A new program release of Plant Base for Windows and Mac is now available. Version 2.1.8 is essentially another maintenance release with just a few fairly small changes and some bug fixes.

There is not yet a new release of the plant database to go with it, so it’s only the program part. As usual, updating the plant data has been happening continuously but is not significant enough to justify issuing yet – so that will come later on.

The most noticeable change to the program is only a small thing, which is the addition of a roll-up/roll down button for the select plants tab. This quickly makes more space for viewing the results of a plant selection. The biggest change is less noticeable, but might be important for those users who need to switch between separate copies of the database files. The method for opening database files has had a big overhaul and is now simpler and quicker to use.

Possibly the most important aspect of this version is that it has been the basis for the very first complete program for Linux systems – more about this shortly!