Plant information records are efficiently stored in a database, indexed by name but searchable by many other descriptive and cultivational criteria.
The Plant Selector facility allows searching for plants which match any combination of criteria such as size, colour, growing conditions and hardiness. It includes a free text search to scan for information held in descriptive notes.

Pictures are associated with plant records but held in separate library areas. No specific restriction is made on number of pictures per plant or size of images. There are up to three separate libraries, allowing greatest flexibility. Each picture library is kept in a separate disk file. Plant Base does not need all, or in fact any of the picture libraries to run.
Two of the library files have identical formats, with picture images stored within the database file itself. Having two such files allows some pictures to be kept separately, perhaps on a different disk drive such as a CD-ROM or a shared drive on a different computer. The third library file simply indexes free-standing image files anywhere on your system, without storing its own copy, saving disk space where you wish to keep the original files for other purposes.
Some example pictures can be viewed on the Gallery pages, the website images are exactly the same as those used in Plant Base.

Each plant may have references to other information. These may be internal to Plant Base or external, such as web-sites, document files or paper sources. Hyperlinks are used where possible.
More infomation about the References feature...

All the plant information and pictures stored in Plant Base may be changed, deleted or new records added. New pictures are easily added from standard image files in jpeg, bitmap or gif formats. Records changed by the user are tracked, so that they can be copied out for transfer to new versions or other computers.

You can create and save personal lists of plants. Individual plants or the results of a Plant Selector enquiry can be added to a list. Each list entry may have detail data recording location, size, cost or other information. Personal plant lists could be used as a log-book for your own garden or as a planning and buying list. Each listed plant links back to the main plant data record, so a personal list can also be used as a bookmark facility.

Personal Plant Lists can be exported to standard text files, as a simple list of names or with all the detail columns as a Comma Separated Values (.csv) file. These files enable use of the data by other applications.
Pictures stored within the database may also be saved as standard files in their original image format.

User modified data, that is: lists, new or changed plant record or pictures, may be archived to a separate disk file. Such files can be read by the Import function (next feature). This provides an efficient method to share information with other Plant Base users or allows easy database recovery, for example when upgrading or moving Plant Base to a new computer.

The Import function allows new or updated records to be added from another Plant Base file or a specially prepared update file. The action of the Import can easily be controlled, so that you can prevent it overwriting records which you have customised.

Pictures can be displayed in sequence as a slide show. For each image shown, a click of the mouse will bring up the main data record for that plant.

An optional Screen Saver module is included which randomly displays plant images from the database when your PC is idle.
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Plant Base has its own "Compact Database" housekeeping function. This optimises disk space and speed of access for databases which have been in use for some time.