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Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder Scraper

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Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder Scraper

Scrapes the complete Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder database — the authoritative US plant care reference maintained by MoBot's horticulture team. Returns structured profiles for 7,500+ plants including scientific name, common name, hardiness zone, bloom data, care instructions, and image links.

Crawls alphabetically by plant name. Each run retrieves the full listing for one or more starting letters, then fetches every individual plant profile page.

What It Scrapes

Each record includes:

Field Description
taxon_id MoBot taxon identifier (numeric, unique)
scientific_name Binomial scientific name (genus + species)
common_name Common English name(s)
type Plant type (Tree, Perennial, Annual, Vine, Deciduous shrub, etc.)
family Botanical family
native_range Geographic native range
usda_hardiness_zone USDA Hardiness Zone range (e.g. "4 to 8")
height Typical height range in feet
spread Typical spread/width range in feet
bloom_time Bloom season (e.g. "April", "May to June")
bloom_description Bloom color and character
sun Sun exposure (Full sun, Part shade, Full shade)
water Water needs (Dry, Medium, Wet)
maintenance Maintenance level (Low / Medium / High)
suggested_use Suggested landscape applications
flower Flower characteristics (Showy, Fragrant, etc.)
leaf Leaf characteristics
attracts Wildlife attracted (Butterflies, Hummingbirds, Birds, etc.)
tolerate Tolerances (Drought, Deer, Clay Soil, etc.)
culture Full growing conditions and care instructions
noteworthy_characteristics Notable botanical and landscape traits
problems Pest and disease notes
garden_uses Landscape and garden use recommendations
image_urls List of plant photo URLs from the MoBot image archive
plantfinder_url Canonical PlantFinder detail page URL

Input

{
  "startLetter": "A",
  "endLetter": "Z",
  "maxItems": 100
}
Parameter Type Description
startLetter string First letter of the alphabet range to scrape (A-Z). Default: A.
endLetter string Last letter of the alphabet range to scrape (A-Z, inclusive). Default: Z.
maxItems integer Maximum number of plant records to return. Leave blank for all 7,500+. Default: 10.

Coverage

The database covers 7,500+ plant taxa across all 26 letters. Letters vary significantly in size — C has roughly 1,000 entries while Q has under 20. Use startLetter / endLetter to process a subset or resume a partial run.

A full A-Z run returns approximately 7,500 records. The actor crawls at a conservative rate (5 concurrent requests) to respect the institutional site's load.

Use Cases

  • Building a botanical reference dataset for plant identification or care apps
  • Populating plant databases for landscaping, nursery, or garden planning tools
  • Research into USDA hardiness zone distributions, native ranges, or bloom seasonality
  • Wildlife habitat analysis (pollinators, birds, deer resistance)
  • Content generation for horticulture publishers and extension services

Notes

  • MoBot's robots.txt specifies a crawl delay for some paths. The actor uses a 5-request concurrency limit to stay well within institutional norms.
  • Image URLs point to MoBot's image archive. Not all plants have images — image_urls will be an empty array for plants without photos.
  • A small number of plant pages may return a 500 error from the server; these are skipped and logged as warnings without interrupting the run.
  • Full A-Z runs may take several hours depending on concurrency and network conditions. Use maxItems to cap output during testing.

Need a Custom Build?

Additional fields, filtered exports by plant type or zone, or integration help — reach out through the actor support channel.

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