Don’t worry about which specific response you pick, you can just choose one that you found helpful…low consequence choice! But it will mean less traffic to the topic and is helpful overall for OPs to choose solutions.
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I just explained: a person unfamiliar with the history of the site not knowing that they were planted.
Sorry, yes, you are absolutely right, and I haven’t been awake enough to that possibility. Thanks for reminding me again. Another 2023 resolution for me.
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For me this is the critical point to make in this discussion. The “casual” label refers to the observation and ONLY the observation. This term captures the difference between, say, traipsing into the woods with your iNat kit and recording wild organisms vs. recording something, say, planted in your yard. Again, as @wildwestnature says well, this is not a devaluation of the work that may have gone into that organism. Nor should it be construed to suggest that those who only record wild organisms look down on people who sometimes record cultivated plants. “Casual” is in reference to the nature of the particular observation in question only (again, the observation itself). At least that’s how I understand it! Cheers.
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I disagree. Many here are focused on the perception that I am “hurt” in some way by the “casual” label on the observation. Elias had a good example last night. He found Orchids growing in a preserve that he presumed were wild until he was told otherwise. He was then instructed to go back and label them as cultivated. This means they will have the “casual” designation and lose research grade. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. The problem is that non-research grade observations are often obscured from displays of the historical record. This means that a future “discoverer” of the same orchids is less likely to see that they were cultivated and will label them wild again.
I really want to let it drop tho.
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But in this case it doesn’t matter if they’re part of recultivation or in someone’s garden, next user can easily post them as wild, as they always do with trees in planted forest, no matter how obvious it is that pines a growing in straight lines, someone will post them as wild, even if their map will be cluttered with previous observations (btw as it doesn’t show when you upload there might be a function like “seen cultivated nearby, are you sure? compare your obs with this one: link”.
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And since they don’t know… the data will lead them all to believe that past attempts at assisted regeneration haven’t worked and that pure naturalism is more effective than it really is.
The scientist behind a restoration project has GPS for - I planted that clump. And knows which are the new generation of seedlings. We, observers and identifiers, do the best we can.
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Occasionally, they even share that private data. Like with Elias and the orchids.
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Is the suggestion that a new category is to be introduced? If so, what are the implications to long-term data if a new category (restored) is introduced?
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I was pretty careful to frame it as a question… “Should regional natives that have been cultivated within their appropriate region be labeled as “restorative” rather than “casual”?”
And it was not a loaded question. A question is not a suggestion. I should also point out that an “answer” is different from a “solution”. I’ve gotten various answers, just not a solution. I’m satisfied that a solution does not exist and that the question can be answered in various ways. Just waiting on the thread to end.
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It’s a great question, I would say, but it’s clear to me now after reading many of the other threads on the Captive setting and all the controversy around it that there are big divisions in the iNat community around serious scientific values vs. what the general lay public expects from the site. As a scientifically trained person and a serious gardener interested in trees and plants, cultivated or not, I’m very aware of the different cultures of people. The approach to these questions and general mindset of a wetland biologist friend, a serious permaculture enthusiast, and a plant collector friend, are all very different. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me when I first created my account that iNat was run for purposes other than the identification of living things. It initially appears as a site helpful for understanding and learning about the living world around us. For the general public, this doesn’t automatically mean “wild nature” since we live in a human-altered world, even if not in an urban environment. However, for most biologists, it seems the wild world is considered a worthy subject of study, but the human-altered world is seen as unworthy of interest; that’s not true of horticulturists, as an urban horticulturist or urban ecologist would understand. Urban ecology is interesting and highly relevant to us as well.
There seems to be a huge spectrum of interesting things to explore and understand that don’t fit into what some people say iNat was created for that the general public really want to use the functionality and community of iNat to better study and learn about, and that includes what iNat refers to as “Captive” or “Captive or cultivated.”
