Re: Plant Identification Software II

Subject: Re: Plant Identification Software II
From: macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis)
Date: 29 Sep 1994 17:57:55 GMT
Article: 44864 of rec.gardens
In-reply-to: rln@metasoft.UUCP's message of 26 Sep 94 16:02:49 GMT
Newsgroups: rec.gardens
Organization: OSF Research Institute
References: <35poit$nao@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <35puco$clk@newsbf01.news.aol.com> <5986@metasoft.UUCP>

In article <5986@metasoft.UUCP> rln@metasoft.UUCP (Roberta Norin) writes:

   Try Florafile for Windows from Terrace Software. It does just what you
   are asking for. It comes with over 600 plants and you can add your
   own plants. $49.00.

600 plants isn't very many.  The American Horticultural Society's
Encyclopedia of Garden Plants covers about 8,000 plants, with
photographs of about 4,000.  Of these, probably over 600 fit the
proposed criterion "Sunny, well-drained soil, flowering, shrub"!

You don't get arbitrary search criteria, but it is well organized and
indexed(*) so in practice you can find plants meeting given criteria
pretty easily.  In particular, there is an index where you can find a
list of recommended shrubs adapted to dry shade, etc.  The price is
about the same as the Florafile program described above.

	-s

(*) Actually, only the 4,000 plants that have photos really benefit
>from  their full organization; the other 4,000 are only listed
alphabetically by genus and species.  Still, 4,000 well-indexed plants
is almost seven times as many as the Florafile program.