One number from the bed to the jar
A Hortis material number such as 2026-0042/A becomes the plant's ID in xPlant Pro, exactly as written, so the cultures taken from it are filed under the accession the collection already knows.
Hortis integration
Tissue culture records that keep your Hortis accession numbers
Hortis keeps the living collection. xPlant Pro keeps the cultures and orchid crosses taken from it, filed under the accession numbers your garden already uses.
Free for 14 days. No card needed.
Why a garden's lab keeps both
Hortis is where the collection is curated. The culture room needs a record of its own, one that follows each explant from the hood to acclimation without losing the accession it came from.
Provenance, not volume
A conservation lab may hold only a handful of vessels of a rare accession. What its record has to carry is where each one came from, which medium it went onto and when it moved on, and that is the record xPlant Pro keeps.
Nothing dropped without being shown
Columns xPlant Pro has no place for are listed when you map the file, and plants left out of an export are counted on screen, so you always see what moved and what stayed.
What each keeps, side by side
Different jobs, which is why a garden with a culture lab ends up keeping both. The Hortis column paraphrases Hortis's own site and help centre as they read on 21 October 2026, so check any row there.
| Compared | Hortis | xPlant Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | HortisManaging a botanical collection: accessions, plant material and where each plant lives. | xPlant ProRunning a tissue culture lab: what was taken from a plant, what it went onto, and how it moved from initiation to acclimation. |
| Where a plant is | HortisGrowing areas drawn on a custom aerial map, with each plant positioned in them. | xPlant ProThe room, shelf and stage each culture is in, and the mother plant it was taken from. |
| What gets recorded | HortisA plant's condition, with a reminder to check back, and photos through the seasons. | xPlant ProExplants, transfers and subcultures, the media recipe and the version poured, and contamination observations with a photo. |
| Orchid crosses | HortisThe parent plants, each an accession in the collection. | xPlant ProThe cross itself: seed parent and pollen parent, the pollination day, the capsule, the grex, and every record sown from it. |
| Names | HortisA shared taxonomy of over 1.4 million names, suggested as you type. | xPlant ProThe name on each plant record, kept as Hortis wrote it when the plant came from Hortis. |
| Labels | HortisData downloaded for label printing, and QR codes to share published records. | xPlant ProQR labels for jars, trays and batches, printed from the browser and scanned at the hood. Label printing is on the Teams plan. |
| For visitors | HortisA public site for the records you choose to publish. | xPlant ProPrivate by default. You choose what to make public, such as a media recipe. |
| Moving records | HortisDownloads a filtered plant material list, and loads new records from its import template through Ask Hortis. | xPlant ProReads that download, and writes that template. |
Into the culture room
From Hortis into xPlant Pro
Three moves, and nobody retypes a name or a number. Moving plants in either direction works on every plan.
What each Hortis column becomes
The column names the importer expects. Hortis does not publish its download's header row, and the columns follow your list view, so if yours read differently, point each one at its field in the mapping step.
| In the Hortis download | In xPlant Pro | How it is read |
|---|---|---|
| Material Number | In xPlant ProPlant ID | How it is readKept exactly as written, such as 2026-0042/A, and unique within the lab. |
| Accession Number and Qualifier | In xPlant ProPlant ID | How it is readUsed when there is no material number, joined as 2026-0042/A. |
| Scientific Name or Taxon | In xPlant ProName, genus, species, cultivar | How it is readThe full name is kept as written. The genus is its first word, and a quoted tail such as 'Coloratum' becomes the cultivar. |
| Family, Genus, Cultivar, Common Name | In xPlant ProThe same fields | How it is readCopied across. |
| Location | In xPlant ProCollection location | How it is readWhere the plant stands in the collection, never read as a growth room. |
| Source | In xPlant ProSource | How it is readCopied across. |
| Status | In xPlant ProStatus | How it is readPresent and Transient become Active. Absent becomes Archived, and so does Unknown, with a warning on the row. |
| Notes | In xPlant ProNotes | How it is readCopied across. |
| Every other column | In xPlant ProNot imported | How it is readAccession date, quantity, tag number, site, provenance and propagation codes, material group, public link and tags are listed as unused in the mapping step rather than dropped. Point any of them at a field yourself. |
Orchid crosses, from two accessions to a flask
A cross is a record of its own in xPlant Pro, so the capsule on the bench never loses the two plants it came from. Either parent can be a plant brought in from Hortis, or an accession number typed in for a parent that stays in the collection. Crosses are on every plan.
- 1
Pollination
A seed parent and a pollen parent, crossed on a recorded day.
