Gentlemen, I curious if there's an expert system where I can enter
"vine, double serrated leaves, semi-tropics" (Taiwan, elevation: 800
meters) and it will tell me some possible families or genera to look
up. That ought to be enough to get me on the right track. No waiting
around all year for it to flower.

Would such an expert system be practical, or is that too little
information to narrow things down?

In article , wrote:
Gentlemen, I curious if there's an expert system where I can enter
"vine, double serrated leaves, semi-tropics" (Taiwan, elevation: 800
meters) and it will tell me some possible families or genera to look
up. That ought to be enough to get me on the right track. No waiting
around all year for it to flower.

Would such an expert system be practical, or is that too little
information to narrow things down?

There have been such systems developed here in Oz for specific groups
(Hyland's key to our tropical rainforest species comes to mind) but I
don't know of one that would cover all plant taxa for the continent,
much less the whole world.

Of course, it would be *possible*-- but not necessarily very practical
with such a small character-set to narrow things down to a small
enough list to satisfy a human!

Good ecological data and/or geographical distribution, would be a help
in the face of a very limited set of botanical characters as such.

Cheers, Phred.

--
LID