PlantFiles field suggestion...

Would it be possible to add another field to PlantFiles for where a plant is native to? I often want to know this about plants and it would be nice if it were on DG with all of the other "stats". Also good since native plant gardening is catching on. Just a thought.

cool idea.

Unfortunately, isn't feasible :-(

There are almost 200 recognized independent countries in the world.

If we did a list of just countries - and that would be a long list by itself - that would mean all of the U.S. would be lumped together as one country, which is not particularly helpful for gardeners wanting to choose local native plants.

If we went down to the state/province level worldwide, the list would grow into the thousands - far too many for most of us to try to sort through and pick out the native areas when we create a new entry. (Not to mention going through the almost 200,000 existing entries and adding this data to each of them one-at-a-time.)

I don't see that a list is needed at all.
Just have a blank field available for the person entering the plant, to type in the native area. I don't think it would be necessary to know the exact rock it showed up on :) just a general area, and it could be typed in, not chosen from a list.
for instance if I added Plant ABC I would type in Native To "Southern Africa" or "Northern India" or "North Eastern US" ect

We moved away from free-form text boxes a long time ago, because there's not an easy way to automatically correct for misspellings or misinterpretations.

An earlier version of PlantFiles used a text box for flower bloom colors before and we ended up with all sorts of well....interesting....color descriptions. And since one person's peach is another person's apricot, you can't easily pull those two together in search results.

I suspect the same thing would happen with locations, only further compounded by how people interpret (or misinterpret) "native."

I didn't really think of making it so uniform, but I guess that's the only way to make it searchable, right? Terry, what do you think of FrillyLily's idea?

We posted at the same time :)

Terry - Could you use a system similar to the one used where people can add their location if they have had success growing a particular plant?

Good questions.

Yes, the data going in must be standardized for the system to compile good search results.

And yes, it is possible to add a ZIP-code based input. However,

a) that would make it US-centric (for whatever reason the lat/long information for other countries' postal codes is not readily available like the US ZIP codes are); and

b) if past experience is any indicator of the future, we will run into (heated) arguments over "is it really native to this area or not?"

I wish - truly - there was an easy fix to provide this information. We have tossed the idea around several times over the years but we have yet to come up with a way that is user-friendly, global, and would yield accurate results.

One thing I'll try to do when I add a plant or comment is include the accepted native region for the plant.
Also, maybe it could be required for members to at least give their location by state or country to their username profile so when they post a comment in PFs other members would know where it can be successfully grown.
Not sure if this is off the original subject. Sorry, if so.

Requiring member to have their location in their user name profile would not help a bit for people like me: how could you know that I grew the plant in Houston, TX when it now shows me as being up by the DMZ in Korea?
We do need to have something in the comments box that forces us to give a location - something that will not change like our profile location. It would also help to have something that asks if this is grown as a potted plant and taken indoors for the winter as I have "successfully grown" many plants as houseplants that would not survive the climate that I live in.

Some simple note added to each plant file, even as broad a statement as native to the United States, native to Europe would be a help.
If a little more information was added, native to the southeastern United States, native to eastern Europe that would be even better.
I think not adding some area of origin for a plant is the only flaw in a good system.

For that reason I rarely go to DG plantfiles any more, instead I use the USDA plant site which includes a map not only of where the plant grows in the US but where it is native to in the US.

i think we should all use the comments more often for detailed information
i always look there hoping for more info
and i am lax in adding my comments, but i will try more often :-)

Dick