I get the impression that the decision-makers as iNat are resistant to the suggestions and ideas coming from many of its users. Why else would the issues around Captive/Cultivated not be resolved? As an identifier, the default settings exclude captive/cultivated. I can change the setting to see Captive/Cultivated, but the very next time I visit the Identify tab, that setting has once again reverted back to the default. As an identifier, even if I set that setting, it doesn’t work the same way because someone other than me has decided that captive/cultivated plants never “Need ID”. Hmm, who is to say that they don’t “need ID”? Oh, it’s because those are “casual”, i.e., non-serious, i.e. non-scientific, i.e. “no one cares”. No one cares that it’s lumped in with bad quality information. Yes, we can read between the lines, you don’t have to say it, it’s what comes across in the design decisions. The site is about scientific use, and anything else is second class. We can accept that or, I guess, look for other sites to identify observations of plants (cultivated or not), except that I don’t know of any that would work the way I have come to appreciate and I’m not sure I want to start over anyway, even if such a site existed.
And so yes, it is an issue that restorative plantings are treated as second-class observations. And yes, it is an issue that iNat expects users to make an assessment of a matter of fact that is not always obvious. There’s no way to know with certainty as an observer whether a tree was planted or germinated on its own. The only real fact is the presence of the tree in a particular place at a particular time; all else is contextual inference, which means cultural assumptions come into play. Is this a park? Is this a restoration site? Is this a timber plantation? Is this someone’s yard? Is this an abandoned homestead? Was this area managed by indigenous people, and shouldn’t that also count as captivity or cultivation? Those are all interesting questions, sometimes with obvious answers, sometimes not. But let’s recognize that the design of iNat’s captive/cultivated is fundamentally flawed because it’s not something that can be objectively known with certainty, it’s an assessment based on available data that could be wrong.
And it’s most likely to be unanswerable in the question raised here, of restoration plantings. Restoration plantings are designed, but they are designed to be natural. So the more successful they are, over the years, the more likely it is that an iNat observer won’t be able to tell the difference. And so the more a particular region practices this type of land management, the less likely iNat observations in that region will be able to answer that question correctly and therefore the more meaningless that data becomes.
I think there are some solutions to this that could still meet all the scientific needs. I’m just not sure the iNat owners care about these problems enough to do anything, but maybe I’m wrong and maybe something will be done. I think iNat cares about wild ecosystems and scientific data that can be used for scientific purposes, but isn’t that interested in supporting other uses; that’s why captive is kind of a junk buckets and why it’s excluded from queries.
If I were to suggest something, the first request would be appoint someone as a representative in the decision-making group who is interested in cultivated plants and urban ecology. That person would be able to hear the genuine concerns of the general public because they’re already actively immersed in the needs and requests of the general public and can present that voice in decision-making.
That person would be able to genuinely hear the concerns about how captive is a junk category and suggest ways to improve the experience. People have complained numerous times that captive/cultivated means it gets ignored by identifiers. That’s a solvable problem. Obvious things are making it easier for identifiers to include those plants, by (1) having settings that can be saved instead of having to reselect it every time, and (2) separating junk data from captive/cultivated, and (3) seeking a less dismissive terminology than “casual” and more accurate terminology than “captive” or “cultivated” that applies more universally, specifically to the case of not actively cultivated planted trees/shrubs/etc., (4) making a confirmed ID feature analogous to the Research Grade status for non-captive or non-cultivated plants, (5) making it possible to specify “unknown” instead of definitely captive/cultivated or not, without penalty of eliminating from the ID pool.
That’s enough for now, but reading all those threads just gave me a bad feeling that there’s not been progress on this issue, and an apparent disregard for many users who continue to express concerns.
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This is a very kind and thoughtful response. It had me hovering over the “solution” button for a very long time.
Noting whether the chickens are feral, as in Hawaii, or captive, as where I live, is an important part of the science. There is a difference between a python in my NY house and one in Florida wandering outdoors.
The people following the invasiveness of garden plants want to know if viburnum cultivars or scotch broom or Japanese spirea are spreading, moving out other plants, or causing no harm.
