Customisation

Contents: Plant notes - core fields, Plant name form, Autofill, Auto synonym generation, Customise accession form, Create plant or accession notes

One of Persephone’s most powerful features is the ability to customise your records according to need. In general, your collection will have been set up by the Persephone Team, after discussion with you, when you first started on Persephone.

To change or add to your collection setup, go to Customise at the top of your Plant List and click on one of four tabs below:

Customise plant notes

Watch this video or read the instructions below for how to set up your custom notes fields.

Core fields

Check the boxes ONLY if you want to use the following fields:

Out of Scope - this checkbox is used to indicate that a plant is outside the scope of your collection. For example, you may have a National Plant Collection of Hybrid Musk roses bred by Pemberton & Bentall, and a few extra hybrid musks that are not part of the collection but which you would like to record in the same place. Plants marked ‘Out of Scope’ appear in purple on your Plant List and are excluded from various reports.

If you want to record large numbers of plants that are outside the scope of your collection, it will be better to have a new garden collection set up for the purpose: please contact persephone@plantheritage.org.uk

Not in Collection – this checkbox is used to indicate a plant that is within the scope of your collection but which you don’t yet have. Some of these plants may be on a list of plants that you are planning to buy; others may be genuinely hard-to-find plants, and these should also be added to the separate Desiderata collection.

Hybrid – Hybrid fields are used to record the names of the parents of plants in your collection and (optionally) use those names to create a hybrid plant name.

Catalogue – The Catalogue field is used to record a fixed amount of text to accompany an image in a Catalogue Report.

Year of Introduction – this field can be used to record the year that a cultivar was introduced to the UK or the Republic of Ireland. This information can help with our Threatened Plants Programme research.

Introducer – this field can be used to record the name of the person who introduced or bred a cultivar.

To Add new note field see the guidance below.

Customise plant name form

Watch the video, or read the instructions below.

Settings

Check the boxes if you want to be able to compare your plant names against the RHS Plant Search and/or Plants of the World Online.

Note that POWO only records the names of wild origin plants. If your collection does not include any named species, use the RHS Plant Search only.

You can also choose whether to include Authority, Section and Series in your plant name (if applicable).

Live fields

To hide plant name fields that you are not using, drag them to the Unused fields box. Data will not be lost if you accidentally move a field, and you can return fields at any time. You cannot move Genus to the Unused fields.

Autofill

If your collection involves only one or a few families, genera or species, you can set Persephone to autofill those fields. The Family field may have already been filled for you, if your collection is part of only one Family.

To add autofill options, click on Create, then Add to add the first option, then Add again to add the second option and so on, then click Save.

Auto synonym generation

This feature can be used to save you having to repeatedly add a former name (synonym) when you are adding new plant names OR to allow you to update a plant name across your collection, if the plant name is changed by taxonomic revision.

Examples:

(I) To set up an auto synonym to record that Eurybia divaricata used to be called Aster divaricatus, click Add and then select Genus. Put Eurybia in the Current Name and Aster in the Synonym. Then click And & select Species. Put divaricata in the Current Name and divaricatus in the Synonym. See Screenshot. You will be able to use this feature when you are adding new plants to your collection.

(ii) To use the auto synonym function to update all Schizostylis coccinea records to Hesperantha coccinea, click Add and then select Genus. Put Schizostylis in the Current Name and Hesperantha in the Synonym. Then click And & select Species. Put coccinea in the Current Name and coccinea in the Synonym. See Screenshot.

Now click on Action, to the right of the rules.

Click Replace to change every Schizostylis coccinea to Hesperantha coccinea; Click Add new names to add Schizostylis coccinea as a synonym of every Hesperantha coccinea record; Click Add new names and Set as display to change every Schizostylis coccinea record to Hesperantha coccinea, with Schizostylis coccinea as a synonym.

Customise accession form

Watch the short video, or read the instructions below for how to customise your accession page.

Live fields

To hide accession fields that you are not using, drag them to the Unused Fields Box. Data will not be lost if you accidentally move a field, and you can return fields at any time.

Location

If you want to record the location of your accessions, check the boxes to make them appear in your accession page.

Use Long/Lat to record the local location of your accession (eg. in your garden).

Wild Long/Lat can be used to record the location where your accession was found in the wild.

