Data dictionary

Every column in the open phenology export, with its type, units, and meaning. Schema version 1.0.0. Columns are only ever appended, never reordered, so a parser pinned to this version keeps working.

Observations

phenology-observations.csv

One row per first-bloom log, anonymized. No gardener, no plant, and no coordinates are present. Each row is a single "it is blooming" record with the season warmth accumulated at that location on that day.

Column	Type	Units	Meaning
observation_id	integer	sequence	Opaque row number assigned at export time, ordered by region, species, then date. It is not derived from any account or plant, and it is not stable between exports.
region_code	string	ISO-3166-2 subdivision (province / state code)	The gardener's province or state code. "ZZ" means the region was not shared. This is the finest location grain in the dataset; no city, postal area, or coordinates are stored.
region	string	text	Human-readable name for region_code (for example "Ontario"). "Region not shared" when unknown.
scientific_name	string	binomial	The plant's scientific name as recorded on the logged plant.
bloom_date	date	ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD)	The calendar day the gardener marked the plant as first blooming.
day_of_year	integer	day (1 to 366)	bloom_date expressed as an ordinal day of the year, so bloom timing can be compared across regions without a date parser.
gdd_at_bloom	integer or empty	growing degree days, base 10 degrees Celsius, since 1 April	Accumulated warmth at the gardener's location on the bloom day. Empty when weather data was unavailable at log time. See the methods page for how it is computed.

Region and species summary

phenology-region-species.csv

One row per region and species pair, aggregated from the observations. This is the citation-friendly view: how bloom timing and warmth distribute for a species within a province or state.

Column	Type	Units	Meaning
region_code	string	ISO-3166-2 subdivision	Province or state code, as in the observations table.
region	string	text	Human-readable region name.
scientific_name	string	binomial	The plant scientific name.
observations	integer	count	How many bloom logs make up this row. Read this first: a row built from one log is a single anecdote, not a trend.
first_bloom_doy_mean	number	day of year	Mean first-bloom day of year across the logs in this row.
first_bloom_doy_min	integer	day of year	Earliest first-bloom day of year observed in this row.
first_bloom_doy_max	integer	day of year	Latest first-bloom day of year observed in this row.
gdd_at_bloom_mean	integer or empty	growing degree days, base 10	Mean accumulated warmth at bloom, averaged only over the logs in this row that carry a warmth stamp. Empty when none do.
gdd_sample_size	integer	count	How many of the logs in this row carried a warmth stamp. This is the denominator behind gdd_at_bloom_mean, and it can be smaller than observations.

Read how the data is collected