Hundreds of observations blue spruce planted in rows on the roadside outside its native range obfuscates this data. Undifferentiated spirea observations make it difficult to know where removal might be needed.
I don’t see this differentiation as a lack of interest in the human-altered world. Quite the opposite.
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Plus what most are not interested in are strictly cultivated/captive organisms, not the urban/changed setting, human-altered world is very interesting, but it doesn’t consists only of planted rows of trees.
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I asked…
"Should regional natives that have been cultivated within their appropriate region be labeled as “restorative” rather than “casual”?
I did not ask…
"Should non-native plants from around the world that have been cultivated within an inappropriate region be labeled as “restorative” rather than “casual”?.
You’re right. I was off-topic, respomnding to someone else’s post. I"m sorry.
To your topic: how do you propose iNat would decide whether cultivars could be labeled as restorative, in your vision? For instance, all the Hydrangea arborescens cultivars?
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No biggie. I appreciate hearing the conversation. I spent 15 years as a programmer / systems analyst and tend to talk in pseudocode rather than any of the more romantic languages.
I try not to apply my vision to anything other than my “place”. Everyone has trouble with this… trying to apply their own vision to someone else’s “place”. I am not immune to this. Large cities usually have a handful of people who are highly trained professionals guiding any restorations in parks and preserves. But parks and preserves are not my “place”.
When I visit these parks and preserves, I find elaborate signs and plaques affixed by highly trained professionals. Many of these signs and plaques, implore me to plant more “native” species. I understand that they don’t really mean “native”. What they mean is, ecologically appropriate. They fear that phrasing it as “ecologically appropriate” might cause me to try to “fit” non-native species into my “place” without any formal training in ecology. So I understand that they HOPE I will limit my palette of plants to “local” species.
The problem is… who decides what is “local”? These highly trained professionals don’t follow me home to guide my “project”. But some of them… like the local parks, nature centers, and preserves host “native” plant sales. Again, I don’t like the word. But I get it. For my “place”, I began buying plants from these plant sales.
I would think most regions in every State have several large, public organizations with highly trained professionals organizing “native” plant sales. Ideally, these professionals would guide the decision of which species could be awarded the “restorative” designation for certain “places”. Places like my “place”.
This would probably make these highly trained professionals somewhat uncomfortable. Awarding this prestigious designation to a casual, untrained gardener. To reassure them, they’d want to follow my “Place”. Not to serve as the plant police, but because I invite them to. If I invite them to, they could keep an eye on my “place”. Make sure I’m not changing my boundaries. Give me advice on my wild, naturally occurring colonies that are expanding. Colonies like this one… https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/117850115
This is important because some of the plants I buy from plant sales hosted by professionals, I’m installing at my “place”. I think the “local” professionals understand that the biggest risk locally is doing nothing. I started with a mono-culture under-story of honeysuckle and a herbaceous layer of almost entirely garlic mustard. I might eventually have a dilemma. Having to choose between my precious and expanding colony of Maianthemum and an expanding clump of casually planted Camassia scilloides. I imagine a professional would help me with this decision. Should I preserve a little space for the Camassia? Or should I preserve the entire area for the wildest of the wild… Maianthemum? I wonder about this, but the dilemma hasn’t arrived yet. It will soon arrive, but it hasn’t yet. I haven’t had to pick between a wild colony that will stop expanding if I don’t remove a planted native in its way. So far, I’ve been able to keep my wild colonies expanding by removing only non-local species. And so both local species remain.
High Level Requirements:
iNat should ask a state level biologist (in Ohio this might be Andrew Lane Gibson) if they can identify trusted professionals for different regions of Ohio that could be entrusted with awarding the designation of “restorative” to a particular “species” for a particular “place”.
I have enough background in information technology to know that this would be a VERY complex enhancement. It’s a little easier because it may not require a complex conversion. The new designation is additive. But the relational implications between “people”, “places”, and “species” is complex. It still might be worth doing. But it’s not my “place” to ask.