Thanks, Dave! Here are examples of what I meant for Child Plant and Pedigree lists that might utilize a direct link from a cultivar's View Page to a "Daylily Database/By Characteristics" result:
First, the View Page of "Diabolique" with a green arrow showing an option for accessing child plants within the DL/By Characteristic database result (
Daylily (Hemerocallis 'Diabolique'))
Clicking the imaginary link in the photo example above might take you to the Daylily Database/By Characteristic page with "Diabolique" auto-filled in the "Parentage" box (
http://garden.org/plants/group...), thus showing pictures of Diabolique's offspring, and allowing further refinement to the list of its children through selections available right in the DL DB/By Characteristics page. This way we could see and refine searches on all the children without having to click through a longer path to a general blank DL DB/By Characteristics page and without needing to fill in the desired cultivar name in the "Parentage" box. One-click to further refinements, for example, might find the user selecting "Semi-Evergreen Foliage Type" to find which offspring have a desired feature.
In this example, I'd know in a couple of clicks that Diabolique has two of eleven child plants that are semi-evergreen, and by clicking through from there to a child plant's View Page I might again find a direct link back to its next-generation child search results in the DL DB, and so on, down through the generations.
Similarly, if I wanted to do a "backward" search in Diabolique to see and compare more detailed plant characteristics behind it, namely for its pod parent "Borrowed Time," there might be a link in Diabolique's View Page to that parent's list of offspring (and/or parents) inside the DL DB:
(
http://garden.org/plants/group...)
That way we could see related lines ("aunts" and "uncles") that also came from Diabolique's parent, "Borrowed Time," and via a click to Borrowed Time's View Page, could go back stepwise through additional generations via direct lines to see other past ancestors (all in the highly refine-able "By Characteristic" page in the DL DB).
Lastly, but certainly not "least" in the pie-in-the-sky category
... a full be-all-and-end-all direct descent and ascent pedigree search result so that one might see and compare past/present cultivars in a line. For example, a both-ways pedigree result via the DL DB would show that Diabolique goes all the way back to 1899-discovered species plants H. aurantica major and H. thunbergii, and also has a modern 2007 grand-child "Pushing the Limits". It would, for example, yield by quick clicks that "Rozavel" (a 1965 Diabolique pollen ancestor) is a close match in color and form for "Puppet Lady" (a 1990 child of Diabolique) and might be a good choice for crossing to set that characteristic. Here's my fantasy of what part of a full pedigree search result via the DL DB might look like (to include offspring up to current generation, as well as direct-line ancestors even back to the last known named cultivar/species - abbreviated/truncated in the picture example below as it would take a lot of cutting and pasting to show all the ancestors/picture/links here):
Okay... I'll hush now
really, i cringed as i prattled on, making heads explode (even my own!
) ... i feel confident i will soon be reading the words "relational database" in reply and i have vague memories of programmers furrowing their brows at my not understanding that "relational" and "searchable" are two very different thangs. it also did _not_ escape me that my random choice of Diabolique (simply a cultivar that had full lines back to species as well as near-present offspring) certainly had its "freudian" overtones thanks to its pedigree cultivar's names. Said another way, I hope I was not too Diabolical in Pushing the Limits here, causing me now to turn into a Nemesis on Borrowed Time!
