- Cultivated
- Wild
0 voters
Haha, good one! Reminds me of my pots out back that I planted stuff in years ago and have now something completely different growing in them than what the label says. About half of those are now home to black walnuts, thanks to a big mother tree and some busy but forgetful squirrels.
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Squirrels gifted me Helianthus annuus in this same pot last year after they stole seeds from the bird feeder. They are silly!
A case where knowing the species is essential before making any assumption about whether this is planted or a volunteer. And even then…
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Does it depend on whether or not you water the pot? If you “take care” of it it becomes cultivated. If you don’t, it becomes wild.
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No vote from me, until the observer leaves a note.
And where are we this time. Nothing like that on my patch.
Volunteer. Not planted by me
or is it
planted chickory, what have I got?
Identifying and voting on iNat is a partnership between observer and identifier.
PS squirrel gift? = wild for iNat.
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If I were uploading this for real, the situation would be explained. We are certainly faced with hundreds of no context pictures every day in our identifying efforts.
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And if it ended up in the pot accidentally when I used old sunflower stems as mulch? That’s why I tagged it mostly humor - the topic has been debated to death and there’s still scenarios that make me go hmmm.
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I’ve been wondering about that myself. Clearly my walnuts didn’t just fall into those pots, they were “planted” there but not by me or any other human. A squirrel intended them to be there, but the plant itself didn’t.
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Looking at my own pots in the backyard full of volunteer weeds, one big clue always is placement of the plants in the pot. Intentionally planted ones typically are dead center in the pot, while volunteers tend to creep in around the edges.
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That was my reasoning too, especially for existing trees incorporated into a landscape, but technically, per iNat definitions, it’s still not cultivated. For plants, on iNat, only origin matters, not current care (this is the opposite of the iNat standard used for animals).
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Great topic! It reminds me of Dandelions in Geralds of the World
Not so sure about this when using alternative watering strategies (granted, you said generally). The mulch and this cut up water bottle to force water to stay in the middle encourages everything to grow in the center of the pot. Here I’m trying to grown Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota):
This one’s just terrible… which “weed” is cultivated here: Wood Sorrel (Oxalis) or Marsh Parsley (Cyclospermum leptophyllum)?
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