Hi, ATP folks. I have a question regarding what we can post under the plant database comments. I have some really old wildflower and plant books that I've picked up at antique shops and used book stores that have a lot of interesting and sometimes forgotten information. I thought it would be fun to post parts of the book as comments in the database. But I didn't know if that would be okay.
Of course, I would list the title of the book, author, and date published but I didn't want to get anyone in trouble over copyright. Also, I wasn't sure if that would be violating the "spirit" of the comments since it seems like we mostly tend toward users commenting about plants they've personally grown or seen growing. I searched ATP trying to see if anyone else had asked this, but couldn't find anything similar. I did look at a bunch of previous comments from the last few months and I see people quoting plant catalogs and even Wikipedia so I wasn't sure where ATP stood on this.
If they're not appropriate to use as comments, I thought I could start a thread in the Wildflowers Forum and do an entry every few days or however often I feel like typing.
I just think some of the entries are really fascinating and offer a glimpse into how people viewed the plant at the time (weed, wildflower, bane of the garden?). There's also a lot of info about Indian usage, medicinal uses, and even some history. For example, one book I have says Pokeweed was not named after President Polk, as it had been discovered long before he became president, but that his supporters would wear Pokeweed stems in their lapels as a way to show allegiance to their candidate. I thought that was really interesting and I guess I just wanted to know what might be the best way to share that on ATP. And if I did just contain it to a thread, wouldn't I have to be concerned that other users might take what I've written and copy and paste it as a comment on the database?
And for the ATP users out there reading this, would that be something you would be interested in reading in the first place?
Thanks everyone!
