Where the plant data comes from

Every species you can place comes from a plant database Airship Lab curates and publishes in numbered releases. This page explains what a release holds, how a design stays on the one it was drawn with, and where its sources are credited.

Species data ships as a release

A release is one snapshot of the whole database: species records and their attributes, stock sizes, price bands, plant-health records, the curated palettes and hedge mixes, and the sources behind them all. Each has a number and a label the curator gives it, and never changes once published — a newer release moves a pointer, so an older one can be rolled back to.

Signed in, with planting switched on for your workspace, the designer downloads the current release, checks it against the fingerprint the server published and keeps it on this device. It looks for a newer one once per session, then when a day has passed and you return to the tab — sooner if a check did not finish. Offline, it uses what it already has.

What a species has to clear

A plant reaches a release only once a curator has verified it and it passes the publishing check: every attribute mandatory for its life form has a value, and no disagreement between sources is left open on one of those — a curator settles that by pinning the claim that wins. Every value that ships, mandatory or not, has to carry a verification stamp that still matches it and come from a source cleared for display. A plant also needs at least one stock size, the size it is planted at; a missing price is reported in the build but does not hold it back.

Anything that fails is left out rather than guessed. An attribute with no value means unknown, never zero: sizes fall back to the generic tree or shrub, and a filter such as Native never matches a plant whose value is unknown.

Every value names where it came from

Each attribute points at the source that recorded it, and so does every plant-health record and price band. A common name or synonym passes the same check — one from a source we may not show stays out — and its source is credited with the rest, though a release credits it for the plant rather than name by name. The accepted name, the family and the botanical identifier are WCVP’s, and ship only while WCVP itself is cleared and credited.

Before a release can be published, or rolled back to, that provenance is audited: every credited source must still be in the register, still cleared, and carry its licence and attribution word for word, and any attribute, plant-health record or price band shipped without a traceable source blocks the release outright.

The gate runs the other way too: if a source is withdrawn its values stop shipping, and a withheld price band leaves that stock size unpriced rather than falling back to an older figure.

Where the credits are shown

At the foot of the Planting panel you will see the label of the release the app is using and a link, Plant data sources and credits. It opens a page listing every source the live release draws on: the title, linked where the publisher has a public page; the publisher; the licence by name, linked to its terms where the licence has public terms; and the attribution exactly as the publisher words it. It always describes the live release.

Your design remembers its release

When you give a plant a species, the design stores a copy of that species record and its stock size alongside the release number. The drawing is then self-contained: it renders, sizes and measures the same on any device, for a collaborator on any plan and for a guest on a share link.

Two notices keep that honest. A design saved by an older build, drawing on the data on your device rather than its own, says Plant data isn’t recorded in this design yet, with Record it. A design opened after the database has moved on says Plant data updated since this design was saved, naming both release numbers and how many species and stock sizes changed, with Update. Each is one undo step. Dismissing the update notice keeps the design on its release, so sizes and quantities hold still until you update; dismissing the other only puts the recording off, and the design goes on drawing from this device’s data. Where two records have been merged, the release carries a redirect, so an older design still resolves its species.

Before any data has arrived

While plant data is still loading, if you are offline before any has reached this device, or if no release has been published, the Planting panel says which, and trees still place as generic symbols.