Why is there no consistency in the custom database? Some of the plant database's are very well put together with the plant names in alphabetical order and some look just to be thrown together without reason.

What do you considered to be well put together and what do you consider thrown together without reason. How is one area being operated any differently than another? Examples?

Here are 2 examples of well put together "Plumeria" and "Ginger". On the flip side 2 examples are (thrown without reason) "Cordyline fruticosa" and "Codiaeum variegation".

There are no custom databases for Cordyline fruticosa or Codiaeum variagatum. The system will sort any plant by genus, so you can see all of the plants in Cordyline (or Codiaeum) lumped together, but that's about it.

As to why those two genera don't have custom databases, the answer is quite simple, no one has bothered to create one. All of the custom databases were created at the behest members who cared enough about particular types of plants to put custom databases together.

Corylines are in alphabetical order, by species first, then cultivars.
http://garden.org/plants/brows...

Same thing with Gingers
http://garden.org/plants/brows...

And Croton
http://garden.org/plants/brows...

Dave explained it this way:
If you just search for Croton, it gives you a natural "best match" search that is NOT sorted and cannot be sorted. It's like Google searches - they aren't alphabetical.

But at the top of your search, if you search for a genus, clicking on the "View all plants in the genus Codiaeum", it gives you a link to view all plants in that genus. And that page is properly sorted.

You can also find the full databases from an individual entry, you click on the blue underlined genus name.

The database is quite powerful, you just need to explore it and know how to use it.

Great information coming out of the question posed by ScotTi. Thank you Scot for asking. And thank you Sue, Kent and Rob for the explanations.