I´m new to this, and I use the app to identify plants in my garden, so I know it´s not the preferred use case. However, I have a few plants that when i scan them it comes up with a suggestion which i know is wrong, cause i have bought the plant and know exactly what it is.
As an example is observation; 44153428
I add it as “cedrus libani”, but I know it is “cedrus libani ´Glauca´”
So first; should Glauca be a part of the ID?
Second; does anyone know if it´s helping the resarch that I am trying to correct the ID in this and similar scenarios (since this is a cultivated plant)?
Third, if it is ok that i try to correct the ID, how do i do it?
In the help file it says:
If a species or other taxon is missing from the iNaturalist database, first try clicking the “Search external name providers” link that appears after you search for a name and get no results. You can also try alternative names that we might recognize (common names, old scientific names). If that doesn’t work, add the original name to the description or as a comment. Then navigate to the taxon page where the name should appear, such as the genus of the missing species, and click “Curation,” then “Flag for curation” on the right side of the page.
I don´t understand how to navigate to the taxon page, could someone provide me with a step by step guide?
From what i understood on the internet, Cedrus libani “Glauca” is a form that was created by humans, so the good ID for your plant is indeed Cedrus libani.
Navigating through taxons is pretty easy, first you have to be on the taxa page, then, below, there is a “Taxonomy” button that you need to click on. By doing that, you have access to all the phylogeny and you can navigate from orders to genus and subspecies.
I hope I have helped you on at least one thing ^^
if you know the subspecies – in this case, glauca – you can include that in your ID. Subspecies and varieties are not given in the suggestions for various reasons, but many are available as manual IDs.
It is definitely helpful to have as much information as possible – thank you for contributing!
Though, be careful with identifying cultivated plants – many of them are hybrids of multiple species, so often you cannot get better than a Genus ID, unless you know the exact heritage. Most are difficult to impossible to know from just a photo, unless you’re an expert. Even then, iNaturalist does favor species-level IDs since, theoretically, there are infinite possible hybrids and it would be a burden to add, manage, and track all of them.
I don’t know how to do this on the App, but on the website, at the top of the page there’s a few tabs – one of them says More. If you click on that, you get a drop-down menu with Taxa Info at the top of the list. If you click on that, it’ll take you to a page where you can search for the taxon you’re interested in. Also, if you go to an observation page, you can click on the taxon name that’s present, and it’ll take you to the page for that taxon. From there you can search for the one you want as well.
usually for garden varieties, i’ll ID to species (or genus) and note (possible) variety names in the associated comment for that ID. that’s probably the easiest thing to do. unless there’s reason to believe that a particular variety or subspecies will spread readily outside of a garden, i don’t think it adds a lot of value to create a bunch of garden varieties in the system, but that’s just my take…
also, if you’re observing garden plants, remember that you’ll often want to mark these as not wild.
To add a bit more: it looks like “Glauca” is not actually a subspecies of Cedrus libani, but more likely a cultivar. So as Victor and Susan said, C. libani is the most specific ID you can make. (You can state the cultivar in the description/etc but it can’t be part of the ID.)
Here’s the taxon page for C. libani, in case you haven’t been able to locate it from psweet’s instructions yet:
Thank you all for your replies!
Even though I use iNaturalist to learn about plants in my own garden, I don´t want to “ruin the database” for what it was meant to do.
I will keep IDs of human made hybrids in the note field instead.
Yeah, if I know a cultivar well enough to make a suggestion on what it is (which is pretty rare these days), I’ll often ID to species, then add ‘possibly (name)?’ in the comment section.
As for my own plants, I usually don’t, but if I do post something, I post it the cultivar and/or ‘the name on the tag’ in the comment field. :)