pcplantdb

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

Aloha,

> I reckon you can't beat Linnaeus' original system.  When I know the
> FAMILY to which a genus/species belongs it can speak volumes to me even
> if I have never come across it before.

I agree that the family, genus, species stuff needs to be in the DB.  I,
however, want to search by functions, inputs, outputs, sizes, yeilds,
lifespans, climates, etc. etc. - plain language stuff that comes directly from
my design needs and gets me some options for plants that will suit my needs. 
I know jack about latin names and so they don't tell me anything (and I don't
want to have to learn them for the DB to be useful for me).

> Common names are a worry, the same plant can have 10 different ones, or
> 2 different plants could have the same one.  I just did a job today
> where "Curry Plant" (a grey low-growing shrub - Helichrysum sp.) was
> specified with no botanical name.  They delivered "Curry Plant" (a tall
> green tree -Murraya sp.) so we couldn't use them.

I think one possible strength of a PC plant DB would be to (finally?) start to
clear up some of this sort of common name confusion by cross-referencing it
with other pieces of information that will enable users to find the "right"
plant with a given common name.  Create a rich enough context for the common
name so that it will be more uniquely identifiable.

For example in Hawai'i there is a tree everyone calls "ironwood" - and a PFAF
search on ironwood turns up several hits, for plants of very different types,
none of which are the "ironwood" in Hawai'i.  That's because PFAF doesn't at
present (AFAIK) have a way to search in that sort of context, e.g. for "the
latin name for the plant called 'ironwood' in Hawai'i" - but I am assuming
that sort of ability - both input and output - would at some point anyhow be
part of a PC plant DB.

> Knowing the height and width at maturity would also be important for
> guild selection purposes.
>
> Is this the sort of thing you mean?

Yeah, definitely.



John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
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