I was just wondering if someone did a search for "perennial, Dry Mesic" would it return a record that was marked as a tree, dry mesic but the life cycle was blank.
From what dave said it wouldn't return that record since its probably building a direct chained 'AND' where statement.
if the logic "if a plant is a tree then it also is perennial" is true you could do a mass update for anything classified as a tree but with life cycle blank.