Folks keep talking about using LLM (nicknamed ‘AI’) to try to answer plant questions, and bemoaning that the data those LLMs scrape from is un-verified blogger heresay. People keep talking about creating a database of professionally verified plant information about specific species, featuring things like:
- Soil parameters
- Best growth conditions and tolerance outside of that
- Bloom and fruiting timeline
- What can it be used for?
I want to let y’all know that This plant database already exists.
It’s called https://plants.usda.gov/characteristics-search
>Go to the Characteristics Search
> Click ‘Advanced Filters’
> Click on whatever category you want. (If you want to find edible plants, go to ‘Suitablility/Use’ and check ‘Palatable Human: Yes’
> Click on whatever plant you’re interested in.
> Click the tab inside that plant for ‘Characteristics’
> Scroll down to view a WEALTH of information about that plant’s physiology, growth requirements, reproduction cycle, and usable parts for things like lumber, animal grazing, human food production, etc.
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If you’re dissatisfied with the search tool (I am, lol) and wanted to build a MASSIVE database of plants, with a better search function, this would be a great place to start scraping info from – all of this has been verified by experts.
submitted by /u/daitoshi
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