About FReD

What is FReD?
Is there a charge for accessing FReD?
How is FReD put together?
What are the hardware/software requirements to run FReD?
How many samples are there in the database?
Who developed FReD?
What features does FReD contain?

What is FReD?
FReD stands for the Floral REflectance Database. It is a database containing the spectral reflectances of many species of flower. A spectrophotometer is used to acquire these measurements. This works by shining a light on to the sample, and the proportion of light reflected back at the different wavelengths is measured.

Is there a charge for accessing FReD?
No. FReD is open-access and free for anyone to use.

How is FReD put together?
The FReD database is a MySQL database. The website brings you an interface to access the database which was developed on PHP 5 with its GDLib. some JavaScript, bringing you the implementation of AJAX for easier access to searches.

What are the hardware/software requirements to run FReD?
FReD has been extensively tested on Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape throughout its development and is fully compatible with these. Opera and Safari users will experience problems with the hexSearch facility.

We recommend visitors use Mozilla Firefox to access this site. It can be downloaded for free from the Mozilla homepage.

How many samples are there in the database?
There is reflectance data for over 2000 individual samples in the database. Other entries will be added as measurements from more flowers are gathered and published.

Who developed FReD?
FReD was developed by research students at Queen Mary, University of London in the UK, in collaboration with researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

What features does FReD contain?

• Simple Search - enter a keyword or combine your keyword with boolean expressions to search for records
• Advanced Search - select specific attributes/features with keywords to search for records
• hexSearch - select a region on the Colour Hexagon and search for flower records with hexagon coordinates in that region (not available for Safari or Opera users)
• Individual Colour Hexagon - you can view an individual colour hexagon diagram plotted for each flower record that has spectral reflectance data available. The excitation values are calculated and displayed alongside this.
• Individual Reflectance Graph - you can view a reflectance graph for each flower record available on the database. Simply click on the record that you are interested in.
• View all returned records on one Colour Hexagon Graph - you can view a single Colour Hexagon model with all returned records plotted on this. It will also produce some statistics of the most common keywords appearing in the results.