Help:Classification of uses

Putting species pages in categories

Here are the base categories recognised by Pl@ntUse. The words in bold give the names of categories that should be put at the end of each species page. The categories are then grouped to form higher categories. For exeample, Tropical fruit, major > Tropical fruit > Fruit > Fruits and nuts.

The objective of the splitting is to reach categories with a reasonable number of species. We consider here as major all the species which are produced commercially and traded on long distances. Species only used locally are considered as minor.

Comments are welcome, but changes will be difficult to implement when many species will be documented, as changes have to be done manually.

The links are to the introduction page for each use group.

• Cereals (including pseudo-cereals): Cereal, cultivated / Pseudo-cereal, cultivated / Cereal, wild / Pseudo-cereal, wild.
• Pulses: Pulse, major / Pulse, minor.
• Vegetables
• Fruits (including nuts): Temperate fruit, major / Temperate fruit, minor / Tropical fruit, major / Tropical fruit, minor / Nut, major / Nut, minor.
• Sugar plants: Sugar.
• Starches (other than cereals): Starch, major / Starch, minor.
• Oil plants (in part)
• Dyes and tannins (in part)
• Spices and condiments
• Stimulants and beverage plants (including plants used for chewing or smoking)
• Food additives

Non-food uses

• Dyes and tannins (in part)
• Technical plants (industry...)
• Ornamentals (including hedge and wayside plants)
• Timbers (including bamboos used for construction)
• Auxiliary plants (including shade and nurse trees, live supports, cover crops, mulches, green manures, fallow crops, live fences, windbreaks, erosion-controlling plants, land reclamation species, and water-cleaning agents)
• Fuel plants (including plants used for the production of charcoal and as tinder)
• Medicinal plants (including poisonous plants used as pesticide, fish poison or dart poison, and narcotic plants)
• Essential oils (including aromatic woods and plants producing camphor)
• Exsudats (including plants producing latex, resin, balsam, gum, wax and aromatic resin)
• Oil plants (in part)
• Fibres (including rattans, and plants used for packing and thatching, as tying material, and for making paper, baskets, mats, wickerwork, wattle work and toothbrushes).
• Forages (including feed for fish and insects such as silkworms)
• Bee plants
• Plants used for social, magic or religious purposes
• Plants imbedded in culture (including art, literature, symbolism)

Novel uses

• Industrial plants (in particular those giving a raw material for green chemistry)
• Model plants for research, or as tool for plant breeding
• Wild relatives of crops (the use of which is potential and indirect)