Help me identify (non-experts welcome)

And for genus within tribe astereae, symphotrichium? eurybia? aster? erigeron? However many other options there are? I suppose sometime I could take a few hours to learn to sort those genuses, or if someone told me there are some that are easy I could do those, but its certainly not just a confidence issue that I’m not doing it.

ID what you are confident of, and what you enjoy. Every little helps.
Follow your notifications, and your skill will develop.
I mostly go to plant genus, and leave those who can to sort out the species.

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The North American taxa formerly in Aster were split off as Symphotrichium; so for that, I go by what hemisphere it is in. Erigeron doesn’t look much like Aster/Symphotrichium to me – the leaves are very different.

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Eh; of those two, the top two most commonly observed in my state are erigeron speciosus and symphyotrichum laeve. From the first few pics on the taxa pages that have leaves, it looks like both have entire sessile lanceolate cauline leaves… there might be differences, but it’s a stretch to call them ‘very different’. The next one down, erigeron compositus, has leaves that do look very different, from either. And even then, there are still perhaps a dozen more genera with radiate heads and white, pink, blue or purple rays…

In New Mexico, we also have Machaeranthera and Dieteria that I think were split off, for a total of 4 genera of purple composites. When I’m out walking, I’m comfortable with genus level and a few species. Until iNat adds 3D photos or requires multiple angles, I’ll steer clear of this group.

Three, because I do not think any North American species remained in Aster. I figure, if I suggest Symphotrichum, and it turns out to be one of those other two, that only bumps it back to Symphotrichinae, which is still an improvement over Asteraceae.

And I stand by my statement about people mainly lacking confidence. I just came across an old observation, still at Asteraceae after 6 years. There was a comment conversation, also 6 years ago, discussing the fact that it could be either Oxeye Daisy or Shasta Daisy. But even if they couldn’t decide between those, why didn’t one of them at least offer a genus-level ID, i.e. Leucanthemum? That encompasses both taxa under consideration, and would have been a huge improvement over leaving it at family level.

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I was counting Erigeron as the fourth, because some ( Erigeron utahensis at least) could be confused.

I agree with you here. People rarely leave sunflowers at genus level, even if it’s the wrong species, but other parts of that family can be intimidating.

I am not much of a fan of the Computer Vision system as it currently exists, but if it could somehow be developed to the point where it could take a photo as input and then guide the user through adding additional photos to help make a better ID then I think we would really be onto something.

For example “This looks like it might be in the family Asteraceae. To identify the species, try to get some closeup photos of the underside of the flower head, stem, leaves…”

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I was just thinking about that. One the IDer side, there is a lack of confidence, as I described; but on the observer side, there is a lack of understanding of how to take an identifiable photo. Over the past few days, I have come across so many observations that are just one photo, a close-up of a vaguely dandelion-like flower, with no sign of any leaves or any indication of the plant habit. Plant habit, in itself, can really help: do the flower heads come up individually from a basal rosette (could be Taraxacum)? On a branching stem from a basal rosette (could be Hypochaeris)? A leafy, erect stem (could be Lactuca)?

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I just found an interesting misidentification problem. Lots of plants (often cultivated) IDed as “Bushtit”. Presumably the observer types in “bush”, which isn’t a taxon, so “Bushtit” comes up instead. They click on it without looking closely, and voila, a problem observation. There are currently 16 pages of Needs ID brought up by “ident_taxon_id=7266” and it looks like more than half of them are plants. Anyone want to help out here?

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I’d like to address the images that restarted this conversation. These kinds of visual guides are valuable for us duffers, but are very hard to find when identifying on iNat. I’ve done similar things with some moths, developed a Wiki, but it seems very hard to access. Is there some way iNat could incorporate information like the fly ID above so it would be more available to the general user? Or is this a topic for Feature Requests?

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There is this: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-comments-or-wiki-like-functionality-on-taxa-pages-to-discuss-identification-and-other-relevant-issues/91/17
and https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/expand-the-similar-species-tab-into-an-editable-identification-guide/13890

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Thank you.

Okay, I take this back. I’ve seen far too many Sonchus asper misidentified as Thistles, just in the Bay Area alone.

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This one is actually tricky. Orange coneflower Rudbeckia fulgida is another very common species planted in gardens (mostly cultivar ‘Goldsturm’) and for the layperson is basically indistinguishable from Black-Eyed Susan. It’s actually often sold under that name as well. (Edited to add: Even the Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as black-eyed Susan, so that is definitely a common name applied to more than one species.)

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planted in a garden could also be (the real ;~) black eyed Susan
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/132458-Thunbergia-alata

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If I see other users have annotated images as part of an observation I will add them to the main taxa page where possible. This was a nice one I came across and added:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/447416-Mya-truncata

There is nothing to stop you adding annotated images from your personal observations to the main taxon page as well of course. I´ve done this for a few taxa. This is one I added to recently - https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/321894-Lonchoptera-lutea.
I´m wary of setting a personal observation to the main image, as it seems a little presumptious, but I think as secondary images it´s fine if clearly helpful to others.

Overall, this approach was my takeaway from the previous discussions around this - I think it´s a practical workaround for the time-being whilst there remains no dedicated broader space for ID notes on the platform.

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I agree about being presumptuous! I try not to reference my creations.
A question - if you add images like that to the taxon page, do they stay at the start, or do they get displaced by other images?

Sure - it really depends on the taxon - for the one I linked to above, there were few RG observations or images added to taxon page. For more common taxa with full image banks already curated by others, it´s different of course - for these, dialogue with the other regular identifiers about whether necessary and/or who has best images to annotate could make sense I think. Either way though, easy enough for others to edit your additions out if they think they are unhelpful - there are no limitations on who changes the image sets.

When you edit the taxon images you control the order.

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Thanks!

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