Pax
As everyone has said, it would be a massive project as there are somewhere
between 25- 30000+ species.
But there is a use for a searchable database based on floral
characteristics. When I have gone into the field in Australia, Asia and
Europe photographing orchids, there are often ones that I can't ID. They
don't come with labels in the jungle, bush or fields. This necessitates
many hours searching references and e-mailing friends and colleagues. I
would certainly find a searchable database useful to help narrow down the
search for a name.
A few authoritative sites for plant names are Kew monocots
http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/home.do , International Plant Names Index
http://www.ipni.org/ and Missouri Botanical Garden Tropicos sites
http://www.tropicos.org/
You would need to get written authorisation from all photographers to use
their photos. Another huge task.
Good luck and as Diana said, do try a few more orchids but chose the more
hardy ones suitable to your conditions to start with.
~John
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"Diana Kulaga" wrote in message
.. .
Pax, I admire your ambition. But truly, the only thing you mentioned that
I personally would use (and rarely) is the feature that would allow a
look-up based on description.
Most of us who grow orchids are pretty much sticklers for having the names
of the plants, so it would be a rare time indeed when one of us would use
even that function.
As to the photos, lifting photos posted on the web is *not* a good idea.
You mentioned the intellectual property issue. I don't know how you'd get
past that, with the thousands of anonymous posters out there.
Between OrchidWiz and www.orchidspecies.com , there is little that is not
now available. Again, though, I do admire you for thinking about such a
massive undertaking. Try a couple more orchids!
Diana
"K Barrett" wrote in message
...
"Steve" wrote in message
...
packat wrote:
Hello,
I am a computer scientist who has a deep passion for orchids. My
parents grew several orchids where I grew up (Thailand), way back in
the 60's. Our fence at the front part of the property lined with 8-9
feet long poles covered with coconut husk and grew Vanda on them.
They are very common in Thailand. I don't know what species, but the
plants grew as tall as the poles and flowered profusely. The leaves
were thin about 10 cm long with round cross section. We had several
other kinds of orchids too, mostly natives of Thailand.
I now live in Maryland near DC. I have spent fortune over the years
trying to grow several orchids I bought from local nurseries and
internet. But I wasn't successful. They all eventually died. But
even with all these failed attempt, my love for orchids has never
faded. I decided to turn to studying them instead of growing them.
My new goal is to build a web-site that I (or any site visitors) to
search the database that stores taxonomy and various characteristics
of each species. For instance, people could request: "find all
orchids with red lip, yellow petals, 2-3 cm in size,....." etc.
The response would be the list of species that match, or fuzzy match
these characteristics. I hope to also show pictures that I collected
over the years from the internet. Probably those that some of you
took. But I need to work out the intellectual property issue first
before I can do that.
My questions to the community a
1) Would this be useful to you?
2) Is there a website(s) that has comprehensive list of orchid
taxonomy? I have looked at several sites including wikipedia, which
are very useful, but I haven't yet found an authoritative and
comprehensive site.
3) This is a stupid question: I found several differentiations
between sites on the species name: e.g. dayana vs dayanum, coccinea vs
coccineum, aurea vs aureum,... and many more. What is the standard
practice when it comes to choosing which version to use?
Thanks,
pax
The site most of us use now to look up a species is this:
http://www.orchidspecies.com/
Now, if you could do what you say you want to do and make it searchable
by a description, that would be most useful when we have no idea what an
orchid is. With the site above, a person needs to have an educated guess
about what the genus is, in order to find a plant.
I'm not sure that you realize what a massive project this would be. Look
at the size of the orchid species site and you will have a good idea.
As far as your questions about names... the species name needs to match
the gender of the genus name. Sometimes scientists decide to place a
plant in a different genus. If the new genus has a different gender, the
species name needs to change to reflect that.
Steve
Pax, if you want to get involved with databases, maybe you should ask Jay
Pfahl http://www.orchidspecies.com if he wants help with his site or ask
Alex Maximano if he wants help with Orchid Wiz http://www.orchidwiz.com,
or ask the American Orchid Society if they want help with their site
http://www.aos.org. Goodness knows the AOS always needs talent.
Otherwise its kinda hard to compete with the Google search engine. If I
want to know anything I just google the term and usually I find it to any
depth of interest.
K Barrett