Sorry that I came late to the party and was thinking this was only for people who hybridize. Now that I have read each post again I say yes, I would use this feature. It took me over 3 years to identify one plant and it would be nice to have a place for the NOIDs as they grow and change. I would use this feature.

One thing I'm not clear on. Will our "special" lists be private, public or will the option be up to each individual? I don't mind folks looking at my list of NOIDs as someone may offer a clue, and knowing the list is public would make me more careful about spelling/wording, etc.

You'll always have the option to make a category in your list private. That won't change.

Natalie said:Deb, thanks for asking this! I've been wondering about this all day! Came inside earlier to ask myself, and forgot what I came in the house for. Nothing new there!

You crack me up! (That's a very good thing.)

Now if I could just remember what it was that Deb asked, that I was going to ask.

, need this a lot for no id etc

Sounds great! My first daylily seedlings bloomed this year so it'd be great to have entries for them. I also have a lot of NOID plants too that I would use this for. Thanks Dave!

dave said:... a certain plant that you want to separately add to your plant list. Right now, you can't really do that since every plant in your plant list must already exist in the database.

I've been asked to make the plant list feature work with plants that are not in the database. In the case of plants like this, you'd be able to add custom details for your own "made up" plants just as if they were in the database. But they would only exist in your plant list.

So, my question is: how many of you would use a functionality like this?

I would use it, or perhaps abuse it. I often buy seeds from a vendor who uses a marketing name, especially for F1 varieties. Adding "junk cultivars" or "bogus marketing variety names" to the main database would kind of pollute it.

Yet I would like to save my descriptions somewhere, of seeds available only through a few vendors.
Putting them into some category in my private plant list, and making that publicly visible, would be cool.

The overall "Combined Seed Swap Have List" has started serving that purpose for me.

I can enter multiple rows for one cultivar, or parent plant, and then change the name and comment for each row. (This breaks the link to the ATP Plantabase).

I can also indicate the exact vendor that way, in the comment which is key to identifying a variety known only by a marketing name.


BTW, in this particular usage, it would be nice to work from more than one "level" of parent plant page.

I'm sure there is a parent plant page for the entire species "Brassica rapa".

But that has at least eight major sub-categories that matter to gardeners or cooks, even if taxonomists refuse to consider any distinctions other than DNA sequence / ancestry.

I'd like to work with "parent plant pages" having a finer level of resolution, and probably the system supports those already, if I were to add a few.

Like these:

B. rapa, Bok Choy, white stem (Chinesis Group)
B. rapa, Bok Choy, green stem (Chinesis Group)
B. rapa, Yu Choy Sum (var parachinensis or Purpuraria Group)
B. Rapa, tatsoi (var. rosularis or Narinosa Group)
B. rapa, komatsuna (Perviridis Group)
B. rapa, Chinese cabbage, heading, Michihli (Pekinensis Group)
B. rapa, Chinese cabbage, heading, Napa (Pekinensis Group)
B. rapa, Chinese cabbage, non-heading, old varieties
B. rapa, Mustards & Mizunas (Nipposinica Group, but I THINK some "mizuna" are inter-species hybrids)
B. oleracea, Gai Lan (Alboglabra Group)

@Dave, I would really like and use this feature. Hope it becomes one of your winter projects

Yes this got a bit stalled in favor of the group seed swap feature. I'm still planning on this though!