Annotations being automatically captured from observation fields added before uploading [but inconsistently!]

[craigpeter]

Hello everyone.

I have made a project so that I can score flowering phenology of plants on the upload page before submitting batches of records. I am impressed that iNat recognises some of these values [eg. “fruiting” and “flowering”] but this is a bit hit and miss. It only recognises “fruit” or “flowers” and only “fruit” if used in combination with another:

Flowers & Buds [not recognised]
Flowers [annotated as “flowering”]
Buds [not recognised]
Flower, Buds & Fruit [annotated as “fruiting”]
Fruit [annotated as “fruiting”]
Flowers & Fruit [annotated as “fruiting”]

Is there any way to do this more reliably? I would be nice to be able to score this all as a batch when submitting the records. I have tried making my observation fields identical to the words used by iNaturalist for plant phenology annotations [eg “flower budding”] but this does not change anything.

Regards
Craig

[jwidness]

@craigpeter

Is there any way to do this more reliably?

Not really. Currently the code is written so that

• only one value per observation field is translated to an annotation
• fruit is only recognized if it’s at the end of your value or by itself (e.g. Fruit & Buds would fail because fruit is first)
• flower is only recognized by itself (e.g. Fruit & Flowers would fail)
• buds is not a recognized value at all

If you want it to pick up multiple values, you’ll have to use multiple observation fields or submit a feature request. If you want it to pick up buds, you’ll have to submit a feature request.