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  • From: Richard Morris <webmaster AT pfaf.org>
  • To: Permaculture Information Web <piw AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [piw] Q2: what criteria do we want to record for plants.
  • Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 13:27:13 +0000

Heide Hermary wrote:

More feedback on suggestions for information we would like to record. (within text below)

Richard Morris wrote:


Q2: what criteria do we want to record for plants.

Botanical names and authors, Synonyms and authors


Definitely the botanical names / synomyms, thre can be many for some plants, plus they keep changing as reserach into the genetic origin of plants progresses. Authors - I don't know - not something that's of the slightest importance to me.

Yep, I can't get too excited by author either. It does have some minor use in that there are cases where the same name is given to two different plants. However, the Authors of the two are different so Botanical Name + Author can uniquely identify a plant.

Author info is farily easy to get from the internet, so I see not harm in including it. Whether we actually want to display it is another matter.

I also like to see an explanation of the botanical name - what the name means. (obviously need plain text entry for this)

Yep, I've glean some of this info from Dictionary of Botanical Epithets
http://www.winternet.com/~chuckg/dictionary.html


Common names
Possibly Language, and Locale for names


For sure, and once again an explanation of what the names mean. So much neat folklore, and also often a reflection of the medicinal or ecological importance of the plant. (plain text entry)

Nice idea. Hence

Common Names
Language
Locale
Explanation


Brief description of plant
1 paragraph summary of plant


Personally I don't see how one can summarize something in a paragraph that takes several pages to properly describe. Have never been a fan of executive summaries - don't see the point. In fact it's always someone else's point, these summaries acan only be written with a specific agenda in mind / subjective perspective. I'd rather spend more energy on proper description.

The idea of this is no such much in the actual page about a plant, but more for use in the results of searches, where 50 or so plants might be listed. To make the selection of plants from this list easier a short description could be useful. We could keep this very simple, for example

Tree with edible fruit and medicinal properties.

Photos of plant

Absolutely, lots and lots, preferably in the field where those specific features are described.


Botanical clasification
Rank: i.e. Cultivar, Species, Genus, Family
Parent: For species and genus - which family they are part of
Clasification scheme used:
Different schemes, such as conquist put plants in different families.

We already covered botanical names above, so family (ies) certainly is important. See no need to go beyond that into order, classes, etc.

Could posibly have a page for each family, and there indicate the higher orders. Some higher info can be useful, for example the monocot/dicot distinction. A broad category like

Litchen/Moss/Fern/Gymnosperms (Confiers and related)/Moncot/Dicot

could be handy. There are some patterns I've found intersting in this stuff have a look at
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/D_fam.html

Its also has some use for plant ID. For the most part easy to get this information from the internet.

Hazards
Hazards to humans
Toxicity

What might be a chemical hazard under some circumstances would be medicine under others.
Physiological hazards (plant defenses?) might be useful to humans as well . these are important features, and we might want to label them something else.

Indeed. Happy for a different lable for this. As responsible internet citizens I feel that we do need to include the negatives as well as positives for a plant.

Hazards to environment
Invasive plants
Locales where plants are invasive

Would also like to know what it is about the environment / plant relationship that allows it to become so invase. For some plants we know, for others we don't. Elaine Ingham describes how changing the soil biology changes the flora / fauna above ground. It's more complext than simply putting that plant in a conceptual box.

Locales in some way answer this, telling us where the plants are considered invasive.
Definately can include some text field to explain more.

Diseases
What diseases they may be carries of.
For example sale of hawthorns is restricted in this country as they can spread diseases.

Talked about this earlier and would like to refer to plant predators instead, and yes they would be different in different locales.

WHta I'm trying to get at hear is more the effect that introducing a plant might have on your ecosystem. So its not just this plant is "suceptable to this disease", but more this plant is sometime "a carrier for this disease" so planting a hawthorn might adversly affect your apple crop.

This could be a relationship
(Plant, is a carrier of,Disease)
or
(Plant, is a vector for, this type of insect)

Native range or Native Locales
locales where plants grow natively

Yes

Cultivated range
locales where plants can be cultivated

Yes - not all plants can be grown everywhere successfully.


Native habitats
Habitats where plants grow natively


Absolutely essential to know as much as possible about these habitats. To the point where it would be useful to have a database of these habitats so one can simply refer to one.

Indeed, habitats is a complex subject. Could have separate page describing a particular habitat in more detail, and the plants growing in that habitat.

Also a need for plain text description of the habitats.

I've done some work going through the text description of habitat in the pfaf db and come up with about 100 different habitats
http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/D_canned.html#HABIT
many more I'm sure.

Related to this are Biomes which are "important ecological
communities or networks of communities that extend over large
areas." These include
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.


Cultivated habitats
Habitats where plants can be cultivated (e.g. woodland garden)

That would be different depending on the locale / climate.

Sort of related to this is the idea of permacuture zones.
Could have sugestions as to which zones these plants are suitable for.


