Does anyone know where I can get a csv file of a horticulture database for a project I'm working on? I'm trying to create an easy-to-use online database to help me source plants for my design projects. The project is
Any leads on data would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Michael
It has been awhile. But I believe the Microsoft product Excel can import CSV.
Bill who loves JMP and wonders if this helps?
He's looking for the data, not the program to import the data.
Oh well here is 81400 hits.
You can download your USDA Plants database selection in comma- delimited text file format from here:
If other sources exist, you may find them on the EWIRM lists at
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Thanks for the posts. I have found a few. I had already looked at the USDA csv, but it's over 200k plants, many of which are weeds or food crop. It would be rather time consuming to go through and pick out the plants significant to landscaping.
I'll check out the links you guys gave. Most of the stuff I have found, people want to sell their database. I'm willing to trade the information with anyone else who has info, so it's not like I'm only looking to receive.
Thanks again for all the leads.
MIchael
Does the USDA file put genus, species and varietal name in 3 different fields?
No. It puts it all in one field. So after having to sort thru 200k of plants to find out the ones significant to landscaping, I'd have to transform it. After all that, it is missing all of the relevant criteria to select a plant for a landscape project. It seems to me that it is more trouble than it's worth just to get the scientific/ common name and nothing else.
You should be able to parse the words into separate columns easily. Assuming, for example, that you have things like this in one field:
Pieris japonica
(all words separated by spaces, in other words), do a search-replace, converting all spaces into some useless character like the tilde ~. Then, use the text to columns thing with the tilde as the delimiter. Voila.
I understand parsing text files to csv and then flipping it to a database. I've worked on quite a few databases as my day job is as a computer geek (I'm only a plant geek by night/weekends). The major problem with the USDA csv is that it contains a massive amount of irrelevant data. Beyond that, not all plants fall easily into the example Genus Species Cultivar/Var. For example, Abelia ' Edward Goucher' omits species and has 2 words for cultivar. I've been doing quite a bit of clean-up on the csv files I've been able to get. I'm just dreading tackling the USDA csv with 200k+ entries then eliminating tens of thousands of irrelevant entries and then cleaning up 40-60% that don't easily convert.
Then I end up with tens of thousands of relevant plants with zero information about them. Over time as I use them in design projects I can add data, but I'm still forced to go outside my database to pull relevant information.
I know this is going to be a massive undertaking and an on-going project. I appreciate all the suggestions and if anyone is interested in trading content, get with me at
I do this all day long with grocery data that was assembled by slobs. If I could reach through the phone and grab some of these people by the throat......
Interested in splitting the task? You take half the file and I take the other? Reassemble it later?
lol . . . that's the way I feel when I'm working on data people send me at work. If I could just get my hands on them for 5 minutes . . .
I'd be grateful to split the task. I'd also be more than happy to give you a copy of the entire database at the end if you have any use for it.
I see the link to the query, but just so we're both working on the exact same file, do you want to compress it and email it to me, and let me know what record numbers you're going to work on so I can pick up at a later point? The "public" email address you see here is a working one. Just let me know when you send the file. I don't check this email often because it's mostly there to catch garbage generated by newsgroup exposure.
Hang on a sec. If I leave the query as general as possible, I come up with
39,000 to 47,000 plants. How did you end up with 200K?
I downloaded the csv from the USDA. Importing it into Excel, I had to break it in half. first half around 120k lines. I emailed it to you. take a look and make sure I counted right. it may be slightly less than 200k.
Just got it. I think I misunderstood what your version of "clean up the data" meant. I was referring to cleaning up the raw data, which I see necessary for many of the "exceptional" records. But, you're talking about editing out categories of plants. I honestly don't have that much time to work on it that way.
no worries. i completely understand. that's my problem as well. that's why i'm trying to find other sources. thanks tho.
What about using the query interface to do some initial filtering?
Actually, some additional poking around the USDA site gave me this link:
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