I have developed a Barichara plant database. As of now, it has 259 plant entries. Of these, 139 are native and the rest are suitable for a food forest in the area. Each plant has 212 fields with information used by the front-end interface.
There are three main ways to find plants: A simple search and the two discover and design sections. Each of those sections has subsections with several plant lists and filters. There is also a details page for each plant.
I made this database specifically for reforestation and food forests in the Barichara area, at about 1000 to 15000 meters above sea level in a dry tropical forest in the Andes.
It’s still at a draft stage and the info and interface need to be refined and improved. If there is interest, I’ll make a Spanish language version.
If it is to be used outside of Barichara, the plant selection and plant info needs to be tailored to each location.
This plant database is made with Google Sheets (spreadsheet) and Google Apps (interface and programming). That means that the URL for the current version may change over time, although I will aim at keeping it at this URL for a while. The images are from Wikipedia and Wikimedia with sources listed.
I made it mostly for our own food forest and regeneration project on Finca Milagros. If others in the area find it useful, they are of course welcome to use it.
This is the first time I used AI as an assistant for a project like this. I started it in 2024 and worked on it for about a week, and then another couple of weeks in 2025. My life was too full to do more with it until this summer where I spent maybe three weeks to continue the work on the content and interface. There are many questions about the use of AI for these kinds of projects, including the use of natural resources and copyright questions. Still, I chose to use it for this project.
