Following the taxonomy trail

[joerich]

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): HP Chromebook

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About):

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : Chrome

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/136746357

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.

Maybe someone can help me. I am trying to work down a taxonomy tree to identify a plant, which I believe is a Stork’s Bill. I am doing this by trying to step down a taxonomy tree and then look at photos along the way to help me identify the next step. I went from Plants to Dicots to limit my search tree somewhat. Under Dicots I saw a picture of a Mediterranean Stork’s-Bill whose leaves looked very similar to my observation. Being cautious, I looked at the Taxonomy for this plant and saw it was in the Geranium Family, so I next entered this as an ID to further limit my search. However, when I then click on Compare, I get “No Suggestions Available”. I would have thought that iNat would have shown me all observations for all genus and species under this family. Is this a flaw in iNat or a flaw in my thinking?

[jdmore]

When I pull up Compare (next to Geranium Family in the current state of that observation), I get 11 possibilities for Placer County, CA, based on existing observations from that county.

If I change the source to Research Grade (RG) Observations, I get 9 choices.

If I change the source to Checklist, there are 10 options.

If I change the source to Visually Similar, I get 2 options.

If you are getting no choices, you may want to check and make sure that you don’t have a default Place setting in effect that conflicts with Placer County, CA. I never set a default place in my account settings.

I’ll also note that the plants you photographed are seedlings, and may be difficult or impossible to narrow down to species at that stage. (But I think you are on the right trail at least.)

Hope that helps…

[joerich]

Thanks, I went back today and tried it again, and it is working now. I’m not sure what happened. Operator problems, I am sure.

Yes, I am going to keep checking these for flowers. The rest of the fields are completely dry and there is nothing (or very little) green, so this seep area is an interesting place with lots of life.