand and design guilds
that 'work' we need to embrace that kind of process - as you say:

> We would need to work
> out why those plants were synergistic (or antagonistic) and use these
> findings to hone the search for synergies. So, a Guild database would
> be a useful thing... but mostly as a starting point for research.


John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
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