"Good growing season color" is one of the categories that can be checked in the Foliage subsection of the plant data form.

I have always reserved this for foliage that's red, chartreuse, etc. -- anything but plain green. I'm seeing people add this to plants with standard green foliage, however. If it applies in this case, how meaningful is the description? Wouldn't this mean that every plant displays "good growing season color"? After all, there are no plants with colorless foliage.

Well, "good growing season color" could be construed to mean that the plant is attractive just for it's foliage, regardless of color. Should we have a place to indicate foliage color, as well as bloom color? Or is that already there and I just missed it.

I think "Good growing season" color should indeed be reserved for plants that exhibit something in their leaves that is unusual or interesting. As you said, zuzu, red, chartreuse, etc, is what this is intended for.

There are plants that are grown specifically for their foliage, and I wonder if that's what people are trying to say when they check this off? I'm thinking of tapioca, which has great foliage but is solid green. I believe it's worth noting that you'd grow it for foliage but I wouldn't say that tapioca has "good growing season color".

Do we want to add that as a choice?

If something's grown just for the foliage, that should be apparent from the lack of information in the fruit and blooms subsections.

I just think this particular description has been overused. I searched for "good growing season color" and found 998 results. Many were tulips, daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, and a variety of other plants with standard green foliage.

Yikes, that's too many, they don't even qualify for interesting foliage! Looks like we need to do some clean-up and get this category on the right track.
I think another category like Evan suggested would be good, like grown for foliage. Coleus and hosta would fit into that.

I think we should add a "Grown for foliage" under Leaves.

But I think we should keep "Good growing season color" for the plants that have nice color on their leaves during the growing season.

Then, I can go through and automatically remove that checkbox for everything under certain genera like tulips, daffodils, etc.

How does that sound?

I do like the idea of adding "Grown for foliage," but I still find the "good growing season color" description a bit vague. Would it make sense to reword that to indicate that the growing season color makes a nice contrast with normal green foliage? Or something like that? Because I think that just adding the "grown for foliage" box may not solve the problem of people checking the "good growing season color" box when it's not really appropriate. Just a thought.

I agree with Woofie that the "good growing season color" description is too vague and therefore can be misleading. We need words to indicate that the color is intriguing, but I can't think of an appropriate phrase.

and I will do whatever the consensus is.

@dave I think there are a few of those in the lily data base. If you can take care of those with one fell swoop of the wand that would be great.

Once we decide what to do I'll make it happen. The easiest will be for me to apply the change to all plants inside whatever genera (or better yet, custom databases) are required.

Sounds like a good plan! Thanks.

How about something like :

"Colorful foliage in growing season (not green)"

I assume that "growing season" is there to rule out trees that have fall colors when the chlorophyll is gone?

P.S. I modified many lettuce entries and only checked the box if the lettuce had color other than green or in addition to green. (And there had to be a fair amount of color - not just a blush on the tips.) Also, if most photos online showed it with only green or 99% green, I didn't let glowing vendor descriptions carry me away.

Also, I took the liberty of NOT checking the "growing season color" checkbox if I didn't like the looks of it. There are some dull muddy brown-red-green varieties that I just didn't like the looks of, and thought would not be widely enjoyed.

BTW, speaking of growing season color - have you seen the cover of Johnnies Selected Seeds 2014 catalog? Very strong color contrasts in maroon and two tones of green, but I think it's ugly, or at least science-fictionish. Page 24 'Fiero' radicchio. As if it were a human-size Venus Fly-Trap and had some blood spatter from its last meal.

What about a selection of "growing season foliage color" with a few choices like grey, or russet, or purple or something like that?

A selection of colors wouldn't work for me. When I search for plants with foliage of unusual colors, I want to see all of them at once. I don't want to have to look for each specific color, especially in view of the way some people misuse the "Other" boxes on the data form. They might ignore "Russet" and type in "Other: Mahogany" or choose to enter "Other: Slate Gray" instead of simply checking the "Gray" box. I couldn't begin to guess all of the fanciful color names they might come up with, and my search would therefore be incomplete.

I already run into that problem when I search for a particular flower color. When I search for blue blooms, for instance, there are some plants that are conspicuously absent from the results. I know they're blue, however, so I look for them. When I go to the entry, I find that someone entered "Other: Cobalt Blue" or "Other: Powder Blue" instead of checking the "Blue" box.

Good point, Zuzu. Hmmm, what about something like "unusual growing season color?" Or "good contrast growing season color?" Just stumbling around here looking for useful verbiage.

Zuzu, what I like to do, when it is possible, is to check any box that someone might search on. Like "red".

THEN, add fanciful names like Other: "burgundy" or "claret" or "cerise".

I'm stumbling too, Woofie. We need to brainstorm this. Who can come up with a phrase to signify intriguing color that isn't standard green?

"Good color, other than green" and "Striking color (not green)" wouldn't work because chartreuse is a good color and a striking color, but it's also green, and I would want it to be included in my search.

Your suggestion of "Unusual foliage color" is the best I've heard so far. If people feel moved to describe the "unusual color," they can describe it in a plant comment.