The old USDA and Environment Canada Zone systems that really only tracks frost days has been updated in several ways. Zones have now been split into a) and b) areas that show a shift of up to 3 weeks on both ends of a growing season within a Zone. Then there is the book, Western Garden -- offered by Sunset Publishers -- offers a complete and VERY accurate growing zone description that includes heat, precipitation, and -- most important -- shoulder seasons west of the Mississippi. It is a refinement of the AHS descriptions. AND, if you go to their website, you can get the same data for areas east of the Mississippi. Both maps extend into southern Canada and northern Mexico. For folks in other parts of the globe it seems to translate well because it of the way it defines climate ... so anyone in a Mediterranean climate anywhere gets accurate information on growing conditions as well as plant lists. The same thing holds true for those in mountainous and desert areas. For a description o f heat days in mountainous areas, you can go to the University of Colorado website, and click on their Master Gardener program data. It follows the AHS guide but goes into more detail. Jo Canning Vancouver Island -----Original Message----- From: pbs <pbs-bounces@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> On Behalf Of Garak Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 9:33 AM To: pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net Subject: Re: [pbs] Plant hardiness database Hi all, a quickly accessible database has its benefits, no doubt, though i'm not happy with the "binary presentation", as it is always more complex than smily or no smily - microclimate is just so important for many plants and can change 1 zone easily, sometimes two. and as John wrote, cold hardiness is not all - there's winter wet, summer heat, summer drought, light intensity (a factor often underestimated when trying alpine plants in lowland)... so the best way to put it could be something like "plant x fits your zone, so winter cold seems not to be an obstacle for you to grow it" or "Your zone is near the lower border of plant x' hardiness, you may want to choose a sheltered position". The other thing i'd like to see would be the source of the particular zone definition, we all know different sources have different values for a lot of plants. Besides, the resolution of cities may be enough for plains, but it's not nearly fine enough in mountainous areas. still, it looks like a good start to me. Martin Am 15.01.2019 um 15:50 schrieb Gianinatio via pbs: > Interesting but perhaps marginally useful, at least here in our Z8 and the other warmer zones. With our summer lows hovering around 80F, and high humidity, there's a significant contingent of Z8 plants that won't grow here. Very little from mediterranean climates, and particularly the cape floristic region, can tolerate our conditions. I tried the program and it simply spits out one zone number. Having tried (and failed) with so many marginal species here, I'd be reluctant to direct any novice to that site for an answer. And any expert would probably already know the answers by experience or reading. If they combined the data with AHS heat zone data, then they might have something useful. That map places Austin and Seattle in very different zones, compared to USDA which puts us in the same zone. > > John > On Tuesday, January 15, 2019, 8:17:34 AM CST, Colin Simeons via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: > > Hi, Very well done. I have tried it and am sure that it will be > very useful for all of us.ThanksColin > On Tuesday, 15 January 2019, 13:15:27 CET, David Pilling <david@davidpilling.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > Someone wrote to me > > "I have developed a database containing 30.000 species including their > hardiness data which will simply be mapped and compared to the > hardiness zone the user of this software is at and instantly provide results." > > See: > > https://asklepios-seeds.de/gb/… > > > There is a commercial aspect to this since he is a seed vendor. > > -- Martin ---------------------------------------------- Southern Germany Likely zone 7a _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… --- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com/ _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…