GENUS & SPECIES in same field of a database: I can see the arguments for each side of your debate, but I agree with Eric. In the end, you'll probably want them in separate fields. Why? 1) Although my own work is in the cataloguing of plants, I imagine that you face the same issues. I occasionally want to select all of the records which pertain to a certain genus (or family, etc), and this is easy if the genus name is isolated in a distinct field. 2) Some database programs allow substring-matching. That is, you can select a record if a given field contains a given string anywhere in the field. This would allow you, for instance, to match the genus name within a field which contained both the genus and species name. However, it would also match any species name which _contained_ the genus name. e.g. if both were in the same field, and I searched for substrings: A search for the genus "Cineraria" could turn up "Senecio cineraria", which is not what I wanted or a search for the genus "Campanula" could include "Agapanthus campanulatus", also not what I want. Again, it's better to keep the two names in separate fields. 3) Say you want to change the database design or move the data to a different platform or database program some day. It's easier for a database programmer to join two fields together into one than to split one field in half. 4) Your report-generating software can write out [GENUS] [SPECIES] pretty easily if the words are in separate fields, but may have a more difficult time if both words are in the same field and you want a report that looks like "Genus: [GENUS] Species: [SPECIES]". This is just my humble opinion. Bob Wildfong [log in to unmask] Waterloo, Ontario [log in to unmask]