I was reading the rules on observations (a bit late, I know), and I made some mistakes. I was posting pictures of the same thing over time. I thought showing them at different stages might help with id, since they were the same plants, but I should have posted them as seperate. Should I delete the later pictures, or just leave them as is and move on? As a bit of a side question, as long as it is the same plant, would it actually help with id like I thought? My instinct was not to clog up the app with the same plant over several days or longer.
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if this were me (and you may find others have a different opinion) id split the observation up to put each separate day into its own observation (you can do this by duplicating, changing the obs date, and deleting the pictures that aren’t from that date/encounter, and repeat until you have as many obs as you had separate encounters on separate days) and then in the description, link each obs to the next and previous day’s obs to create a chain (there are also observation fields tailored for this, i believe)
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Those observations of the same individual over time have the potential to be valuable! Thanks for doing this. I would do what @supertiger suggests.
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I fixed one last night, but it was a mushroom that got mowed off, so no more for that one. The rest are cultivated though. I was trying to id stuff in my yard to see if anything is invasive. Thanks.
Agreed with others - make separate observations, and link in comments, description, or observation fields. I do think it helps with identifying things, though you will get less response for cultivated plants.
On a side note, one of the reasons that this is a good approach is because it shows phenology over time. There are many iNat projects for phenology and publications have been made based on this type of data, so it can be quite useful!
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That became way too tedious, and I was ending up with a lot of observations with only one or two pictures that weren’t very good. I just deleted all of them, from the app and my phone. Easier to just start over. Thanks for the suggestions though.
There are some threads on the forum about how to make good IDs of plants that you could search for - which characters to show, etc. 5-6 good pics of key parts of a plant often allows for decent IDs.
Yeah, I learned more after making those observations. I was adding the later pics mostly because I realised the earlier ones didn’t show enough, but making them as seperate obs left them with the same problem. So now I’ll take more thorough pics at the same time for one obs at a time. It’s just my yard though, hardly anything of scientific value.
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You never know! Backyard observations can turn out to be important. Thanks for posting them.
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