I thought of that, but then I wondered if that also could lead to potential disaster. If, for example, "full sun" were removed from the rose parent plant info to accommodate the roses that will grow in part shade, would the change then remove the "full sun" info from the 5,000+ roses that do need it? It was never added by me when I filled in the entries because it was already there, so would it suddenly disappear? I'm really wary of the potential changes to existing entries.

It would work with the sempervivum. Not sure about the sedum. I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around the sedum.

I'm reading this with interest - but cannot see how it would be a problem for Plumeria. There will always be a few specific features and I assume we can manually add those? Like if a certain Cultivar is particularly difficult to root, for instance.

Yes Hetty, you can add manually as much as you like. To expand on that:

zuzu said:If, for example, "full sun" were removed from the rose parent plant info to accommodate the roses that will grow in part shade, would the change then remove the "full sun" info from the 5,000+ roses that do need it?

Never. This is a critical point to make: the parent plant feature only adds information to the children, it never subtracts or deletes anything. So this is why the parent plants should only have the absolute bare minimum of information that for certain applies to all children.

Once all the information has been given to the children, they then have it and the only way it can be removed it to go through the plants one-by-one and remove it (or have me script the removal).

Actually, my rose example wasn't that good because even if it only adds information, the addition of "full sun" to "full sun or partial shade" would not be an awful thing. One doesn't preclude the other.

If, however, it added back "vine" to the existing Clematis entries where "vine" has been deleted and "herb/forb" has been entered instead, it would be a problem because the plant can't be both.

dave said:So this is why the parent plants should only have the absolute bare minimum of information that for certain applies to all children.

Once all the information has been given to the children, they then have it and the only way it can be removed it to go through the plants one-by-one and remove it (or have me script the removal).

Sounds good. And the flexibility sounds good.

Going back to Euphorbias and the ONE characteristic they all have in common, would you leave that as a Parent then or just go with a general listing "Euphorbia" in the database?

SongofJoy said:Going back to Euphorbias and the ONE characteristic they all have in common, would you leave that as a Parent then or just go with a general listing "Euphorbia" in the database?

In cases like that I would lean on you all to help decide what's the proper course to take.

One entry is about the barest minimum you can have in a databox. After sleeping on it, Euphorbia should probably stay in the Parent plant section as well because that is the one characteristic that makes a plant a Euphorbia, and I'd like to see it applied to all of them.

In the case of African Violets...would they then now fall under the Parent Page "Gesneriads"?

Late coming in here...still trying to wrap my brain around it.

Tee thank you. Between you and Dave you helped me understand this project, a little more. : )

threegardeners said:In the case of African Violets...would they then now fall under the Parent Page "Gesneriads"?

They would be matched by

All the information in the databox at the above linked plant would apply to every plant in the Saintpaulia genus.

If everyone is pretty well understanding of the plan here, I am going to continue work on the project. I expect to get some headway done on it today and early next week make the transition over.

Lynn, I'm glad it made sense. Sometimes I know what I'm thinking (sometimes) but not sure it's coming out so anyone else knows what I mean. Thanks for the reassurance.

dave said:If everyone is pretty well understanding of the plan here, I am going to continue work on the project. I expect to get some headway done on it today and early next week make the transition over.

Thanks for your ability to plant a thought that germinates and grows.

Sounds good to me, Dave.

Tee, would this provide a way for you to create a distinct Euphorbia page for the shrubby spurges? I've been hoping for something like that ever since reading Debbie's (rcn48) article a few years ago.

Evan, I believe this means that any Parent species of Euphorbia will have it's own individual page. They won't be all together because that would defeat the purpose of the proposal, if I'm understanding it all correctly. I might not be .... so stay tuned.

As you are aware, there are many species of the hardy shrub-type spurges just as there are many species of tender succulent Euphorbias. It's one of those genera that is huge and a bit unwieldy, to say the least.

Any suggestions you may have are welcome.

I just uploaded a huge batch of code that gets us 75% of the way there. If you find any oddities in the DB, please let me know!