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Cultivated-plant knowledge base (Rust + DuckDB) — with a loaded public seed.
Open-source “straw” for human agricultural / garden plant data: taxonomy, traits, names, provenance. The schema for personal inventory (L3) is empty by design; the knowledge tables are filled and shipped as parquet. Apps (e.g. Budsy) write L3 locally.
| Status | Data loaded — cultivated KEEP product on GitHub (data-v0.2.0) |
| Product species (KEEP) | ~18,566 cultivated/germplasm-linked taxa |
| Warehouse | ~62.5k USDA Species rows (reference; not the public product) |
| EN common names (KEEP) | ~91% of KEEP |
| Care-rich core | ~2.1k with ≥3 practical Tier1 fields (soil/moisture/height/toxicity) |
| Engine | DuckDB locally; shareable source of truth = parquet tables |
| License | MIT OR Apache-2.0 (code); data PD / CC BY / CC0 — see MANIFEST |
| Release | data-v0.2.0 |
Botanica stays free/open for the knowledge + schema. Product UX (camera, plant ID, sync) lives in Budsy.
Open source, not open contribution. Sole developer: Michael A. Kuykendall. Unsolicited PRs are closed by default. See CONTRIBUTING.md and GOVERNANCE.md. Optional support: SPONSORS.md.
| Layer | Content | Public seed |
|---|---|---|
| L1 Taxonomy | families, genera, species, external IDs | Yes — filled |
| L2 Knowledge | traits, cultivation requirements, vernaculars, synonyms, distribution, provenance | Yes — filled (depth varies) |
| L3 Inventory | your plants, photos, care logs | Schema only (0 rows) |
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Species | ~18,566 |
| Families / genera | ~532 / ~3,687 |
| Vernacular name rows | ~247k |
| Trait rows | ~26k |
| Cultivation requirement rows | ~26k |
| Synonyms | ~35k |
| English vernacular coverage | ~91% of KEEP |
| Practical Tier1 (≥3 of soil/moisture/height/toxicity) | ~11% of KEEP (~2.1k deep core) |
| Hardiness (Wikidata free pass) | ~545 species |
| Uses / cultivars | 0 (not loaded yet) |
KEEP membership rule: hort payload (traits / cult.req / uses) or GRIN / FAOSTAT allowlist hit.
Full USDA wild bulk is not the product — ~44k empty rows were filtered out.
Sources already in: USDA PLANTS, GRIN taxonomy, FAOSTAT crop labels, POWO, GBIF vernaculars, Wikidata hardiness (sparse).
One directory per table under data/silver_keep/ — each table split into small
part-NNNNNN.parquet files (every part ≤ 40 MB, so we never need Git LFS). DuckDB reads
a whole table by globbing the parts. See docs/DATA_PARQUET.md.
| Table dir (examples) | ~Total |
|---|---|
vernacular_names/ |
~16 MB |
distribution_regions/ |
~57 MB |
species_identifiers/ |
~16 MB |
species/ |
~4 MB |
traits/ / cultivation_requirements/ |
~1 MB each |
| All KEEP tables together | ~126 MB |
# after clone
duckdb -c "SELECT count(*) FROM read_parquet('data/silver_keep/species/*.parquet');"
duckdb -c "SELECT scientific_name FROM read_parquet('data/silver_keep/species/*.parquet') WHERE scientific_name ILIKE 'Monstera%' LIMIT 10;"Or download the Release asset.
Rebuild KEEP after fills:
python scripts/export_keep_set.py --tag <sprint>Every knowledge fact is labeled by source. See [\docs/PROVENANCE.md](docs/PROVENANCE.md) for licenses, tables, and queries.
| Source | License | Role |
|---|---|---|
| USDA PLANTS | Public domain | Taxonomy + most care traits |
| GRIN | Free + attribution | Cultivated / germplasm membership |
| FAOSTAT | Free + attribution | Commercial crop signal |
| POWO (Kew) | CC BY 4.0 | Synonyms, distribution, lifeform/climate |
| GBIF | CC BY 4.0 | Vernacular names |
| Wikidata | CC0 | Sparse hardiness |
Row-level: \provenance\ + \source\ columns on L2 tables. Batch-level: \data/manifests/*.json.
# What’s missing from a priority list (starter houseplants included)?
python scripts/gap_report.py
# → data/manifests/gap-houseplants.txt then scrape only those gapsLoop: score → gap list → fail-fast scrape → merge → export KEEP → quality JSON → commit parquets.
- Family → genus → species types and CRUD
- DuckDB migrations for L1/L2 + empty L3
- Seed build / KEEP export scripts
- Optional network ingest feature (
--features ingestion)
- Deep care fields on most of the 18.5k (only ~2k rich)
- Hardiness / sunlight completeness
- Uses, cultivars
- Some common houseplants still missing from KEEP (see
gap_report.py)
| Doc | Topic |
|---|---|
data/README.md |
Artifacts + load |
docs/ITERATIVE_FILL.md |
Agile fill loop |
docs/RELEASE_PROCESS.md |
Tagging / Release |
docs/ARCHITECTURE.md |
Design |
docs/WORKSTREAMS.md |
Work queue map |
[dependencies]
botanica = { version = "0.3", path = "..." } # or crates.io when published truthfully
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }use botanica::{BotanicalDatabase, Family, Genus, Species};
use botanica::queries::{family, genus, species};
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> botanica::Result<()> {
let db = BotanicalDatabase::memory().await?;
db.migrate().await?;
let rosaceae = Family::new("Rosaceae".into(), "Juss.".into());
family::insert_family(&db, &rosaceae).await?;
let rosa = Genus::new(rosaceae.id, "Rosa".into(), "L.".into());
genus::insert_genus(&db, &rosa).await?;
let briar = Species::new(
rosa.id,
"rubiginosa".into(),
"L.".into(),
Some(1753),
Some("LC".into()),
);
species::insert_species(&db, &briar).await?;
let found = family::get_families_by_name(&db, "Rosaceae").await?;
println!("families: {}", found.len());
Ok(())
}Prefer parquet KEEP for real species data; the snippet above only demos the in-memory API.
| Feature | Purpose |
|---|---|
ingestion |
HTTP/CSV importers + CLI bins |
darwin-core |
DwC types (partial; not a full GBIF stack) |
conservation |
IUCN types (mock client — not production) |
full |
Turns on optional pro flags (still incomplete) |
Default features: none.
- Budsy — app lifecycle, inventory UI, CrabCamera
- CrabCamera — desktop capture (plant-agnostic)
MIT OR Apache-2.0. Knowledge stays open. Build cool things.