Idea: 98Wednesday, 08 April 2015By. Francis Pedraza

Systema Naturae

— Buy exotic plant seeds

In 1735, Swedish polymath Carolus Linnaeus published the Systema Naturae, one of the earliest attempts to catalogue all known species. In the spirit of The Long Now Foundation, I feel as if there should be a single database (as opposed to a mess) for all of the world’s biological species, with both their common and Latin names.

The Catalogue of Life claims to track 84% of species known to science. Which is impressive, but their website is awful. Awful, as in, only useful to academics. Most users will never find their taxonomic tree, and once they do, it is so ugly, that they will leave. What if there was something like this that “normal” people would enjoy?

To my knowledge, such an attempt has not been made on the internet.
— If it had been made, it was not serious
— If it was serious, it didn’t have “industry standard” production quality, or a sustainable model

! Inspired by Botanica Magnifica — an astonishing display of biodiversity in exotic plants, mainly orchids.
! The book demonstrates how many more species exist than we see on a regular basis. Recalibrates the intuition.
! And the book is inviting. Stunning, full page, high-definition photography.

$ Which made me wonder, would people buy exotic seeds that they can’t get anywhere else?

X Compete with unimpressive sites like this, this, this, this, this, this and this — all from the first page of Google results for “buy exotic plant seeds”