I was recently viewing observations of herb Robert, Geranium robertianum, and noticed that all of its North American presence is listed as introduced. This is incorrect as it is native to eastern North America. All sources I checked (State flora atlases, GoBotany, etc.) confirm it as native to eastern North America. I believe the issue stems from the species’ Wikipedia page, where it states, “Its main area of distribution is Europe from the north Mediterranean coast to the Baltic and from the British Isles in the west to the Caucasus in the east, and eastern North America and western Washington state, where it has escaped from cultivation and is regarded as an invasive species.” It is easy to misunderstand this as it being introduced to all of North America, but it is only introduced to areas along the west coast of North America.
I do hope this gets cleaned up as it is misleading to have this listed as an introduced species where it is indeed native.
One place this has to get fixed that is not obvious is there is a checklist called Newcomb’s wildflower range, US. it is marked as introduced on that list. That one will need updating and is not obvious.
On The Canada checklist it is marked native, it is not marked on the Ontario list, but our sightings show introduced due to the Newcomb checklist.
Also a minor nitpick, if the Newcomb range is going to have the US and Canada in it, it should not be named ‘US’ , it should be named North America, nor should it be nested in the geohierarchy under the US as it is now
I got it fixed. Sometimes, you have to chase down every location it provides and change them individually. It’s a huge pain and I’m thinking of starting a discussion about it here to see what we can do to get that changed.