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Ghini (pronounced "Ghee-nee") is a database application for managing botanical collections, in particular living collections.
Ghini was originally developed as Bauble at the Belize Botanic Gardens. At its heart, however, it is a framework for creating database applications. Bauble and Ghini have been used to manage plant records and, specifically, living collections.
Ghini and its predecessor Bauble have been developed with the support of botanical institutions in several countries. We are grateful to the Belize Botanic Gardens, the University of British Columbia, and the Mackay Regional Botanic Garden for their early support and interest; to the Jardín Botánico de Quito and the Botanische Tuin van de Universiteit Utrecht for their important taxonomic support; and to all the individuals who have given their encouragement and support, too many to mention without risking forgetting others.
Some of these institutions no longer use Ghini, while others contributed to the project without deploying it in routine work. Their contribution to the project nevertheless remains part of its history.
Until 2015, 'ghini.desktop' was known as 'Bauble/bauble.classic'. Development was subsequently moved from the Bauble organisation to the Ghini organisation, and the application was renamed Ghini.
The name honours Luca Ghini (1490–1556), regarded as the inventor of the herbarium. Although none of his books survived, his students became some of the most influential botanists of the Renaissance. He founded the botanical garden of Pisa, where the current maintainer, Mario Frasca, later studied computer science.
The original name, Bauble, was retained for many years. It was eventually replaced in part because the word is difficult to pronounce and spell consistently for speakers of several languages, and because its meaning has no particular connection with botanical collections.
Within the Ghini organisation you will find:
- 'ghini.desktop', this program;
- 'ghini.pocket', a small Android database viewer intended to let you carry your database in your pocket;
- 'ghini.github.io', the sources for the Ghini website;
- 'ghini.web', showcased at http://gardens.ghini.me; and
- 'ghini.tour', a collection of settings for building audio guides to gardens.
The Ghini family has also adopted two ODK products, Collect and Aggregate, which help users add or correct information in the database. They are not part of the Ghini organisation, but are integrated members of the Ghini family.
Included by default is RBG Kew's Family and Genera list from Vascular Plant Families and Genera, compiled by R. K. Brummitt and published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in 1992, used by permission from RBG Kew.
All code contained in the Ghini package is licensed under the GNU GPLv2+.
Just as Bauble's flagship was bauble.classic, Ghini's flagship is ghini.desktop.
Are you a Windows user and are in a hurry to run ghini.desktop? Download and install in the given order Git, Python, pylxml, psycopg, pygtk, then download and run devinstall.bat and keep ghini-update.bat for later reference.
Or also read the rest.
For current Linux development, use the Ubuntu 24.04 Docker workflow documented
in doc/docker-development.md. It provides deterministic Python dependency
locks, GTK 3.24/PyGObject runtime packages, X11 GUI launching, VS Code tasks,
debugpy support, formatting, pytest, and warning-gated migration checks.
The complete documentation for ghini.desktop is to be found at http://ghini.readthedocs.io. It includes detailed and up-to-date installation procedures for different platforms, troubleshooting, and a very thorough user manual.
For any kind of question, you can open an issue here on github, or if you feel more comfortable with it, you can start a thread on our google group.