I think it might be a hybrid Ilex x ‘Nellie R. Stevens’, but I’m not in the nursery trade and I have no relevant degrees. I don’t see Ilex x ‘Nellie R. Stevens’ listed on iNaturalist. Nor the full name Ilex aquifolium × Ilex cornuta ‘Nellie R. Stevens’. Is that because it doesn’t occur in the wild and iNaturalist is primarily for wild organisms?
Should I ID it as just Ilex with a comment and mark it as captive/cultivated? It’s definitely cultivated. I like to wait to mark that though until there’s some confirmation on the ID because it removes it from the ID queue.
Adding horticultural hybrids as taxa would allow them to be distinguished further from wild genus-level observations.
iNaturalist has a system of automatically marking observations as captive/cultivated based on the observation taxon. Sometimes it has done this to genus-level observations, possibly due to the dearth of horticultural hybrid taxa.
I don’t think iNaturalist should omit a taxon just because it is unlikely/impossible to be a legitimate identification for any verifiable observation. This is the case with many horticultural hybrids, humans and extinct taxa.
Not quite true. iNat aims to encourage people to engage with nature. Since most of us live in cities, we start with ‘cultivated plants’ then move on. Obs of cultivated plants are on iNat and, at least some, hybrids are useful in the taxonomy. But staff does prefer to have an obs … not to set out to add All the Possible Hybrids to no point and purpose. For example Safari Sunset is observed across the temperate world. 60 obs for the hybrids, but thousands for each of the parent sp - which is as it should be.
Kind of, but it’s often important to record the horticultural and garden plants as those can be ground zero for plants that become naturalized or invasive.
I primarily look for genus Populus hybrids. As far as I’m aware, all the naturally occurring hybrids have been added for the locale I look in. There are also a couple of clone cultivars that are in the library like Populusnigra ‘italica’. However, there are many clone cultivars that are missing. I don’t think this is done intentionally. I think it’s more of a lack of knowledge, and willingness or ability for those knowledgeable to contribute.
There’s certainly room for discussion around whether a hybrid that occurs naturally from cultivated sources should be counted as ‘natural’ or not. This is something I’ve discussed here and there; as often the source of many of the Populus hybrids I’m interested in are from non-native clone cultivars mingling with native species.
My personal opinion is that those hybrids are natural and should be documented in all cases. Even cultivated hybrids in this case. Speaking generally, any hybrid can pose a massive ecological threat in a number of ways. Often the least thought about is the potential for back-crossing with native species.
I’m not aware of any gatekeeping or ‘anti-cultivar’ sentiment from those that actively run the website. I do get a sense from certain members of the community feel the need to gate-keep what is and isn’t allowed on iNaturalist. As I said above, I think the problem is a lack of knowledge or confidence in that knowledge, or the lack of ability or permission to apply that knowledge in combination.
As most scientists will tell you, having more information and data at your disposal is never a bad thing.
Or with nearby alien invasives. There’s an Ilex cornuta sprout every 2 meters for a hundred acres around these trees. It’s a lot of work to control them every year. These trees probably aren’t to blame as they are supposed to be self-pollinated and sterile and that dispersion pattern is likely the result of birds and Ilex cornuta is planted in many parking lots for miles around.
I’d still like to send some samples for genetic testing just to be sure. If any of the seedlings are 1/4 Ilex aquifolium, that would tell a compelling story.
The answer to the question in the title of this post is:
Only hybrid taxa with individuals that occur spontaneously (i.e. those that would not get the “cultivated/captive” checkbox checked for every occurrence) should be added to iNaturalist.
I think it might be prudent for iNat to expand this to something that includes suspected “pre-invasives”.
It really would be asking too much to try to turn iNat into a database of all known(/claimed) horticultural hybrids, though. Gotta draw the line somewhere, and “spontaneous natural occurrence” is a pretty good place to draw it.
Or with nearby alien invasives. There’s an Ilex cornuta sprout every 2 meters for a hundred acres around these trees. It’s a lot of work to control them every year.
YES! The potential that two non-native species could hybridize and create a third, potentially more virulent offspring.
