I’ve seen casual-grade observations used to track things like potted plants sprouting and growing. Does anyone ever check these non-verified/casual grade observations as a kind of interesting data set and reach out to observers if there’s anything unusual there?
I like to look through my local area’s casual observations to get a sense of what’s popular in commercial landscaping. I’d like to say there’s a more noble reason for doing this, but I mostly do it to avoid those odd situations where my spouse points to something and I tell her I’m not sure what it is.
Anecdotally, here’s what’s popular in my area:
I’m sure there’s some debate about whether such plants are really interacting with nature, maybe in topic: Relevance of cultivated species observations, but if they get new people using iNat, I think that’s great.
I think learning to appreciate tiny, barely visible flowers, like with Veronica arvensis or natives, is a later stage of nature appreciation.