I am looking for a downloadable/queryable database which lists tree species with their characteristics (e.g. average height, preferred temperature, etc.), I am specifically interested in flowering times. There are some websites where one can look up a specific species like worldagroforestry.org or feis-crs.org, but I would like to be able to query it (e.g. list all trees that blossom in July).
Has anyone came across such a database or service?
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2you may want to ask this on open science, which didn't made it out of beta, but is up and alive on a university's server– albertMar 9, 2016 at 4:33
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2 Answers
The National Phenology Network has data for flowering dates (and other phenological characteristics) for trees in the United States.
Using their download tool, you can specify a season of interest (if you select "Other" under Year Options, you can narrow it down to specific dates) and a range of species (selecting all the broadleaf and conifer Functional Types will give you most trees and shrubs) to download. Checking "Flowers" under the Phenophase Categories will return only the data pertaining to flowering.
Even their summary data are more detailed than simply a list of species matching the criteria, so you will need to do some additional analysis/interpretation to answer your question. The parts of interest to you will be the First_Yes_* and Last_Yes_* describing the dates of the flowering events.
Also, as you will no doubt notice, the flowering date of a particular species will vary by latitude and elevation (as well as other factors correlated to temperature), so the answer to the question of "all trees that blossom in July" will depend on where those trees are located.
Good Luck!
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Thanks a lot! It is a great dataset! can you tell me what is the difference between End bloom/End of flowering?– ylkaMar 10, 2016 at 13:09
For generalized attributes for a broad range of species you could also try the Encyclopedia of Life. For example, their data page for Pinus taeda has general attributes for height (base and mature), as well as some phenology traits (but not as granular as a specialized phenology database). The EOL traitbank can be queried by API, and it's also possible to query their neo4j database via Cypher, see this page for details.