Plant Characteristics - physical stuff about the plant

Habit - tree, shrub, annual ,bienial etc.

yesd

Max Height - may want to include a locale
- might actually be a range

Range makes more sense, is very locale dependent

Indeed. Also habitat related.

Could have something like
Height: 15m - UK, woodland
3m - UK, Hedges
30m - US Rocky mountains

Height after 1, 5, 10 years?

I never found this very meaningful, depends on locale, culture

Not sure myself on this. It could be a way to describe how quickly a plant grows.

Same for width.

Okay

Age range - annual, biannial, perennial (max age)

Sure

Growth rate - how fast it grows

Once again somewhat meaningless unless compared to a standard. But different depending on soil environment, water availability, temperature....

Agree.


Botanical charteristics and identification

Type of flower -
hermaphrodite (the flower has both male and female organs).


Sure


monoecious (individual flowers are either male or
female, but both sexes can be found on the same plant).

dioecious (individual flowers are either male or female,
but only one sex is to be found on any one plant so both
male and female plants must be grown if seed is required)


Sure


Type of polination -
wind, insects (specific types), self fertile


Definitely, and the types of insects required / preferred for pollination


Flower identification -
lots of botanical stuff about how to indetify a plant by
its flowers. Superiour overies. Closely linked to
Botanical clasification.

Type of fruit/seed

Seed dispersal - method

Fruit/seed identification

Leaf type/shape

Sure, all cool stuff, needs lots of pictures


Times -
When in leaf
When in flower
When in fruit
Number of fruiting seasons per year
Time until first fruiting

All the above need to be cross referenced with locales
at very least Nothern/Southern hemisphere or tropics.


Yes


Cultivation Information

Temprature
Hardyness - which UDSA zones the plant grows in.

Frost tender - whether the plant can withstand frost

Number of days of frost plant can withstand

Min temprature plant can withstand

Max temprature


That depends, of course, on what time of year the frost occurs (has plant already hardened off / come out of hibernation?)

Yes. Still don't know best way to record this sort of stuff which goes a little further than the UDSA zones.

Moisture
Can it tolerate drought?
Drought at what time of its life cycle
Can it tolerate water logged soil?
At what time of its life cycle

Good point.


Soil
What Ph range it can tolerate

What Ph range it prefers

Can it tolerate saline soil/does it require saline soil.

Soil types it tolerates - clay, loam, etc

Soil types it prefers

Moisture level of soil - tolerates and prefers


Definitely


Shade
What level of shade it tolerates/prefers


Definitely - also locale / climate dependent


Other characteristics
A bit open ended allowing for other things like

Tolerate atmospheric polution
Tolerates grazing by dear
Resistant to grazing by dear
Tolerate mowing

Other cultivation info
Free text info on cultivation


Great


Propagation
Time to sow
Time to plant out
Stratification of seeds


Propagation methods other than seeds - also their timing, any special considerations. Temperatures, light requirements, length of seed viability, etc.etc. Could be lots of great stuff in this section.


Pests and diseases
Vunerable to which pest/diseases
Resitance to particualar pest diseases


Back to my dissertation on predators.


Benifical relationships
What animals it attracts
What animals if is a food plant of
What animals it is a habitat of
What plants is is know to grow well with
What plant guilds it is a member of


Really , really important. This includes socalled pests and diseases


Use by man
Ethnobotanical information
Traditional uses of plants by diferent societies


Back to hazards etc. There is no black and white. Lots of information available on this.


Edible Uses
Parts of Plant you can eat - keyword
Culinary uses - keyword
Rating of edible use

Nutritional information
Yield information


Great stuff. Recipes??


Medicinal Uses
Keywords
Rating
text description


Ethnobotany, hazards etc. Same sort of range of information. Have no idea what you mean by ratings.

Ratings are an idea to get users votes on a plant. Could have a sort of rating system from 1-5 to quickly indicate what people think about a plant. For example plants with a 5 rating for edibility are the niceest and plants with a 1 rating are edible but not very nice.

Other Uses
key words
Rating
text description


Sure

History and Folklaw
Information about curtural aspects
Famous trees inc locale


Great stuff, often very useful in understanding plants / ecosystems


Growing experiences
A place for people to record experiences people have had with growing the plant.


Extremely useful


Links and references
Links to other websites
References to books


Totally


Supliers
Places you can get the plants/seeds


Wouldn't bother, this information is outdated in no time at all, unless we are talking about gene banks etc.


---------
So there you go.

Comments, additions welcome. At this stage I think we should keep it just what criteria we wish to record and not get involved in
the how we record it.


This really has been a very comprehensive list. Now we just need to figure out how best to organize the information so it's meaningful for the persons
- entering the info
- searching the info

Ah theres the rub. On to Q3.

A few things have emerged.

As well as plants there are a few other top level thing we might include
each of these might have a separate page

plants (species)
plants (cultivars)
families
other higher order groupings
locales - where
habitats
guilds and other groupings
plant uses
other creatures, pests, diseases

also a general relationship structure, a triple
(Subject,relationship,object)

Some items like height also need some sort of clarification
textual description, specilisations locales etc.

Tee dum

Rich






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