Starting to use Bioperl

I believe I mentioned in my note about that Native-Plants dbase, that I
came into this because I am researching a deer problem.

I have about 1000 entries, most are species, some are genus, I think a
couple are family (or tribe).  Ostensibly, these are all entries for
plants that deer may not prefer to eat.  There are many reasons why a
deer (which I mean generically, so white tail deer, mule deer, moose,
elk, ...) may not eat something: tough foliage, spiny, strong odour,
toxins, and some others.  Some plants share many of these
characteristics, some only have one of them.

What I have is an array of hash references.  Most of the keys point to
string values, a few point to undef or things like array references.
CommonNames often has multiple string values to it.  It would be nice to
put it into a more formal format, so that I can try to find missing
information to fill in.

Any recommendations as to how to proceed with this?

Have a great day!
Gord