Set qualifiers

If you use qualifiers to record accessions multiple plants of the same accession, or propagules of an earlier accession, you can configure this here.

For example, to create accession numbers like 2020.001 * A, choose * from the options in the Separator dropdown and A-Z in the Qualifier dropdown. There are three options for Separator (. - and *) and three options for the Qualifier (A-Z, a-z and Roman Numerals). You have the option for the first qualifier to be blank, so that qualifiers are only used for the second and subsequent accessions.

For more information about using qualifiers see Add Accession

Set default values

Use the dropdown boxes to set a default value for the ‘Acquired As’, Status and Provenance fields. This is useful if the majority of your accessions are acquired as – say – a whole plant; or if their provenance is usually ‘Garden Origin’.

You will be able to overwrite the chosen value when you complete the accession form.

Create plant or accession notes fields

This is where you can choose one or more notes fields to record additional information about your plants or accessions.

You can also choose whether to make these fields visible or editable to others or to keep them private. You may want to keep a field private if it contains sensitive information, such as the location of a valuable plant.

It is important to think carefully about whether a note should be used for plants or accessions:

Plant Notes should apply to every accession of your plant – eg. cultivar flower colour.
Use Accession Notes where they apply to individual accessions of a plant eg. planting location.

The table shows a list of all the different types of notes fields and what they can be used for.

For more details of how to set up these notes fields, see below.

FIELD TYPE	Example	USE FOR
Textbox	Notes about PLANT	Small amounts of text
Date	Date of planting of ACCESSION	Calendar dates (DD/MM/YYYY)
Year	Date of registration of a CULTIVAR	Year Information
Single Checkbox	Check when an ACCESSION has been photographed	Y/N options
Checkbox List	Flowering seasons of a PLANT (eg. Spring, Spring & Summer, Winter)	More than one option can be checked
Radio Buttons	Flowering seasons of a PLANT (eg. Spring or Summer or Autumn)	Only one option can be filled
Text Area	Cultivation Notes for a PLANT	Expandable area for large amounts of text
Dropdown	Location of an ACCESSION in various borders	One option can be picked from a dropdown of multiple options
Table	Tree height of ACCESSION by year	Information in tabular form
Number	Number of extra ACCESSIONS of a plant	Must be a number (decimal).

Create text boxes, text areas, date, year number and single checkboxes

To create any of the above fields, simply label your note and select the relevant option. Starting on either Customise plant notes or Customise accession notes, click on Add new note field. Then, label your field, select type from the dropdown and save.

Once created, the notes field will appear below and it can be you can edited, deleted or moved. Click on Edit to the right of the field you want to edit, and then choose edit, delete or Up/Down to change the order of your notes.

Create checkboxes, radio buttons and dropdowns

To create a checkbox list, radio buttons or a dropdown field, label your field and select the correct type.

Enter your first option and click +Add. Enter your second option and click +Add. Continue until you have added as many options as you need, then save

To delete an option, click on the X to the right of the field. To change the order of the checkboxes, use the green + to drag and drop your options into the correct order.

Create tables

Choose Table from the list of types and label the field.

Select Normal or Infinite Table. A normal table has a fixed number of rows and columns for every plant or accession. An infinite table has a fixed number of columns and you can add as many rows as you want for individual plants or accessions.

For a normal table, add the number of columns and rows and save.

For an infinite table, add just the number of columns

A picture of your table will now appear.

For a normal table, label the columns and rows and then click Save table.

For an infinite table, label just the columns

To delete a table or change the column and/or row headings, click on Edit to the right of the table and choose edit or delete.

To add or delete rows or columns to a normal table simply adjust the number of columns and rows in the Notes Editor. NB – new columns are added to the right of existing columns and new rows are edited below existing rows. If you are entering a sequence (such as years) make sure to put these in ascending order so you can add to them later.

To add columns in an infinite table simply adjust the number in the Notes Editor. NB – new columns are added to the right of existing columns, so if you are entering a sequence (such as years) make sure you put these in ascending order so you add to them later. Rows are added in the actual notes field - click on the three dots to see options to add, delete, or re-order the rows.

Note that data held on a spreadsheet can be imported to a Persephone table and that all tables can be exported. Please ask the Persephone Admin Team for more details.