pcplantdb

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

Aloha,

Busy moving and trying to finish a friend's NPO web site before a grant
reveiw, so I'll be brief...no, really I will... ;-)

> ... However I would have 2 concerns: what if a plant is
> part of more than one natural-plant-community (would you be able to
> specify “biomes,” and would this help)?

User could see overview of all observed communities it is part of and choose
relevant one(S), or limit search by climate or bioregion or whatever.

> And how would this help users
> come up with novel and functional combinations of plants?

If a plant community is observed in "nature" to work well (synergistic;
self-sustaining system; etc.) but doesn't produce much *direct* yeild for
humans, we look to substitute "more useful" plants into the community - eating
apples instead of crabapples, edible bulbs instead of inedible bulbs, etc.
etc.


> 2. “I would want to look for all known relationships of (for example)
> White Oak with various other plants.”  Isn’t this what our proposed tool
> would allow users to do?

To the point they were in the DB, I assume so.

> users
> of our proposed tool would choose an initial plant.  Clicking on the
> plant, for example the White Oak, would bring up all the plants that
> White Oak has a “positive” relationship with ...
perhaps, “positive” relationship lines could be one
> > color and “negative” relationship lines could be another
> synonyms and antonyms in the VT.)  And users could click on the
> relationship line itself (the line between the original plant and any
> plant it has a relationship with), and learn more about the relationship.

Sounds good as far as one possible UI goes.  Still need back end to build this
on though.

> (Also, clicking on the relationship line would somewhat alleviate the
> concern: “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.”

It's still a relationship between just one plant and just one other plant, so
the scale represented hasn't changed.

As long as it's made clear that this is a particular tool for a particular
scale and purpose I don't have a problem with that.

> 4.  Someone described guilds as “examples of patterns to look for and
> work with locally, not recipes.”  Yes indeed.  So perhaps, could the tool
> instead be theme-based instead of plant based?  For example, instead of
> working with specific plants, you work with specific plant
> characteristics (fixes nitrogen, likes partial shade, shallow roots).

That's been my assumption all along - the whole point is to provide functional
information and be able to search for plant functions and return particular
plants.  That's what makes it a PC database compared to others where the focus
is always on plant names, plant names, bloody plant names.  Linneaus went
"mad," you know, after he "finished" his taxonomy...

> Along the lines of what Richard Archer wrote, “we would need to work
> out why those plants were synergistic (or antagonistic) and use these
> findings to hone the search for synergies.”  Exactly.

I just want to know that they are (have been observed to be) synergistic (or
not), then I can start experimenting.  "Why" can be useful but is not
essential to start with.

>I am interested in Chad’s Eden tool.  How can we integrate our
> proposed tool with Eden?  Or, what might Eden need (if we were to build
> off of Eden) in order to incorporate the wealth of information about
> plant relationships, and make it useful and useable in helping people
> design functional plant-communities?

Haven't had time to look at it, and won't until I don't know when, so no
useful comment at present...

> I initially understood our intention as organizing information about
> plant relationships

And plant functions/functionality - I want to search for a fast-growing
wet-tropical N-fixer that creates high canopy partial shade and get back some
specific plant options.  That sort of thing.

> I veered towards GBI’s
> and the Visual Thesaurus as a model because I find parallels between, on
> the one hand, relationships between words in language and, on the other,
> relationships between plants in natural-plant-communities.  Furthermore,
> I find a web-like interface to be ideal for mapping and representing
> relationships (versus a table or dry text).

That would be a great front end, and as I've said before we can put any front
ends we want on it - some like visual graphs, some like tables and charts,
whatever.
There has to be a viable back end or discussing front ends is a waste of
bandwidth, especially since any front end is possible.

As for complexity, that can build over time.  Start with plant
functionality/characteristics DB as a design resource.  Add relationships as
time/resources/knowledge allows.

> Finally, someone asked, “Is a guild design tool really the number one
> software <-> permaculture intersection on peoples lists?”  This is a
> critical question.  What do people think?

I'd have use for a PC-centric plant DB because I'm weak on plant knowledge -
but I can work on learning that in the 'real' world of course.

I really don't see much necessity for computers in PC design, but a PC-centric
plant DB would help aggregate one possible answer to one of the most frequent
questions in PDCs and other PC workshops - "where do we look up all this
functional info on plants when we're designing?"

cheers,
John S.


John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Design & Technology Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net