Beach Naupaka showing up as "introduced" in Hawai'i

Bug Reports
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Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About):

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Chrome

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/98574318

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Look at observations of Scaevola taccada (beach naupaka) in Hawai’i

Step 2: Hover over the pink exclamation mark

Step 3: It says “introduced in United States”; however this plant is native to Hawai’i

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Any user can change establishment mean, just go to the checklist and change it yourself. This isn’t a bug.

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This is saying it’s native to Hawai’i so I still think it might be a bug. https://www.inaturalist.org/places/hawaii#q=Scaevola%2Btaccada

Edit: I think what’s happening is it being introduced in the United States is overriding it being native to Hawai’i even though the mainland US is irrelevant to this observation.

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Yes, that’s how the system works, see here for a few more details.

Within the bounds of the current system, you need to remove the introduced status for the US and make sure it’s marked introduced in each relevant state (possibly just Texas and Florida? I don’t know the introduced range).

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Okay, thank you both!

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Similar to taxonomy where we try to follow external authorities, we follow GADM for our standard places, which are broken down politically.

Personally, as someone born and raised in Hawaii, I’ll say people often don’t think it’s an actual “real” US state (I’ve been asked by people at very prestigious colleges if we use US currency in Hawaii, for example) and I wouldn’t want to further that confusion any. But yes, it’s weird having Hawaii be under the US on iNat and be so different ecologically. There are always going to be compromises as iNat deals with both non-humans plus humans and all the baggage we bring along with us.

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