WS Database Question

Does anyone know how to quickly see if there is an entry in the WS database for a particular plant? I don't see any way to search only the database for entries and I don't want to page thru 10's of pages looking to see if a particular item is in there.

I don't think there is a way, at least I don't know of one. A major disadvantage.

Karen

OK, thanks. I couldn't find a way but thought maybe someone else knew how to do it. and you're right ... BIG disadvantage.

The list is alphabetical by botanical names, starting with Yarrow (Achillea). Maybe that will help.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/ws/

Maybe this will help, new from Dave's. check it out. On Dave's forum, new engine search.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/commentsearch.php?q=wintersowing&Search=Search+the+PlantFiles+comments

This message was edited Dec 11, 2008 9:56 PM

I think you will have success to wintersowed anything that is labelled on the package "early spring" or "as soon as the ground can be worked". Also, any perennials that are hardy in your zone would be great ws. Many other will be successful, but bloom much later than if started indoors, such as petunias. We have a real swing in the number of daylight hours, so it may be different in your area. Late June we have close to 17 hours daylight. December we have less than 8 hours.

Every year is different with weather, so that will also affect the germination. For this area, March is a good month to ws.

With millions of different plants on the face of the earth, I think that using common names, which refer to several different plants, is one factor making the DG wintersown database so useless. A scientific name refers to one and only one plant.

By using common names, while ordering the database by their unseen scientific names, we get alphabet soup when we look at that list. I don't know about you, but when I search something that's been alphabetized, I like to go from a to b to c, etc. and not have to hop around in such a hodgepodge that is now the WS database.

Using the scientific name (one name per plant) that is internationally agreed upon enables people to identify that plant no matter what their native language is.

Using the scientific name enables us to tell one plant from another more precisely than using their common names. Why is it useful to be able to distinguish one plant from another? Take the genus, Campanula. Some species grow up to 6', others an inch or so. Some want to invade the whole garden, others just want a crack in a boulder in Siberia. Some need warmth to germinate, some cold, some a sequence of warm-cold-warm, etc., with many more variations among them.

DG PlantFiles are extremely helpful in finding out what a scientific name is, as is google. Often, you can just type the common name into the DG search box, and the scientific name will come up, as here - http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/adv_search.php?Search=Click+here+to+search+for+plants

The way to find the above DG PlantFile search box is to:
-- click on the Guides and Information tab at the top of any DG webpage
-- In the box to the right, click on PlantFiles
-- Click on the green bar to the left that says, "Click here to search for plants"
And then the above search box will come up. I find it works best when you put the least information into it.

Another great DG feature for identifying plants and thus being able to link a common name to a scientific name is the Plant and Tree Identification forum - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/plantid/all/ . The people there are very helpful.

Basically, a scientific, or Latin, name has two parts:

-- the first part is the plant's genus, which tells us where the plant is located within the overall botanic classification of plants, and

-- the second part is the plant's species (also referred to as "specific epithet), which can be descriptive. For example, you may sometimes see such words among this second name like "argentatus", as in Plectranthus argentatus. The word, argentatus, means silvery, which the leaves of Plectranthus argentatus certainly are. This plant brings silver to dark places, where most silvery plants just won't go, since they usually prefer sun.

I think a wintersown database for DG would be wonderful, and I think we can make it useable.

Bluespiral, I totally agree with you on using the scientific names in the database.

Well you have to look at idiots like me that have never heard of the scientific name of plants. I grew up only knowing the common names. so where does that leave us? If we know a common name for it and want to look up the scientific name so we would know it.How are we to do that? Like I was looking for what I know as common sage and had no idea of what to look for because it was listed under the scientific name and there was a blue million of salvias and I had no idea of which one it was because there was none that mentioned common sage.

I believe this database is still on Dave's to-do list. When it's done, I guess plants would be accessible by common or scientific names.

There are a few threads about the database in the Dave's Garden discussion forum - maybe we should post there to get people's attention and get the ball rolling again. It would be great to add another season's info and have it available to use in the future.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/793848/

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/794755/

FlowerFantasy, If you're an idiot, then so am I - it's a universal given that there's always something new just over the horizon for each of us. Glad ta meetcha!

One great thing that wasn't in the world when I grew up- and not in my budget until a couple of years ago - and maybe not for you, too - is the digital camera. If you take a picture of the plant you call "common sage" and then post it on the Plant and Tree Identification forum, there's a good chance they can identify it for you.

DG also has an Agastaches and Salvias forum that also has some very helpful folks.

