In our database, there are 37 shrubs that have blue flowers, while there are no cacti/succulents with blue flowers! There are 77 trees with pink flowers. Among those, 16 have edible fruit.

How do I know all this? For some time we have had a "search by characteristics" engine for the custom databases like roses and daylilies. Today I am pleased to announce that this search engine has been extended to now allow the entire database to be searched.

You can access it by going to the Plant Database and then click on "Search all plants by characteristics".

any plans for being able to sort the search?

Juli is being greedy!

daylily said:any plans for being able to sort the search?

Sort it how?

And we need help filling in those details so that they can become part of the search!!

dave said:Sort it how?

I've given this some thought and have added a rudimentary sorting system. It grabs all the matching plants and then sorts them by the display name. So it may not be 100% perfect but it's pretty good, I think.

dave said:
Sort it how?

maybe I am mixing apples and oranges. I am thinking of general search.

I have done a general search for a name of a plant, and it has brought up lots of plants, and I have to search through them because they are all mixed up. It would be nice to be able to click on the column header and sort by species or alphabetical by cultivar name etc. For example, lets say a daylily I like has the name of a woman, but I don't remember the full name. So I put in the general search "Paula" The results do not seem to be in any order. Daylilies are not together, they are not alphabetical - they seem to me that they are listed any old way.

The other thing I wish in the characteristic search is that it was not limited. For instance if I go to the daylily database, search for Hanson as hybridizer, tet as ploidy - it says the max has been reached. It asks me to narrow my search. However, sometimes you want to know all the names of cultivars a certain person hybridized, not just a partial list. When I go to the AHS database and select the same options, it comes up with 573 daylilies, listed in alphabetical order, and lets me choose which of the 58 pages to display.

Maybe I don't know how to use the database here correctly?

Sorry if I am being greedy ---

Juli, I was just teasing! I think it would be nice to be able to sort search results, too!

I can find the parent plant for sempervivum. It used to be the very first shown when I typed in 'sempervivum'?

Juli, I have it sorting alphabetically now.

As for the rest of your proposed enhancements, they will have to wait until I can dig back in there and do this. It's very complicated to make a search engine that does what you're asking it to do.

Lynn, I searched for sempervivum and was taken directly to the Sempervivum Database front page. To find the parent plant, open any sempervivum entry in the database, scroll to the bottom and click on "See the general plant entry for Hen and Chicks (Sempervivum)".

Why isn't it just showing at the top of the list, like it used to? It was so much easier for new people to find.

I'll see about making it more prominent, Lynn.

Lynn, you can now click on "Access the general Sempervivum entry" right at the top of that page.

Thank you Dave.

By the way, the new search capability is awesome and fun.

Thank you Dave!

You are the best!

Dave, When searching using Minimum cold hardiness is it possible to list not only plants in the zone selected but those in a colder zone?

ex.
if zone 5b is selected
then list plants in zone 5b thru zone 2.

That's a hard one. I really want to be able to do that and it's on my wishlist but it's a very different and difficult thing. The select menu means "pick one". We have no support for "ranges of numbers" in the DB which is why we have hardiness in two pulldowns: minimum and maximum.

To let people search on a range will require a pretty big fundamental change to the system. I want to do it, I'm just not sure when.

All right, Thanks Dave.