It’s worth mentioning that most (all?) cultivated plants are “intentionally cultivated”, including non-native exotics used for landscaping, meaning they were put there intentionally by humans for some purpose. I’m not sure that a special designation is needed, but if so, I prefer your originally suggested term “restorative”.
If/when I ever get a house with a yard (fingers crossed), I cannot wait to do some restorative work of my own. Keep up the good work!
Here’s another example, this time in reverse. A neighbor has this type of liriope in the cultivated beds around their house (which is fine*). An additional plant popped up in my restored woodland (and was promptly removed). My observation of this plant is wild because I’m not controlling it and neither is my neighbor. But it’s a little galling that this plant gets the label that I really want for rhizomatic offshoots of my planted natives. I still can’t bring myself to label rhizomatic offshoots as anything other than “cultivated”… but the “casual” label doesn’t seem right either.
Yah… I agree the word “intentional” is extraneous.
Sadly, the word “restorative” might be too subjective. If I planted black locust is it really restorative even though it isn’t native to my region and is only native to North America? Some would say “yes”, some would say “no”. They’d both have a point.
I once found a somewhat rare orchid population way off trail in a nature preserve, and much later someone told me that population is part of a secret re-introduction project and was planted (and it’s not working well, they re-introduce them every 10 years or so…)
Also found a rare tree in the middle of another preserve once and then was told by the preserve manager later that it actually had been planted there 50 years ago by one of his predecessors. (And pretty much every single tree in the preserve arrived as part of a reforestation project at some point.)
But not going to mark either one of those as cultivated… when I found them I had no reason to think they are not wild. And so if somehow I would walk through your land I similarly wouldn’t know that things are not truly wild without being told.
And even a not-so-secret restoration project can be difficult to identify as such if one is unfamiliar with the history of the site. If the wildflowers are in the field guide as native, and you don’t know the habitat intimately enough to see the signs that it is restored, you might never know that those ten or fifteen lifers were planted there three years ago.
It doesn’t serve restoration and range evaluation efforts to mix up where humans have planted natives and where they are naturally growing.
What is the motivation for labeling things that we planted as not cultivated? Whom does it serve?
This blatantly goes against the rules laid out on the iNat help page for what is wild vs captive. Literally one of the examples given for a captive/cultivated organism is:
“tree planted 1, 10, or 100 years ago by humans”
I know, but it’s just impossible to tell in the case of reforestation - in my one preserve there’s records by a former land owner where they planted 176,000 native trees on their land, but nobody can tell which trees those are (basically every tree older than 80 or 90 years? but maybe some came up from seed in addition to the planted ones?). And for my two specific observations, they were wild at the time I made them for all I knew 
If I see a plant on iNat growing in a pot or in anyway that suggest it is planted by humans, I may mark it as cultivated , and that will give it a casual status. I do not know whether the plant is native to the region or not.I thought there is no restorative status in iNat. There are exceptions in which wild plant seeds can land into pots by wind. I’ll reserve judgment for some circumstances.
M, you already found out they’re cultivated, so you have to mark them, those you have no idea about are different from those you were explicitly told about. It’s also pretty easy to not observe older trees where you know they were planted X years ago and only observe young ones. If you know you go against the guidelines, why do you keep it that way?
For me “casual” fits rather well. They are often planted only for ornamental purposes.
Thank you for chiming in. It’s nice to occasionally hear the thoughts of a curator. I’m new to the forum and appreciate any advice from pretty much anyone, but especially a curator.
I agree with you. I’d guess that 99% of all cultivated plants are cultivated primarily for aesthetic (ornamental) reasons. I doubt that my neighbor that planted the parent colony of liriope was thinking about the ecological benefit when choosing this plant. I can’t prove that it was a child of this colony that popped up in my woods. This means it’s able to reach “research” grade, despite the fact that the parent colony was planted more casually than my clump of Wild Hyacinth.
