Data additions and corrections during January

We have been busy  during this month and have made a number of corrections to typographical errors in the data.  Our main work  has been the addition of 750  records spread across the data set, mainly to seed weight and seed numbers, but also to two new characteristics, mean plant dry mass and max stem diameter.  These are all accompanied as usual by their sources, of which we have added a further 50.

We should soon have a reasonably complete table of hybrids  and links to their distributions etc, but  little ecological data.  The next task will then be  the writing and uploading of the descriptions for the next 300 aliens, and the extraction of the data for these plants. This will  provide us with data on a total of over 1000 of our most common aliens.


Henry F

Happy New Year to our users

Ecoflora hopes everyone has had a great holiday season, that everyone has had a productive year last year,  and that the plans for your activities in 2015 are  getting under way.

Here, we are about to start a rationalisation of the database, prior to redesigning the interface. Now is the time to put in your requests from your wishlist.   We are planning the usual updates of species data, and hope to have more photographs ready for the production of a plant identification app. The addition of 26,000 records of floral morphology last year should enable us to complete this by spring this year.  We also intend to apply to TRY for further data on our species. The TRY data sets do not necessarily correspond to our ecological characteristics, but that is no reason not to include the data, even thought they may  not prove to be sensibly  searchable as the traits will differ from species to species.  

Our usage statistics are slightly down from last year, but since being a member of TRY - www.try-db.org, we have been receiving regular data requests via this site at a rate of about 20 per month. One has popped up as I type this note.

We also hope to receive funding for our work this year and will be putting in a few grant applications to this end.

So we hope that all our users have a splendid New Year.

Henry Ford

Ecoflora