International Plant Database?

[Brittany Brock Birdsong]

Anyone know of a good website where I can search for native plants for different areas of the world?  Doing a residential and a hotel landscape design in Morocco for work and am not familiar with plant palette there.  Would like good images and descriptions, even design considerations.

Thanks! 

[Thomas J. Johnson]

This ought to get you pointed in the right direction…

http://www.bgci.org/resources/database_links/

http://www.bgci.org/garden.php?id=755&ftrCountry=MA&ftrKeyword=&ftrBGCImem=&ftrIAReg=

http://www.bgci.org/garden.php?id=2366&ftrCountry=MA&ftrKeyword=&ftrBGCImem=&ftrIAReg=

http://www.bgci.org/garden.php?id=532&ftrCountry=MA&ftrKeyword=&ftrBGCImem=&ftrIAReg=

[Brittany Brock Birdsong]

Thanks! Unfortunately the Morocco section says it has no plants right now. Looks like a hugely informational site. Just wondering if there are any sites out there where you can search by location or climate zone rather than species name.

[Rob Halpern]

Perhaps you need to search in Arabic or French or Spanish

[Thomas J. Johnson]

You probably won’t find a site like that for free…Creating that kind of data base and search engine is an expensive endeavor. There is a program called Horticopia that enables you to search based on form, color, seasonal bloom, soil, water, etc, etc. It’s a great program for finding plants appropriate for your region but even Horticopia doesn’t have every plant and misses a lot of the basics. One of the factors you need to consider in your search is; will you be able to source the plants in Morocco? There’s no point in identifying “native” plants if you can’t get them on the scale you’ll need from local nurseries.

Also, is there a reason you are going with “natives” vs. “adapted” species? There are a lot of great plants from around the world that will work in that region…

[Rob Halpern]

Two perfect and perhaps correct responses. Thinking about “native plants of Morocco” for a project in some unspecified locale is like asking about “native plants of Texas” for a job in Houston.

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