Common sage means different things to people in different parts of the world. In western United States, there's Sage Brush, which is not even a sage - it's Artemisia tridentata - a type of wormwood. To cooks, it's Salvia officinalis. To shoppers at chain stores like Home Depot or Walmart, its Salvia splendens. To rabbits and woodchucks that inhabit a meadow about 40 minutes away from where I live, it's Salvia lyrata.

To find a forum on DG, click on the Communities tab at the top of any DG webpage, and then click on Forums in the right-hand column. Next, you will find the DG webpage that lists hyperlinks to its forums -

Plant and Tree Identification forum - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/plantid/all/

Agastaches and Salvias - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/salvias/all/

No I'm not an idiot really just old fashioned. It is taking me a long time to learn all of this new stuff. Just in my younger days we all only knew the common names, people just didn't use the Latin forms of it or nobody would have know what they were talkng about.
Thanks for the info, but I found what I was looking for. And yes it is the salvia officinalis. I have no picture of it as I was hunting for some seed for it. Does any of you have any ? Will gladly send ppsae for any if you or anyone has it.
Glad to meet you too!
.

Karen.... Great posts

and before and for a few months after i stumbled onto Daves... i did not know any scientific names.

I'd use Google with a common name, which usually led me back to Daves where i could find all the info i needed.

but yes, things like "common sage" and many many others ... plants are so similar that it is hard to tell them a part.

I have used many of the resources in here ... specific forums and or the ID forum to ID specific plants.... I still have some where i do not know the specific plant... but i'm getting closer.

I have learned a lot... but still have a long way to go.... with the help of others, we are all learning as we move along.

Mike -- thanks for those links... i will check them out.

Flowerfantasy I do not no how old you are. I am 51 and 3 years ago I only knew Dutch common names of plants. After I moved to Belgium I found out that the common names of plants are often different in French and German and even in Flamish (these 3 languages are spoken in Belgium). So I started to learn the scientific names.
Since about a year I'm a DG member and without knowledge of the scientific names I wouldn't be able to take part in a lot of things.
But still I have often problems, because when people offer seeds or want to trade with me, sometimes they only have common names of the plants. And when I google the common name, there are several or a lot different plants with the same common name. And when I ask them which one it is I sometimes get answers like: 'it's yellow ' or 'it grows here everywhere'.
Knowing the scientific names has another advantage. Starting with it is difficult, but once you know more names you will discover that the scientific name often tells you a lot about the plant. So tells 'lutea' in the scientific name you that it is a yellow variety. Or 'sanguineus' means a red variety. The more you learn the less you have to look up.
I understand the aversion for changing, but will you please consider it. Especially for people who want to trade worldwide it is a must. But even in the USA there are the same common names for different plants.

Jonna, thank you for bringing up a point that I didn't know.. that the scientific name could even tell the color! I've really been hesitant to try to learn scientific names simply cause I'm stubborn that way LOL!

But as a newbie here, I can see that I'm going to have to give in and at least do a start at attempting to learn.
So that's my New Year's resolution.. as I plant my gardens this year, I will learn the scientific name of what I'm planting. I figure that will be a small start that won't (HOPEFULLY) overwhelm me :)

Chris

Chris, the scientific name not always tells you the color, it can also tell you something else, or nothing special (unless you understand latin). But the longer you use the scientific names the more you learn. A lot of the 2nd or 3rd in the names indicates something of the plant and once you have seen that a few times you will be able to imagine how a plant can look like if you see the full scientific name. Plants (and seeds) are often selled with the common name, but most times there is also the scientific name on the plantmarker or the seedbag.
I trade a lot worldwide (the last 6 months I had about 60 trades) and I always use the scientific names. Even if people are not used to it, they can easily find out what they get using google. They will not have any doubt, because the scientific name shows you what you really have or get.

Jonna ,
I am not against learning those names and have begun to try but when you have no idea exactly what kind you are looking for it is hard. It's like when I was looking for the sage. I knew to look under Salvia but it listed so many different kinds and none mentioned common sage. So that's what puts me in a spot to lean this stuff. I think if there were just some small notations mentioning it's common name would help us that don't know the scientific names, and then we could write them down and learn as we go. To me that is the simplest way to learn, and to be factual this is what I have been doing with the ones that does have the common name with the scientific name. Like this for example:Lamiaceae officinalis/common sage. Why would this not work for everyone? Just what does it take to put in a few extra words"nothing"

FlowerFantasy, what you wrote does work - almost - for everyone, already -

Lamiaceae officinalis/common sage

What you wrote would be exactly what is commonly accepted as the correct way to write the name of a plant, but it would be like this:

Lamiaceae officinalis (Common Sage)

If I were looking for the cultivar 'Berggarten', then I would write the whole name like this:

Lamiaceae officinalis 'Berggarten' (Common Sage)

All I'm asking for is that when we alphabetize the WS database, that we do it by the scientific name first, for reasons given above. If we include the common name as above, then we would have a database searchable for both common and scientific names, with the scientific name being first, since each plant only has one scientific name.

