It would be great to have an option to add a Tree Diversity Summary to the Plant Schedule that automatically calculates and displays tree diversity by family, genus, and species.
The summary should:
• Report the total quantity and percentage of each family, genus, and species based on the trees included in the schedule.
• Automatically update as the Plant Schedule changes.
• Be optional, allowing users to enable or disable it within the Plant Schedule settings.
• Allow users to define diversity thresholds (For example: 30% maximum from a family, 20% maximum from a genus, and 10% maximum from a species) and highlight any values that exceed those thresholds.
• Use the existing plant database taxonomy (family, genus, species) without requiring manual calculations or exporting to Excel.
Including this summary within the Plant Schedule would streamline the preparation of landscape plans for municipalities and clients that require tree diversity calculations. It would eliminate the need for external spreadsheets, reduce the potential for calculation errors, and ensure that diversity information always remains synchronized with the planting schedule.
The summary should:
• Report the total quantity and percentage of each family, genus, and species based on the trees included in the schedule.
• Automatically update as the Plant Schedule changes.
• Be optional, allowing users to enable or disable it within the Plant Schedule settings.
• Allow users to define diversity thresholds (For example: 30% maximum from a family, 20% maximum from a genus, and 10% maximum from a species) and highlight any values that exceed those thresholds.
• Use the existing plant database taxonomy (family, genus, species) without requiring manual calculations or exporting to Excel.
Including this summary within the Plant Schedule would streamline the preparation of landscape plans for municipalities and clients that require tree diversity calculations. It would eliminate the need for external spreadsheets, reduce the potential for calculation errors, and ensure that diversity information always remains synchronized with the planting schedule.
Rick Haering
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Task — 2 months ago
Rick, thanks for the explanation and mockup! This is actually already on our roadmap and mocked up, but not scheduled for development quite yet. I'll add your contribution to that wishlist item.
I like the idea of being able to set thresholds and have the system highlight any outliers. What would you like to happen? Just have a cell background of a light red maybe? This might also need a spot in planting preferences to define such a highlight, or maybe just in the schedule options if we can find room. I'm not sure we'd want to introduce another schedule text style when we already have Schedule Title, Schedule Header and Schedule Text.
How would you like it to handle if the same code plant is used in multiple plant mixes and seed mixes? Would it be OK if this feature is only allowed when plant mixes are included by plant, not by group? And then it would not take the species makeup of seed mixes into account, but I think that's just practical and no City Staff could really argue against that due to the lower rate of survival of each seed in the mix.
-Amanda
I like the idea of being able to set thresholds and have the system highlight any outliers. What would you like to happen? Just have a cell background of a light red maybe? This might also need a spot in planting preferences to define such a highlight, or maybe just in the schedule options if we can find room. I'm not sure we'd want to introduce another schedule text style when we already have Schedule Title, Schedule Header and Schedule Text.
How would you like it to handle if the same code plant is used in multiple plant mixes and seed mixes? Would it be OK if this feature is only allowed when plant mixes are included by plant, not by group? And then it would not take the species makeup of seed mixes into account, but I think that's just practical and no City Staff could really argue against that due to the lower rate of survival of each seed in the mix.
-Amanda
Rick, can you please also link to the city requirements that state you need to break out the diversity of all 3 of family, genus and species? I'm not sure we'll be able to break down by family any time soon since we don't have that data added to our database at this time.
Ex. from Wikipedia:
Edit to also add:
More issues to discuss - usually the biodiversity is based on % of all trees or % of all shrubs. Not % of all plants. This would also be needed since there would be no way to calculate the % Use of a tree species to any Shrub Areas or Groundcovers with a square area quantity.
Ex. from Wikipedia:
The Sapindaceae are a family of flowering plants in the order Sapindales known as the soapberry family. It contains 138 genera and 1,858 accepted species. Examples include horse chestnut, maples, ackee and lychee.
The Sapindaceae occur in temperate to tropical regions, many in laurel forest habitat, throughout the world. Many are laticiferous, i.e. they contain latex, a milky sap, and many contain mildly toxic saponins. The largest genera are Serjania, Paullinia, Allophylus and Acer.
Edit to also add:
More issues to discuss - usually the biodiversity is based on % of all trees or % of all shrubs. Not % of all plants. This would also be needed since there would be no way to calculate the % Use of a tree species to any Shrub Areas or Groundcovers with a square area quantity.
Hey Amanda - That's great news that this is something already on your roadmap. I have attached the Town or Erie, Colorado Standards and Specifications to show you where this requirement comes from. Look at Section 1062.07.01 (Page 1000-34). There are a couple other municipalities we work in that have similar types of requirements, but you are correct that they are percentages of just the tree category, not all plants. We have only seen this type of diversity requirement for trees, but I would imagine any solution could easily be applied to shrubs, grasses and perennials. We don't generally use plant mixes, but I think your suggestion of only using it for individual plants (not groups, mixes or areas) would be easier to implement, and most useful for users. I like the idea of turning an outlier cell red. A font change might be too subtle and could be missed.
Are the cities specifically asking for that information to be in the main schedule, or would a separate report be adequate? A separate report, even able to place on the sheet as a separate table, would be easier for us to implement.
We could also provide a highlighting option to show on the plan the varying diversity percentages, like verify labels. Then it'd be easy for your team to go through and pick out the plants in the plan to change to another species.
-Amanda
We could also provide a highlighting option to show on the plan the varying diversity percentages, like verify labels. Then it'd be easy for your team to go through and pick out the plants in the plan to change to another species.
-Amanda
In the past we have done it both ways (integrated into the plant table, and as separate tables/reports). A separate report would work great if that is easier to implement. I like the idea of highlighting the plants that are over the thresholds. That would make it really easy to visualize where you have too many of certain species.
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