Seed parent 2026-0042/A, from Hortis
Pollen parent 2019-0142/A, typed in
The lab's own cross code
- 2
Capsule
Harvested months later, as a green pod or dry seed.
Harvest date, after pollination
Green pod or dry seed
- 3
Sown in vitro
Every record sown from the capsule links back to the cross.
Transfers, media and stages from there on
Each parent shows the crosses it was used in
- 4
Grex
The name for every seedling of the pairing, and how far its registration has got.
Not registered, applied for, or registered
The registration reference
A sketch of what the cross record holds, with example numbers. Not a screenshot.
Back to the collection
From xPlant Pro into Hortis
For plants that started in xPlant Pro and are not in Hortis yet, including seedlings sown from a cross. They go across as new accessions with their culture history attached.
Or ask an assistant to do it
Both products can be connected to the same AI assistant. With Ask Hortis and the xPlant connector added, a request such as “add the plants in Initiation to Hortis as new accessions” reads them from xPlant Pro and creates them in Hortis, one record at a time. Tell it to ask before it writes, in either system.
The workbook is still the route for a batch, and the route when the numbers matter. It carries each plant's history as log notes and leaves out plants already in Hortis on its own. The xPlant connector cannot yet set a plant's own ID, so an accession number moved through an assistant lands in the plant's notes rather than as its ID.
What does not move yet
Said here, so nobody finds out halfway through moving a collection.
No automatic sync
Records move when someone moves them, as a file or through an assistant. Nothing runs on a schedule, and neither system changes the other on its own.
New Hortis numbers do not come back by themselves
After Ask Hortis loads a plant raised in xPlant Pro, that plant does not learn its new Hortis number. Where the plant has an ID in xPlant Pro, the accession's notes carry it, which ties the two together. Do not re-import the Hortis download to fetch the number: the import would make a second plant.
Crosses and culture history stay in xPlant Pro
The export sends plants, not the cross they were sown from. And Hortis's import template cannot add notes to a record that already exists, so the culture history of a plant brought in from Hortis is not sent back. Ask Hortis can add notes to an existing record if you ask it to.
Questions gardens ask about Hortis and xPlant Pro
Is xPlant Pro part of Hortis?
No. Hortis is made by Botanical Software, and xPlant Pro is a separate product from a separate company. xPlant Pro reads the file Hortis downloads, and writes a workbook in the layout of the import template Hortis publishes.
Do we need both?
Only if your garden keeps its collection in Hortis and also runs tissue culture. Hortis is built for the living collection: accessions, material, locations and observations. xPlant Pro is built for the culture room: explants, media recipes, transfers, stages, contamination observations and orchid crosses. Each works without the other.
Can a cross use parents that live in Hortis?
Yes. Each parent of a cross is either a plant in your lab, such as one brought in from Hortis with its material number, or a name or accession number typed in for a parent that stays in the collection. You can give both.
Which plans include it?
Moving plants either way between Hortis and xPlant Pro, and recording crosses, work on every plan. Hortis, and the assistant you connect Ask Hortis to, are priced by their own makers.
What happens if two plants share a number?
If two rows in a file give the same material number, the later one is refused at review and the message names both rows. A number another plant in the lab already has is refused for that row, and the other rows still import.
Can an export change a record that is already in Hortis?
No. Every row in the workbook is a new record, and Hortis's import template has no column that could point at an existing one. Plants whose ID is already a Hortis number are left out of the export for the same reason.
How many plants can go across at once?
One export holds a lab's first 5,000 plants, oldest first. Hortis suggests loading its template in runs of tens of records, up to a hundred or so, so split the workbook and load a few rows first to check them. A lab with more than 5,000 plants cannot yet send its newest ones; tell us through Support if that is you.
Our Hortis list names its columns differently. Will the import still work?
Hortis does not publish its download's header row, and the columns follow the list view they came from, so yours may not match the table above. Any column the importer does not recognise is shown in the mapping step, where you point it at the right field before anything is saved.
Where does our data go?
Nowhere on its own. The CSV goes from your computer into your xPlant Pro lab, and the workbook comes from xPlant Pro to your computer. When you give the workbook to Ask Hortis, it is loaded into your Hortis organisation under your own Hortis sign-in, and Ask Hortis can only do what that account could already do.
Bring one accession into culture
Start a 14-day free trial, import a filtered Hortis list, and start cultures under the numbers your garden already uses.
Free for 14 days. No card needed.
What this page says about Hortis was read from Hortis’s own pages on 21 October 2026: hortis.com, About Hortis, Getting started with Ask Hortis, Uploading data using Ask Hortis, Ask Hortis FAQ. Hortis is Botanical Software’s name, not ours, and they do not endorse this page.