By the way, I had an itinerant upbringing and when I married, I had no interest in gardening whatsoever. But, I knew as I surveyed our *new* lot (was an *ancient*, neglected hovel), that I could never maintain it just for the sake of neatness and conformity - it would have to be something magical, and that's when memories of my New England grandmothers' garden came back to me. I only got to see it for a few moments around the time I turned 3.

For the first 10 years, I tried to grow useful vegies, but vandalism was pretty bad. So, I thought to myself, maybe if I just grow weeds - burdock like you would hosta and Hall's honeysuckle up over an arbor for a vertical element and gill ivy for groundcover, I could have the *feel* of a garden. Also, it occurred to me to try to grow plants not grown locally that weren't too showy like herbs, in the hope they might be too confusticating to the locals to inspire mischief.

The vandalism suddenly stopped - long, sad story there - so won't go into that here.

And so, I began to try to learn the names of unusual ornamentals and went from there to flowers "for pretty". First, the challenge was to match an image with a common name - flower catalogs came in handy for that (I didn't know a forgetmenot from a snowdrop). And then, I discovered books by Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West, Elizabeth Lawrence, etc., and the urge to learn Latin names came over me (and I didn't grow fangs - lol). Many Latin names have a root that is the same is roots for English words, like hirsute (hairy), argentatus (argent for silver), etc.

Maybe if I had been a member of Daves Garden back then and I *needed* to learn Latin all of a sudden, I would have balked. But, I snuck up on the Latin names vewwwwy slowly at my own pace, and taking a local community college course on perennials was helpful, too.

I find language fascinating for its own sake - so the Latin became kind of fun - some dictionaries have a section for each word that shows how it evolved over time from older languages - so the Latin kind of dovetailed with my curiosity in that department, too.

Well Blue, Thats a thing that I get so confused on that I have to have a sheet of paper in front of me so I will remember what is what and that is the cultivar species, genus, and family. For what ever reason I just can't get that planted in my head. Believe it or not I took Latin when I was in High school and I don't remember a bit of it,never had a reason to use it. I am not saying I am completely dumb on the scientific names of all the plants, because I do know some of them and then some I can just look at and figure out what they are.. Like you said with the Latin language some of the words are self explanatory.
Jonna I am 12 years your senior. At that age learning is just a bit harder because your memory just doesn't work like it use to. By the time I was your age I had been to college 2 times and never had a problem with my memory but with age that changes.

flower... i have all my seeds in a database in Excel. so in there i have all the data, with both scientific/Latin name and common name... that has helped me tremendously. my spreadsheet also includes the link in PlantFiles so i can look anything up that is not in the sheet.

tcs
I literally no nothing about databases and excel, so that is out for me. I just use a notebook and write it down, I have had only the basics in computer training and that was learning how to type LOL. and am not good at that really.

One of the great benefits of DG is that over the last couple of years, I have become increasingly familiar with the botanical names for plants. When I am swapping seeds, I try to always use the botanical name so the recepient can easily find out more about the plant. I once received seeds marked "Chinese Lanterns" but that name referred to THREE different plants, each with different requirements for germination, etc.

Besides, learning stuff is what keeps us young ^_^

Oh yeah I agree there, I figure if I learn at least one new thing a day I am accomplishing something. I am trying to learn as I go. It would help me if I would learn how to spell LOL. Everytime I type something out I go back and reread it and I have always got a word mispelled LOL.

LOL There are some new things I can learn, but spelling isn't one of them. I found that learning to download and use use a good spell checker was more reliable for me than trying to learn to spell.

Here is ieSpell http://www.iespell.com/download.php made for Internet Explorer. It is free for home use only and it works great..I have used it for several years with not problems. After it is downloaded and installed there is a small icon on your IE tool bar. Anything you type on any web page, you can spell check just by clicking on the icon. It's great! I installed it on my XP before Vista came out. If you have Vista you may want to read carefully to make sure there is not another version specifically for Vista.

No I don't have vista. But my problem is not really my spelling LOL. my fingers don't work as fast as my brain does and when I type I get ahead of my fingers. That is the reason I couldn't really learn to type when I was in school. What I know about typing now is just setting down and concentrating on what I am doing and I have to concentrate very hard when typing.

