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Background
When I started with hostas around 1998, I was overwhelmed by the number
of different hosta names and the
information available. There were the websites of hosta vendors, hosta
societies and hosta amateurs. There were a lot of hosta
pictures available on the Internet especially in the Hosta
Library. Add to this all the hosta mailing lists.
Searching the Internet each time I needed some info was not
the right thing to do. To use the words of Bill G.: I want hosta information at
my fingertips: at home, on the road, in the garden, ... So I
decided, around 1999, to create my own application called
HostaMania
to help me manage all this information. That's how I
became a hostaholic. Today (January 2004), HostaMania contains
"information" about some 5600 hostas, has access to more than
6500 hosta
pictures and contains my own hosta collection. I use it more and more to
automatically generate web pages like these
lists.
You can find a page with statistics here. |
Hosta Information?
The "information" included in HostaMania is primarily what I find useful for the moment. It can be easily extended.
For the moment it contains
- Main hosta table with hosta
name, originator/author, year of
registration/description, size, fertility, leaf
color, veins, leaf description, petiole color,
flower, fragrant, slug resistant, leaf size,
availability, prices, descriptions ...
- Separate table with origin
information for sports (parent) and hybrids (parents).
Will be used to generate the progeny of an Hosta.
Possibility to generate lists of related hostas.
- Table for my own collection
plants: name (linked to the main table to see
information), source, date, price, notes.
- Growers table with
information about nurseries and others: name,
address, URL, e-mail, ...
For latest features, you can
check here.
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