Erroneous automatic identification of a plant as introduced by humans

[truezhenik]

When defining a plant as Scilla siberica (observations in the Belgorod region of Russia, North Caucasus), this species is automatically marked as an introducer. However, the natural range of the species covers Eastern Europe (including the European part of Russia), the Caucasus, and Western Asia (Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran).

[thebeachcomber]

welcome to the forum

this is not a bug. It’s appearing as introduced because someone has annotated it as such in a checklist for at least one of the places it falls into

using this tool made by @pisum, you can see a list of all the statuses: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_taxon_est_means.html?taxon_id=862704

multiple places that your observation falls under, eg Belgorod and Belgorod Oblast (2019), have had this species annotated as introduced

[truezhenik]

There is most likely a misunderstanding here. Marking this species as introduced in our zone is possible only if a person records the observation of Scilla siberica in his garden, if the plant was grown from bulbs bought in a store. I just don’t see any other options - this species is very common and occurs throughout the Belgorod region in almost all deciduous forests and plantings. Relying even just on data from Wikipedia, it is simply unrealistic to define this species as introduced.

[cthawley]

I agree that this is not a bug per se. The system is working as intended, though the native/introduced information may be entered incorrectly.

In situations like this, you can raise a flag on the taxon page for the organism on iNaturalist itself - in this case https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/862704-Scilla-siberica
On the right side, click the Curation button and then Flag for Curation. You can add the info that you did here and discuss specific places that you feel the species should be native - you can use the link @thebeachcomber posted to see a list of location to consider.

On a related note, introduced and cultivated are treated differently on iNat.

@truezhenik

if the plant was grown from bulbs bought in a store

this organism would be cultivated (Not Wild) regardless of whether it is native or introduced in a place. Wild/Not Wild status is addressed in the data quality section at the level of individual observations. Introduced/native status is addressed for a taxon in a specific place and applies to all observations of the taxon in that place.