Flagging hostas and other ubiquitous cultivated plants (in North America)

Hostas are familiar to all of us, ubiquitous in almost every garden in Canada and the US. A quick search on the Explore page reveals 1,500 observations of hostas at ‘Needs ID’ or ‘Research Grade’ in North America. I suspect almost all of these are cultivated plants. I propose that we tackle the task of flagging as many of these as “captive/cultivated” as possible.

While we’re at it, can you think of any other commonly cultivated plants that with a large number of un-flagged observations? Feel free to post them here. Other examples that come to mind are Juniperus horizontalis, Forsythia spp., Cercis canadensis, etc.

P.S. there are rare naturalized populations of hostas in North America. Here’s a great example of a presumably naturalized population: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/41009023

P.P.S. this topic is North America-centric, as this is where I live and the region I’m familiar with. I believe most hosta observations worldwide are probably cultivated.

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The eternal question (sorry), and what slows me down in marking others’ observations … where is the dividing line between cultivated and naturalized? I know it’s a continuum, not a line, but any guidance on making that judgment when flagging others’ observations?

It’s easy when the photo shows a backdrop of weed-free mulch around a peony. Hostas are long-lived plants that don’t usually self-seed in the garden (in my experience,) so they are fairly easy. Ditto forsythia and lilac.

OTOH, Fritillaria meleagris: if they have self-seeded out of the garden into the adjacent lawn, are they naturalized? How about if they have self-seeded into the opposite side of the lawn?

Or do we want to just sidestep this rabbit-hole?? If you want to remove this post (or want me to remove it), feel free.

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I’m chugging through Asian Bleeding-Heart, and using a standard paragraph:
I have marked this observation as cultivated because these plants are almost always intentionally planted as opposed to naturalized, and this particular plant appears to be in a garden setting. Let me know if you think this is not the case.

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Geraniums are a totally mess in North America (wild, naturalized and cultivated species mixed) There are many cultivated species that are not marked as cultivated, most of them are even misidentified. For example many cultivated Geraniums are labeled as Geranium pratense, Geranium syvaticum (from Europe), Geranium geranium potentillaefolium and Geranium seemannii (from Mexico, Central America). Recently, I’ve fixed the mexican species, there are no cultivars and they should not be found north of Mexico. However, I have problems with the European species as there are many cultivars and I’m not that skilled in Id-ing cultivated Geraniums.

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Don’t Hostas reproduce from rhizomes? From my interpretation of wild/cultivated(on iNat), if it is reproducing on it’s own it is now wild. The example observation you give, would be my assumption that probably someone tossed out some rhizomes and there they are growing, so did they have human intervention getting there? If they appeared via seed, I would assume it would be a new culitvar. Hence since, you’ll never know - you are guessing.

This is a common conundrum for me as I have a lot of plants that reproduce from rhizomes, tubers, stolons etc. BTW, no Hostas do not grow in Southern Florida.

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It’s not very common, but I do occasionally see hostas naturalize in my area (southeastern Pennsylvania).

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This issue is widespread for the rest of the world concerning other commonly ornamental plant taxa. Many new users think that iNat is like instagram but for plants and pets, completely misunderstanding that it is not a mere collection of photos. Others think that it is an alternative to plantnet and just want their cultivated plant to be identified.
The problem lies upstream: not enough clear information of what iNat really is and which are the ground rules.

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I have observed several hostas growing a good distance from any house or garden here in the metro Atlanta area. See observation 27781052, 34888084, 45077153, 57985510. They grow in the midst of wild plants and seem to persist year to year.

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One of the most ubiquitous cultivated plants in North America is Malus domestica. It can be very hard to tell what is an old orchard/pasture/homestead and it’s time consuming to check the map on every record. Not including crabapples (there are some native species), there are 5,000 RG and NI.

More applicable plants:

  • Salvia greggii
  • Common sunflower
  • Spanish broom (3,000 NI and RG in USA)
  • Sycamores in urban areas
  • Desert willow, spreads into arroyos from mature landscape trees
  • Yellow bird of paradise, quickly spreads into wild areas from gardens
  • Ornamental poppies
  • Roses (95,000 NI and RG in USA for the genus, map shows strong clusters in urban areas)

So, what’s an efficient way to tackle these?

If it got there by itself – e.g. seeds from a garden that spread without human’s intentional help – it’s wild for iNaturalist purposes. This helps us record the very earliest evidence for the spread of plants that may go on to be naturalized. Some records are pretty iffy, but that’s OK.

The line is harder to draw for plants that spread by rhizomes or stolons. When in doubt I leave them “wild” but one could reasonably disagree, if they’re just spreading rhizomatously from old plantings.

@caththalictroides I added your paragraph to my page of standard responses. Thanks!

