How to determine plant phenology stage

Nature Talk
1

Hello again!

I was wondering what the best way to help identify a plant’s phenology on the site. I did a very quick search of the forums, so I apologize if this has been brought up before.

I am a bit confused on how to select the phenology for a plant for example:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/33334407

The flower is clearly in the ‘flowering’ stage but after that you have the options for fruiting and then budding. This is where I’m kind of lost, since I know that some flowers/plants do produce fruit but since the flower has already opened shouldn’t just fruiting be the last stage? I also know that plants have more than 3 stages:

https://aeroponicsdiy.com/stages-of-plant-growth/

&

https://sciencing.com/life-cycle-plant-kindergarten-6527903.html

If you have taken a picture of a plant that just has leaves on it, what stage would that be on? It wouldn’t be on flowering stage since there isn’t any evidence of buds…

Also, how is one able to determine if the plant is male or female? Since from a brief search on the internet, I know that some plants/flowers have both sexes in different parts of the flower/plant (I am aware that it differs from plant to plant).

I am learning a lot from trying to figure out what I have from my pictures (I’ll probably get stuff wrong, lol).

Thanks!

2

I took budding to be leaf budding, not sure if that is any type of consensus. I have seen flowers that have a very noticeable baby bump. I would say are both flowering and fruiting at that time. Quite often a plant isn’t observably doing any of the three. One annotation I think is missing from the list though is dormant. I haven’t read any previous threads to know if my views are similar to others though.

Edit: budding is flower budding.

3

Thank you for posting this question @bookworm86! There is ongoing discussion in this thread around planned revamping and augmentation of annotations. Discussion of plant phenology annotations in particular starts in earnest here.

To keep the discussion from getting split up and harder to follow, I am going to close this thread and encourage you to contribute further ideas and discussion to the thread linked above.