Suggestion : An Illustrated List of Pakistani Garden Plants

[M Farooq]

ASA everyone,

Wouldn't it be nice if we have an illustrated list of garden plants of Pakistan here that we can consult anytime? I am presenting a Wikipedia like idea to get your valuable feedback. As we know Wikipedia is mainly based on volunteers and it is open to editing by everyone. Yet its accuracy is comparable to established encylopedias because it is a self correcting database. For e.g. if A writes something which may have factual errors, B corrects it.

It is long been my dream to have an illustrated list of Pakistani Garden Plants. What if we make an editable online list of only Pakistani plants in this forum? All we have to do is to add the names and pictures of the plants we know of along with common name/ Urdu/ local names. I used to keep a Word file for my own reference which is very simple, plant's name which was new to me at one time and it's picture (mainly from the internet).

Currently, it is a modest list of names i.e. ~ 50 so far, but if we upload it here and keep it open for editing by members, then each member can contribute at his/her own convenience. Secondly even if 20 of our active contributors add 10 plants they know of, we will have at once 200 additional plants in that list...and this will grow with time. So there will be no burden of time on anyone!

We don't need to take photographs of plants that we add but we can use google images and use their link as a reference.

Every now and then we get an identification questions. What we can do is to archive that picture in the list along with correct identification, if someone finds a mistake then that member can correct it .

A snap shot of my Word file is attached for your perusal. Please don't say that we don't have time- it will be the most invalid excuse because hobbies and passions carve out time themselves out of very busy schedules. All we need is a determination. As the famous saying goes Where there is a will, there is a way :-)

Regards,

Farooq

[Tahir Khan]

Great idea farooq sb, we can even add non indigenous plants as well that can grow here in Pakistan and can be safely introduced in our climate.

[Khalid Abro]

Dear Farooq

Hats off to you for dropping this idea. I am sure we will all make an effort to make it most profound list with the passage of time and that will be used as a best reference for Pakistani Garden Plants.

[Farhan Ahmed]

@Farooq Sb.....You have full liberty as any other member to go ahead with your suggestion and put it in black & white in whatever way you have envisaged. Looking forward to initiation of Illustrated list project from your side. We would be grateful and render our services in all possible manners.

On the other hand Mirafzalkhan is working very diligently on creating some sort of database for the above mentioned project remaining within the frame work of Forum/phpBB script.

[khabbab]

I would suggest that the data should be in the form that it can be categorized without any extra effort. E.g. If i add an entry for a plant then i should be able to mention that it is a fragrant plant, its type is creeper and so on. So later on if we try to get a list of fragrant plants of pakistan then we do not have to search for each entry. It is the same concept of labels in blogger blogs E.g. http://www.lahoregardening.com/search/label/butterfly will fetch all post having butterfly in the label. This is also the way Flowers of india has done that. Same data but different extraction. I think they have used JAlbum http://jalbum.net/en/ which seems good and not very expensive.

One more thing, this list will grow i have no doubt about it. it will reach hundreds and then even more. We should be able to present this data in a separate website. If we launch flowers of pakistan dot com then we should be able to put same data on that website with minimal effort.

[Farhan Ahmed]

@Khabbab.....how about we sponsor a new website. But again what are the possibilities of tailored made database ?

[khabbab]

@Khabbab.....how about we sponsor a new website. But again what are the possibilities of tailored made database ?

We can go for new website, just my opinion though. I have asked database question on forum of Jalbum, lets c what response i get. But there are many other solutions similar to jAlbum, they need to be investigated.

[Syed Adnan]

Nice idea.

[khabbab]

@Khabbab.....how about we sponsor a new website. But again what are the possibilities of tailored made database ?

No database. The images are uploaded to Jalbum.net or any other host. Remember we can publish the same set of images/galleries to any website or blog. Still checking the tags support. But i think they can pull images from picasa. Face book and twitter integration is a must. If a photo is uploaded i would prefer it gets auto published at the face book page as well so more people know about it.

[M Farooq]

A think a number of active contributors are agreeing on the idea- but have challenges in terms of implementation:

Tentatively, a number of things can be done from the following options:

1) Collect funds specifically to make a proper Garden Flora of Pakistan webpage. I am not into softwares or programming langauges but Khabbab knows all about them. The Flowers of India has shifted its focus on wild plants because the contribution is coming from photographers. We can start from garden plants because they are the most familiar ones.

2) Second option is that I maintain a private list again in too simple a process of making a list in Word, as well as members email me pictures and IDs. We can also make a separate email with a common password (among the team) in gmail- which will be solely dedicated to photo collection. I will verify from google/ or other sources. Google drive can also be used to store the images.

Once Mir Afzal sahab and team members are ready to lauch a such website, I can provide that list and use that email database. The only "problem" is that my images are currently from google but I do have their links saves as well for reference.

What do members think about it?

Regards,

Farooq