Kathy, there's another use as well as the unpleasant long term consideration. It
helps no end in tracking repotting & other treatment needs. I also try to
record *where* each plant is in my collection now. That's after searching &
swearing, trying to find a particular plant (or many) that my database says
should be repotted.

And, while I don't keep it all as up to date as I should, I do ensure that each
purchase, loss, repot, and position on shelf is recorded.

For repotting, I find it far easier to sort the database by repot date than to
work my way through the entire collection looking for the date of last repot on
each tag.


On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:50:55 -0700, "K Barrett" wrote:

Marilyn Light (North American chair of the Orchid Specialist Group) used to
give OrchidSafari chats on the idea of orchid conservation vis a vis
hobbyist's orchid collections. Or to put it another way, since habitat is
being lost our collections just may wind up housing important plants, maybe
even one's no longer found in the wild. You may or may not agree with that
idea but one of the things Marilyn used to stress was to keep and maintain a
list of all your orchids, hybrids included, because some just might become
important.

Lo and behold, my mentor did keep a list of her orchids. More importantly
she *maintained* the list! Dang, she even input purchases made just a few
days before she died. (The woman was compulsive, *G*.) I can't tell you
how easy it has been for her family to figure out what's in the GH. It only
took a day to figure out what's still extant in her collection. Way more
easy than the daunting task of cataloging what's in her library and potting
shed.

So, while Marilyn Light might have had some lofty goal, thinking that a list
of what's in the GH could conserve orchids in the wild, in reality its made
one facet of my mentor's heir's lives real easy. People here have mentioned
their orchid databases, some that even include flowering records. *Kudos to
you all!* I never really was 'together' enough to make a list of my
orchids, much less keep it current but now I'm considering it and including
my library's books, too. I figure my heirs deserve a clue as to what's
worthwhile in all the crap they may want to dump or sell on eBay.

K Barrett

Dave Gillingham
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