I’d say, good to mark cultivated plants, but be on the lookout for wild ones. Ginkgo biloba hasn’t existed as a truly wild plant anywhere for centuries – but now there are a few truly wild trees in eastern North America, plus scattered seedlings one has to call wild. I was surprised to learn that there are now well established wild populations of Sanseveria (three species!) in southern North America. Ornamental poppies show up as wild plants in lots of places (mostly near roads), spreading from seed. Most don’t form persistent populations, but they’re wild while they’re there. Corn (Zea mays) and Milo (a cultivated form of Sorghum bicolor) show up as waifs (wild, but not forming persistent populations) everywhere, especially near bird feeders. Urban street trees should be marked cultivated, but the same species may also escape in the area, as the Bradshaw Pear has done with enthusiasm. Spanish Broom forms extensive wild populations in California and southern Oregon. etc., etc.

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One point: If you’re going to mark plants cultivated but you can’t put a name on them, best to start with observations more than 3 or 6 months old. Why? Because once they become “casual” the observations probably won’t get names, and in many cases the observer wanted a name.

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90+% of Salvia greggii have already been tagged captive and it is native in texas, so most remaining untagged observations are probably wild.
Common sunflower is invasive, probably most of the observations of it are indeed properly wild, even in urban areas; tons of it in ditches along roadsides.
Spanish broom is also invasive, plenty of legitimately wild observations.
Plenty of sycamores in urban areas in, say, Ohio are 300 years old, even ones in otherwise highly manicured areas, so they weren’t necessarily planted. It also grows all over there, probably most specimens in that area were not actually planted, or there’s no real way to tell in most cases.
Desert willow: “spreads into arroyos from mature landscape trees” makes those individuals wild by inaturalist definition.
Yellow bird of paradise: “quickly spreads into wild areas from gardens” is wild by definition
Roses: I personally have dozens of observations of wild roses and 0 of cultivated ones, they grow everywhere. Rosa multiflora in particular is a huge invasive and singlehandedly accounts for ~20% of NI/RG rose observations, those are practically all wild. Observers are also clustered near urban areas so that doesn’t inherently mean they are cultivated ones.

Determining what is wild or planted can be tricky. Often the observer doesn’t even know. Some “wild” areas actually have a history of being planted/seeded, e.g. along the Blue Ridge Parkway corridor, or may have been augmented by the introduction of rare plants for conservation purposes at some point in the past. Usually none of those cases are marked cultivated because the history is not well known.

On the other hand, many houses around here (Southern Appalachians) are built in the middle of the woods with natural vegetation left intact around them. I’ve seen native plants (e.g. rare orchids) that would be impossible to grow in garden soil marked captive/cultivated simply due to proximity to a house. Whoever is doing the marking seems to be unaware how difficult it would be to actually grow those plants in cultivation.

Some others grow wild in the area, but are also widely popular and present in gardens (e.g. Rudbeckia, Monarda, Phlox). Some of these “nativars” used in gardens in turn tend to escape and become “wild” again by iNat definitions. Sometimes the wild species looks sufficiently different from garden cultivars and hybrids and crops to distinguish them. E.g. wild Helianthus annuus seeds (and plants) are much smaller than the domesticated versions, for example. But that is not always the case. Add all the naturalized and invasive non-native species and it’s a mess that becomes very difficult to sort out.

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This definitely complicates matters. In the American west/southwest, very little if any native vegetation is left after development. The native trees of New Mexico include pinon, juniper, cottonwood, and hackberry, but the most common urban trees are russian olives, siberian elms, sycamores (one native species in SW NM), bradford pear, desert willow (native to southern NM, but not really in my city), etc. It’s hard to decipher the status to accurately mark these observations, especially if pictures are only a closeup of leaves.

The iNat definitions complicate matters too. Arugula reseeds itself in my garden, so after how many generations is it wild? If goldfinches bring wild sunflowers to my garden, then I collect and spread the seeds?

My general feeling is that if inaturalist requires two votes for the community ID to reach ‘Plant’, but only one vote for ‘not wild’ to consign it to the casual abyss probably forever, then it should require about twice as much confidence to tag something ‘not wild’ as to ID it. For potted plants, obvious mulched flower beds, and young trees in a neat row in a new development, that standard is achievable.

For many other cases, it probably is not an achievable standard, and I’m comfortable with that. The pollinators, squirrels, birds, bats, fungi, and parasites don’t care if that 100 year old apple tree was originally planted or grew from a discarded core. Nor do the plants it is competing for light and water with or sheltering. If the ecosystem impact is identical and either scenario is plausible, I struggle to see why anyone should care at all how how it got there originally, except insofar as it is additional interesting information about the ecological history of an intrinsically valuable observation.

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