Would the comment area for that plant work?

Whew! My head is spinning with all these choices & options.

As usual Dave has made this whole thing seem like a piece of cake. It's so easy to operate. I will have to think about categories. Such as:

1) I would burn it if I could! for things like Virginia Creeper
2) You're welcome to all of them if you come dig them up --- PLEASE! for Prickly pear

Sure, if each variety can be prsent in "my" list only once, I would list several rows in the comment field, one row for each batch.

The comment field could also work for "how eager am I to give these away" ... but iot would not be searchable. If there were a slider or radio button for "availability", a person could search for "all", or only for "freely available". That would also be a way to filter out "not for trade" or "I'm out of these until next Fall".

Now that I think about, there could be a category for "I will have cuttings available in the proper season, just not now".

Great idea!

"These are freely available to anyone crazy enoguh to want them, but they are INVASIVE where I live!"

In fact, if each "my" list had fields like "is it invasive HERE?", that would provide a way to expand the Plant Database to cover regional differences and differences of opinion.

Like
- flowering time,
- days to maturity,
- best sowing dates,
- spring or fall crop,
- will it overwinter
- how much it reseeds or spreads
- and the always-differing "how easy to grow FOR ME".

I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds very interesting!!

I've listed various genera as categories and I'm going back to the plants I've already listed and editing the entries to put them in these categories, but am I wasting my time? Will there be a time when we'll be able to view our lists in alphabetical order, in which case they'll be categorized by genus anyway?

Great thought Zuzu.

zuzu said:I've listed various genera as categories and I'm going back to the plants I've already listed and editing the entries to put them in these categories, but am I wasting my time? Will there be a time when we'll be able to view our lists in alphabetical order, in which case they'll be categorized by genus anyway?

There will indeed be all the sorting options you could want. So categorizing by genus is, I think, a bit redundant and un-necessary.

For me personally, I'm using the categories as "locations" since that is what I want.

I've seen others categorize them by type of plant (bulb, succulent, etc).

You could even have a category called "Plants I saw at such-a-place arboretum" and everything in that category is marked as "Want".

That's great news, Dave! I'd much rather spend my time categorizing them by location or source.

Can we have something that shows the total number of entries in a category?

That shows up on your profile. Click on your name and you'll see all the numbers.

I didn't know that was there. Thanks Dave.

I have a question.
I just decided to add some plants to my list and when I type in 'Plumeria rubra' it seems to give me a random selection of about 8 varieties to add. How are these chosen? It doesn't seem to be alphabetical and of course there are many more varieties in the database so I'm a bit confused.

It's ordering them exactly like the search engine in the database does.

So you can search for "Plumeria rubra" and it'll find all plants that match it, best guess. You can also do something like "Lincoln rose" and it'll find the rose by that name. Or "myrtle Dynamite" to find Crepe Myrtle 'Whit II' Dynamite.

I just realized it only gives me the first eight from the database, I have to type in the cultivar name in order for it to pop up.

hmmm not working for me. I just tried to add Plumeria rubra 'Beacon Lights' and it does not come up - it tells me 'ERROR:: You have to find the plant first'...

Try it without the quote marks and see if that works.

And remember that you can't just type something in and let that be that. You have to click on the name in the list that drops down while you're typing.