These trees probably aren’t to blame as they are supposed to be self-pollinated and sterile and that dispersion pattern is likely the result of birds and Ilex cornuta is planted in many parking lots for miles around.
One of the most common misconceptions is that hybrids = sterile. A perception caused by things like mules. By their very nature hybrids are genetically chaotic, which means they can always end up fertile.
@ddennism Only hybrid taxa with individuals that occur spontaneously (i.e. those that would not get the “cultivated/captive” checkbox checked for every occurrence) should be added to iNaturalist.
Gotta draw the line somewhere, and “spontaneous natural occurrence” is a pretty good place to draw it.
The discussion often comes down to defining ‘natural’ and ‘spontaneous’. These terms are not well defined. Is something that was planted, but escaped via any form of reproduction, natural or spontaneous? A tree that was planted, then removed, but regrew over years? Abandoned trees with no signs of human intervention? Many people consider anything outside it’s origin ‘unnatural’.
Not attempting to argue, I’m just curious as to other’s positions on this. A tree that gets this frequent sort of discussion in my sphere is Populus alba. The scenario I see the most often is: It was often planted on settler homesteads, but many are abandoned and renaturalized. It’s unlikely the original tree is alive, but Populus reproduce via root clones. Same tree? Is it still considered cultivated if it’s part of the surrounding forest now? Are those natural and spontaneous?
Yes, that is generally the answer to my question. And it fits well for Ilex × attenuata which has been documented growing wild where its parents native ranges overlap since the late 1800’s. It has its own taxon on iNaturalist (rightly, I think).
The other part of my question was what to do with the observation. It looks like the consensus is to mark it as simply Ilex with a note in the comments.
DianaStuder and others are painting a picture where it’s reasonable to ask for specific hybrids to be included in iNaturalist as-needed, once we have ID confirmation and maybe a need to study that hybrid, or that the hybrid is so popular that it just makes organizing existing observations easier. If it turns out to have potential for invasive offspring (which has never been investigated), then we can revisit. We’re just at the “Glen is curious” phase right now.
Given their vague morphological delineation and taxonomic uncertainty, use of hybrid taxon concepts should be avoided whenever possible. Adding IDs of higher-level taxa is usually sufficient. In those rare cases when some external authority actually supports a named hybrid, we will tolerate it, but abide by the following guidelines…
If it’s the same organism that has regrown after cutting (or humans are no longer present), it is still cultivated on iNaturalist. For plants, if an individual was cultivated at some point, it remains that way for its life.
In cases where an organism grows within the human-intended area (like daffodils making more bulbs in a flowerbed), these would still be cultivated as they are not “spreading outside of the intended gardening area.”
If a clonal descendant did establish outside the intended area of cultivation, it would be wild.
I appreciate the reply and input! This is something I’ve been wrestling with. I tend to view the ‘captive/cultivated’ button as a nuclear option. I only use it in the most obvious of cases, where certainty guaranteed!
Given their vague morphological delineation and taxonomic uncertainty, use of hybrid taxon concepts should be avoided whenever possible. Adding IDs of higher-level taxa is usually sufficient. In those rare cases when some external authority actually supports a named hybrid, we will tolerate it, but abide by the following guidelines…
Yeaaah. I’ve seen this and I’m not sure when it was written or last updated. And, not that it matters, but I disagree with this excerpt. Hybrids are still being researched and I believe it’s detrimental to classify them under a higher classification. I can imagine it’d usually end up at genus, though sometimes ‘sections’ are available. This would make it harder for anyone seeking these hybrids, to find them.
I also don’t like how vague ‘some external authority’ is. I don’t know the process, but this does sort of read as arbitrary. If I want to have a hybrid added, what are the baseline requirements? Which cultivars/hybrids are added, and which aren’t does seem a tad random.
Aren’t all the valid names due to ‘some external authority’, like POWO, which is updated from changes elsewhere, like Jepson eFlora, or FNA. It’s not like we’re asking ChatGPT to hallucinate binomials. And ‘some external authorit[ies]]’ have difficulty agreeing on names at times, particularly hybrid names. Try to key out a bush monkeyflower in Southern California using FNA vs Jepson - you get to different places