User talk:HortMan

Hello, welcome to Wikiversity and the Bloom Clock Project. Below more info about Wikiversity, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 16:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hello HortMan, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To get started, you may

And don't forget to explore Wikiversity with the links to your left. Be bold, and see you around Wikiversity! ----Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 16:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hi HortMan! I'm pretty sure what you saw on U. parvifolia were the fruits, not the flowers. The flowers appear before the leaves emerge in springtime (it's autumn there, I assume). :).

There has been some talk lately about making a fruit/seed clock as a companion project... should be easy enough to start up: we hadn't really got talking about it until this (Northern) winter, and there's not a lot in the way of fruit yet north of the equator. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hello, HortMan, and thanks for signing up as a contributor to the Bloom Clock!

To get started, all that you need to do is keep your eyes open for flowers on plants growing outdoors. Then, depending on how well you know plants, you can either try to find the plant using the global keys, or just check the master list where plants are listed by their scientific names.

Assuming you find a log page for the plant you saw, all that you need to do is click [edit] above the list of signatures, and add *~~~~ on a new line below the last signature and above the line that begins with <noinclude>, which will make your signature appear on the profile page.

If you don't find a log page, just add an entry for the plant to the Master List using {{bcp|Scientific name|Common Name}}. Someone can then show you how to create a profile and log page for the plant.

If you don't know the name of the plant you saw, try asking on Bloom Clock/Unknown Plants using the template there. Photographs are very helpful, but if you don't have a digital camera, just give the best description you can and hopefully someone can identify it for you.

After you've logged 10 or more plants as flowering for your location, another bloom clock contributor will help you set up the categories and templates used to construct a key for your region, and try to match up your region to the global keys.

If you have any questions, ideas, or need something explained, please feel free to leave a message on my talk page, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!--SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hi HortMan. I did a few corrections on the new pages you made... not at all your fault, but I just finished a basic instruction manual at Bloom Clock/Editing BCP Pages. I switched anwers to those used by the templates on all of them, and moved "Fuchsia sp." to "Fuchsia" (it's probably better with the "sp." or "spp.", but all the other generic profiles just use a genus name, and there would be some issues with italics as well).

You're also well above the "qualifying 10" plants, so I want to set up regional keys and categories for you. I'll create the basics later, using "New Region 2" for now (the bot will change that later). This does mean you should be adding one or more templates to the BCP page in the middle template: {{bcp/victa/gp}} for cultivated plants, {{bcp/victa/np}} for native plants, and {{bcp/victa/ip}} for invasive plants (use 2 or more of those when appropriate, these should be at the beginning of the line before the monthly templates). The monthly template for April will be {{bcpm/victa/4}} (may will be {{bcpm/victa/5}}, etc.). I'll set them up later today (no instructions for making them yet, I'm afraid).

Thanks for all the contributions! I look forward to comparing the data and matching a season :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 14:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Heh, yeah, I'm not exactly a hacker either... I know just enough to be able to make the stuff work, but I'm not so good at explaining it :). For an example of what I mean about using the templates: see this edit. What it does is add both categories and links for your region, and eventually (hopefully) we can figure out how your region corresponds to other regions (e.g., we now know that Sedum spectabile blooms in April where you are, and in September/October where I am :).

As for cleaning up the identification archives: I did a bit of that a few months ago, but got too busy with other things. I do plan on somehow moving plants that are still unidentified after a month or two to subpages, but probably won't have time until June or July (busy with spring planting here). Maintenance help is definitely needed on the global keys though... I'll try to come up with instructions on how to do that. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:34, 25 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Oh by the way: please don't use those templates on plants seen indoors! That would make it pretty much impossible to compare data from region to region, since the closk is for seasonal things, not glasshouse-related things. There's nothing wrong with making profiles for those plants, but you might want to sign using an alternate account, so no-one gets confused down the line. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hi Hortman,

Was this in a greenhouse? (Bloom clock plants should only be logged when they're outside) :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 08:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)Reply

Hiya HortMan,

I set the templates and did the basic structure for the Victoria keys. I think I got all the ones you logged for April (some pages were created but no actual logs), the ones I did get are here. If I missed any, you can just add {{bcpm/victa/4}} to the "Victoria, Australia =" field on the middle template.

As you log plants this month (May), add {{bcpm/victa/5}} to the same part of the template. This will both add the categories and make a link to the keys (listed here... I haven't set the DPL for them yet but will try to get to it later today). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC)Reply

You might have noticed that new profiles created using {{bcp3}} now have a number of changes in the bottom template (changed on Monday, then I haven't had much time since then to get a note out). The main changes involve the fields which previously required the use of additional templates (such as {{bcp/white}} for white flowering plants). These "embedded" templates have caused a great deal of confusion among some of the new contributors.

On the new template, each of the colors has it's own field. To mark a plant as possible blooming in that color, simply put a "y" or "yes" after the equal sign (similarly for marking plants as herbaceous, etc.). Similarly for all the new fields

For the moment, "forb" should be used for any plant that has no woody parts above ground and is not a vine (e.g., BCP/Hemerocallis has a "y" for both "herbaceous =" and "forb =", while BCP/Ipomoea hederacea has a "y" for both "herbaceous = " and "vine = "). Note that annuals, grasses, sedges, etc. should also be classified as forbs or the time being.

Mike's bot will come through and update the older pages hopefully sometime in the next few days. The old fields will still work for now... several categories will allow us to keep track of which profiles use the older versions (I couldn't figure out an easy way to get the bot to redo the data, so we'll have to do that manually).

Note that the log pages are a bit different now as well, using an (updatable) template instead of text, and using headers differently to allow grouping by year. These can easily be updated by adding {{subst:bcp3-logs}} to the top of the page, then deleting the old text and moving the logs.--SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)Reply