I’ve used iNat for a few years, but I’m just a native plant enthusiast/ Master Gardener. I recently created a traditional project to gather observations on the trail we manage. Some of these individual observations on iNat I know or reasonably know - are not natural plantings - but plants established by fellow gardeners. I hesitate marking someone’s observations as ‘casual’ but realize this may be best practice. Thoughts on this.
Note : that in the past people with good intentions planted species native to the state or to the US on our trail . We now try to remove invasives and plant only natives to county.
If it was directly planted there by a person—it would be cultivated. But weeds would be wild, as would plants that grew there from the seeds of plants planted by people, that are not experiencing further human intervention such as irrigation. For example, one year a cottonwood seed started growing in my potted plant, so I marked it as wild because I did not plant it.
This sounds similar to some of the areas where I add IDs locally. I have a project for a native plant garden in town. There are a lot of volunteers, both in terms of humans weeding and planting, as well as plants that come up on their own from seeds (which could be considered wild). It can be impossible to tell for an outsider what was planted and what is wild.
Since I’m familiar with some of the history and plants that were purchased for plantings over the years, I try to mark everything I know that was planted as cultivated, sometimes with a note when it was planted in that area if I have that info. Same with some of the pollinator gardens at state parks or other natural areas that I’m familiar with and in some cases even donated native plants for that I have grown from seeds. I try to mark all those cultivated, often with a note as well since I’m one of only a few people who know the history of the site. It would be easy for anyone else to mistake those plants as wild since they are native to the area.
Some short-lived perennials may reseed themselves and a couple of years later the original plantings may be gone but the species might still be there because it has established a reseeding population that can support itself without human intervention. I think it would be fine to consider those as wild, but it may still be worth noting in a comment that these established from a planting that was done years ago.
If you are positive a plant has been cultivated, you should mark it, adding a comment to explain the reasoning. It is both the best practice and important information for research, for example, a person investigating the ecological status of a native species may have their data wrong if they think a species has reached an area on its own when it was actually planted by humans.
I would not mark them if there is reason to suspect the plant grew on its own from one of the cultivated plants, though.
Thank you. This is my situation, it’s a native plant trail within a state park managed by volunteers, we took over a few years ago from a previous group. The marking idea is good, and I’ll present it to the other co-chairs for consideration. To be honest, some of these plantings are decades old and lost in time. I’ll definitely mark the ones I’m certain were planted - if I obtain permission to do so.
Thank you, I guess I just didn’t want to burst anyone’s bubble. For example a now deceased volunteer planted a Calycanthus florida, which is adventive to our county. Several folks took observations and marked it as wild. I wasn’t there when it was planted, but it’s right behind the bench and the gentleman told me he had planted it there. Others photograph the Zizia aurea plantings, but to be fair they may have spread from the original.
Look at is this way -
If I took a “random” picture of a “wild” plant and somebody marked it cultivated without comment, I would be confused and mildly annoyed, so I understand what you mean by bursting a bubble.
But if someone marked my random picture “cultivated” and told me that my picture shows the legacy of a late volunteer that planted it in a rewilding effort, my random picture will now have a story and will be a registry of a person’s legacy and efforts. I much prefer the latter. It always makes me happy when somebody sees a picture I took and has any extra information of my specific organism, even if it makes it of a less “interesting” species or moves it to casual.