I am fortunate in that I am a country boy who spent a lot of time down on the farm and also was able to get a college education. I have just enough common sense and book smart to be dangerous, but I find most every thing easy to learn. My PROBLEM is that when I go to bed at night the black board is erased, so each morning I wake up in a new world. If only I could remember what I learn. LOL

I have a little bit of that problem too, but I guess at my age it is part of the process LOL You sound like that Movie . 50 first dates LOL that was the funniest movie that I had watched in a long time LOL.

That movie was hoot to watch. I gave it four stars (really liked it) on Netflix.

Yeah, I'm sure my age has a lot to do with my forgetfulness. However, on the up side I can watch that movie again in a couple months and it's just like watching it for the first time. LOL

LMAO Yea I know what you mean same here!!!!
I think what is the worst about it all is that your doing something and forget what it was you were doing LOL. Like DH says the mind is the second thing to go and I don't remember what the first was.

Kudos to you Karen! (bluespiral)

I totally agree with you. Googling the common name led me to Dave's Garden. I slowly learned the "scientific names" sometimes called "botanical names" over the years I've spent on Dave's just by lurking & reading tons of info here. lurking: To read but not contribute to the discussion in a newsgroup, chatroom, or other online forum.

I've taken to reading the seeds' packets; looking for the "scientific names" if you really need seeds for:
Common Sage, Garden Sage, Salvia officinalis: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/313/
please dmail me by clicking on my name to the left (which should be a blue link; it will take you to my member page where you dmail me. I have some seeds of it I can send to you.

~* Robin

I agree that the database would have been more user friendly if plants were listed by botanical name. For all the reasons listed by bluespiral, entries would be easier to find if listed that way. Too many people in this big world use the name "coneflower" for echinacea, rudbeckias, ratabidas, and probably many, many other plants as well. However, an echinacea is an echinacea is an echinacea, and that doesn't change.

I don't want to be harsh in criticism of the existing database though, because I know that some worked hard to create it to their liking. For them, I guess it works out. I don't ever use it because I have no desire to actually work at learning something which, in reality, is counterproductive in terms of learning about plants. It just doesn't work for those of us living in a world of botanical names. I know what achillea is, but I've certainly never heard of sneezewort.

Karen

One common name I have always had trouble is the Bachelor Button or straw flower. From the time I was just a kid, my grandmother and my mother referred to Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena globosa) as Bachelor Buttons or straw flowers.

When I look for the BB seeds I most always come up with a corn flower (Centaurea cyanus), the flat blue or sometimes pink straw flower. What? Straw Flower, well that a whole nuther thing as there seems to many different kinds of flowers referred to as straw flowers.

So, I guess Common Names can sometimes be as confusing as scientific names. The thing about common names is that what may be common to me and my family and neighbors may be unheard of to you and your family and neighbors, especially now days with everybody wanting to be different and trying to invent new names for something they see based on what they feel at the time. If that new name catches on then over time young people call something by one name and older folks call it something else and so it goes.

TRG, You Said it all . that is the exact reson I have trouble looking up flowers, all I know is the common names and when you look up common names you find a blue million different flowers , so I really am trying to learn the other names for them and some I do know, but it isn't easy for me.

Maybe this link may help some of you; or maybe you may be even more confused than ever.... just take a look (see)

Vascular Plant Image Library: http://botany.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/gallery.htm

Happy Hunting & Season's Greetings!

~* Robin

Edited for spelling correction

This message was edited Dec 24, 2008 4:48 PM

Ok Robin, with the way all of that is listed is that the name of plant with all of the different species of it? If so that will help some but it doesn't give me common names to help me learn to connect the scientific to the common . I have saved the site so I can go to it and maybe learn a few of which I already know a little better like how many species of that plant there are.

Ok, there's a link there called " string query" to the right hand side. It goes here: Full Text Index and Query System: http://botany.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/gallery/library_query.htm

That page tells you how to use the "Query System" you should try that too.

Don't try it all in one day, your head will be spinning like Linda Blair's head. Like the "Asteraceae" Family! http://botany.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/imaxxast.htm

I really gulped when I saw how many their are!

~* Robin

Yeah that's what I done when I went there and just took a glance at it. I thought oh man is there really that many species of just one plant.So hard to imagine that much.

Robin - thank you - what a wonderful resource. I've indexed your links in my Favorites to spend more time on. Am not sure I will have the time for some ideas your links are inspiring in me.