In the autumn my thoughts turn to mushrooms. I’ve really been enjoying adding observations to https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/mushrooms-of-south-carolina. It is a traditional project so you must add observations manually. After adding my own observations, I’ve added other mushrooms from the iNat forest of local observations. The more species in the gallery, the more useful the project becomes. Too many mushrooms are foundlings–no home–no project to live in where they have a chance of getting IDed.
A while ago, I also joined https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/south-carolina-native-plants, but then I discovered that since I didn’t know what plants were native to SC I was stuck with what already was in the project. So I decided to start with a native plant list I could trust http://www.scwf.org/native-plant-list and I looked for observations in SC for each plant listed–only a sampling of the diversity available. Along the way I ran into observations from super identifiers like a shepherd, a botanist, naturalists, and park rangers whose observations I could rely on to be mostly wild so I added flowering and fruiting instances from them for the gallery. I also ran into some class projects from Clemson and add a few good examples from students. Homework should matter!
Besides learning which of my own plant observations are actually natives I have learned about numerous completely unfamiliar natives. Also I discovered a nearby heritage preserve I had never heard of before.
What rewarding experiences have you had with adopting nearby projects?