If I’m honest. And I try my best to be. I admit that part of my reason for choosing Wild Hyacinth for my restoration is that it fits itself into my residential neighborhood. It looks superficially similar to the Liriope. The bulk of my decision was based on ecological benefit. But I also understand how my neighbor sees things and hope I have influence over how others might view plant choices.
A question I have for curators is… If I see Wild Hyacinth on other parts of my lot where they clearly are not rhizomatic offshoots, do curators mostly agree that these stand alone plants would be considered “wild”? Because if they aren’t considered wild, then why is the Liriope?
Liriope volunteer…
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/93093102
Cultivated clump of Wild Hyacinth that has successfully spread via expanding rhizome…
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/45922977
Thanks again for responding, and for your efforts as a curator.
The guidelines in the FAQ are clear on the point of when a cultivar you planted is considered wild…when it is reprocing outside the planted area. So the Euonymus alatus that was planted when my house was built is captive/cultivated. The new sprouts from seeds and roots that come up right by those plants are captive/cultivated. The embarrassing and dismaying sprouts that come up 200 yards away are wild.
The Asclepias tuberosa I planted is captive cultivated. So far, it has only seeded within 18 inches of the planting. Those are cultivated by iNat’s definition.
I am ripping out mugwort. Asclepias syriaca is filling in on its own. That’s wild. I may plant some in that spot as well from harvested seed. Then i wont be able to distinguish on iNat. I will call it cultivated. Why not?
What is this resistance to following the guidelines laid out by the biologists/ecologists who set up the guidelines?
The rules on “planted” become very murky in the UK where most of our woodlands have been at least slightly managed for centuries. There’s ancient trees around me which have been pollarded and shaped by humans - are they wild? So many of our oaks were deliberately planted centuries ago - so should they be marked cultivated? How can you possibly know for each individual tree?
I don’t know, but it does seem slightly silly that this Atlas Cedar, say that’s been there under it’s own strength for 100 years gets placed the same category of “not wild” as a well-pampered houseplant - especially considering some native oak or something planted in a similar situation would reach Research Grade without any eyelids batted!
Generally the national recording schemes rules are generally a bit tamer with trees for this reason; so there’s smatterings of records for things like cedars, ginkos, monkey-puzzles and so on - “long-established individuals” which could easily be there for decades or perhaps even centuries to come are usually fair game in addition to the natives.
Many, many inatters feel similarly, and there are many, many threads mentioning the tree concern, as well as many, many threads dealing with cultivated v wild and restoration efforts. This might be one of the most talked about topics in the forum. Here are many, many related posts in threads for the search “tree cultivated”:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wild-american-bison-are-captive/24143/14
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wild-or-cultivated-how-to-tell/19627
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/when-is-a-plant-no-longer-considered-cultivated/12194/2
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/survey-about-criteria-for-wild-captive-observations/27007/19
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/observations-from-areas-under-restoration/6418/2
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/do-i-misunderstand-the-wild-cultivated-distinction/31077
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/at-what-point-does-an-anthropogenic-introduction-become-wild/2221/14
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/flag-captive-or-cultivated/24815/3
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/trees-casual-or-not/23282/2
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/should-pocket-prairie-plants-be-considered-wild/38082/2
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/wild-vs-cultivated-for-escaped-garden-plants/30432/3
On the upside, someone clearly had a lot of fun writing the Captive/Cultivated FAQ. Some of the examples are hilarious.
I feel as though I came into this sincerely seeking clarity and find myself appreciating a little bit of grey area. I am ready for the thread to end but I’m not sure if I can end it, withdraw it, or allow it to end of it’s own accord… kinda new here… to the forum anyway, not to iNat. Let me know if I’m supposed to end it some way.
It will end of its own accord something like 2 months after the last reply.
Since it’s in the General category, you can choose one topic that you seen as the “solution” to your concern, as you see fit
Happy inatting!!
Too scared to pick a solution. lol
No solution required! No worries. Hope to see you around the Forum.