[Bioperl-l] Companion planting

[Gordon Haverland]

Greetings.

I am trying to fuse some (4-6?) of the larger lists of companion (or
anti-companion) plantings together.  I am not anything remotely like a
biologist or geneticist (materials science is where I come from), but I
am back on the family farm and it needs some rehab.

I want to incorporate taxonomy in my companion data.  There is some
data which definitively states that the presence of A helps B, that the
presence of B helps A and that both A helps B and B helps A.  Some data
notes the companionship, but doesn't point to the detail of it.  And
some I don't understand.

For example, Wikipedia seems to think that Repel and Distract are
important, but I don't think a single example of Distract was given.

The only taxonomy I have any familiarity with, is that presented by
Wikipedia.  I have no idea if that is the best available.  And it
some group updates some taxonomy by agreement or concensus, I suspect
modifying anything based on Wikipedia could be problematic.  Perhaps
the more formal taxonomy databases are better?

And stuff about classifying plants bugs me.  How beans as a
"species" (or group of species) can not be broken into subgroups; when
in the companion data we see things like bean/pole Helps and
bean/runner should be Avoided?

Maybe it isn't a subspecies type thing, maybe it is more like the
"Clade" data that Wikipedia presents?  Not that I understand Clade more
than anything else.

One place where the "plant" kingdom interacts with the "animal" kingdom
is in the use of Trap plants.  A plant present because it will be
damaged or killed by some "animal" pest, instead of the wanted plant.


I have looked at some of the "man" pages at MetaCPAN on taxonomy; and I
haven't a clue as to how I would either freeze a perl structure
(DBM::Deep?) or use SQLite3 (or PostgreSQL) to save a local copy of
data.


Personally, I would like to find a trap crop for deer; but I suspect
none exist.


More data is always nice.  I think I have one more "biggish" source to
digest, which is by some definition "big".  But all of the stuff I am
looking at is "popular", which may be why the definitions of things
change from source to source.  Are there better sources that are more
rigorous?

My thinking is that this data (what plants do I want or not want
close to X) probably changes with climate, soil, and maybe other
things.  I suspect there are also interactions between plants (A helps
B if C is not present, ...).


Oh well, I am going to go back to merging my data.  Perhaps someone
with nothing to do, could humour a poor materials scientist turned
farmer (permaculture)?  :-)

Have a great day!
Gord