I'd like to be able to search for plants in my list by characteristics. One possible format would offer me a Search by Characteristics option on the home page of my plant list. This would be useful, for instance, if I were thinking of setting up a moon garden and wanted to find all of my existing plants with white blooms.

It would be useful, but too limited for my purposes. A preferable format would add "In my list" to the characteristics I'm searching for in the general plant searches, especially in the case of plants with custom databoxes. If I want to find all of my Ralph Moore roses, for instance, I can now type "Moore" into the hybridizer box of the rose search engine, but it gives me 222 results. I'd rather be able to find only those that are already in my list.

Irises provide another good example. A search for Pacific Coast Irises brings up a myriad of results, but I might only want to know which ones I already have. It's not enough to be able to search through the 250 irises in my list for the Pacific Coast irises because that might not be the common name showing on all of them.

Yes, I think I can do that. Let me have until tomorrow and I'll see what I can come up with.

I just uploaded the enhancement to the Search by characteristics form (both the general one that searches all plants, as well as the one that searches the custom databases.)

At the bottom of the search form you'll see a new checkbox that, if checked, will restrict your search to plants that exist in your own personal plant list. I tested it and it seems to work well. Give it a try and see if it's what you were hoping for.

I just tried this on my list. I just checked off "Perennial" and the box for limiting the search to my list, but only 3 plants came up.

You'll probably need to search for more than that. The advanced search isn't intended to be used to show all perennials across the whole database, and therefore (for technical reasons I won't describe right now) it won't find them all like that.

Try searching for perennials with at least one other attribute, like flower color or what have you.

Ok. I tried searching just my list for perennials with pink, showy flowers. Still only three results. Oh well, no biggie for me, I was just playing with it.

Of the 135 plants in your list, how many do you think you have that are perennials with pink showy flowers?

Well, if you look at the very first item in my list, Abutilon Bella Pink, it is listed in the database as being a perennial, with pink showy flowers, but it did not come up in the search results. Could that be because there is an additional entry under "Flower color?"

Ok, I see what you mean. I have updated the system to expand its reach, and it should be seeing them all now. Please try again.

Yes! That works!

Thanks for the report!

By the way, just for clarification on how the whole search thing works, if I check Pink AND Lavender under flower color, the search results only show listings that have both colors, not either color. Is that the way it's supposed to work?

Yes, it searches for plants that have ALL the checkboxes you filled in.

That's right, Woofie. The entries would have to have both the pink and the lavender boxes checked to appear in the results. That is the way it's supposed to work.

Dave, this is phenomenal. I had been hoping for something like this in the future. I never expected to have it the day after I first mentioned it! It works beautifully (and I now know that I have 82 of Ralph Moore's roses).

And I only have 12 Kordes roses, will have to remedy that!!

Why can't I add a space after my italicized word? In my post, I added a lot of space trying to seperate the words, it stayed the same. Do we need different code now? @dave

Whoops, can't tag you in edit mode.

Zuzu, I'm so glad you're happy with it. Never be afraid to ask for any enhancement that will make the site more functional for you!

Sue, I can't remember exactly why but at once point I had to alter the way italics behave on ATP. I think it was because of the way we show latin names in italics and there wasn't enough space after it so I changed it. I'll look further into it.

dave said:I just uploaded the enhancement to the Search by characteristics form (both the general one that searches all plants, as well as the one that searches the custom databases.)

At the bottom of the search form you'll see a new checkbox that, if checked, will restrict your search to plants that exist in your own personal plant list. I tested it and it seems to work well. Give it a try and see if it's what you were hoping for.

, Dave.

This helps so very much!

You're very welcome!

Just tried it Dave. Another great tool. Thank you.
And thank you Zuzu for asking for it.