iNaturalist just surpassed 250 million verifiable observations:
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Viruses are very underrepresented on iNaturalist relative to their diversity in nature. After one viral observation in 2020 – the papilloma virus that causes the common wart – I did’nt observe any more for years. Last year, 2024, I decided to make it an ongoing iNatting goal to observe at least one new viral taxon per year. That year, I acheived the goal on October 13 with the Hackberry Island Chlorosis Virus – an Ampelovirus not yet described to the species level.
I have a few parameters for my plant viral observations. I have seen too many hopeful observations knocked back to “Life” because chlorosis can be caused by a simple nutrient deficiency in the absence of any pathogens. Therefore, before I observe any plant virus, I must first identify the host, then look online to see if it has known viral diseases that cause the observed symptoms.
Today I achieved the goal for this year. Several sources describe the observed symptoms, including
Buttonweed in your Pastures | Soil & Water Conservation District
Virginia Buttonweed | Home & Garden Information Center
Virginia Buttonweed | NC State Extension Publications
None of those sources ventured to name the virus, and the Clemson source even called it “an unknown virus.” Only when entering the observation field for the host and starting to type in “Diodia” did I see Diodia Vein Chlorosis Virus pop up. It is a Crinivirus, a genus with several known crop diseases.
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@jasonhernandez74 Thanks for posting this! I noticed this on some of the buttonweed in my yard and didn’t think to investigate what caused it.
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I passed 10,000 annotations earlier this week. Now to get my IDs up to a similar number…
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Went to a bioblitz this past Saturday, and I’ve crossed a couple milestones as I work through the uploads from it!
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CNC 25 by species
San Antonio 4817
Graz 4526
Cochabamba (the ‘winner’) 4524 whittled down to third and only 3% RG :~((
Can we nudge Hong Kong up to true third position 4433 by knocking another 90 off the ‘winner’. Wading thru a suspended user with almost 2K obs and all at sensational wrong IDs. Only needs 3, on every obs, to put it right. 
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Finally posted at least one observation of every bird on my life list, so now almost every animal I’ve photographed should be on iNaturalist. Brought me over 1,000 observations.
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I finally passed 1000 observations!
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6,000 observations! Going for 8,000 by the end of the year
Also at 8807 ID’s, going for 13,000 by the end of the year
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I’ve been trying to help with that—even if I did get punchy and identify a Domestic Chicken as Theropoda. It’s not wrong; just very non-specific! 
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I had a great hike for my birthday on Tuesday and passed 3000 species observed!
I’m also on the verge now of 2nd all-time for species in my county (580). A few hundred of those have been just since the CNC.
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Happy Birthday!
and Congratulations!!
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A HUGE milestone for me is improving the photo quality.
I like saying that, thanks to the camera I bought and I started using this year, my photos are more than reasonable, rather good.
Here’s my newest favorite:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/289738555
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Wow - while I was sleeping the other shift of identifiers has been hard at work! We now have true winners for the first 3 places.
CNC 25 by species
San Antonio 4802
Graz 4525
Hong Kong 4428 !!
Cochabamba (the ‘winner’) 4339 whittled down to fourth. Still down at only 4% RG :~((
Dallas / Fort Worth edging up ?
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I passed 20k observations, worthy of a post here! Also crossed 3700 species at some point, but seeing a new species happens very rarely now.
The 20k observations comprise 14.2k plants (4.2k orchids), 4.5k fungi (3.9k lichen) and 1.2k animals.
0k 5k 10k 15k 20k
[other plants ][orchids][lichen][an]
I suppose one way to up my species count would be to observe more animals, but they just never hold still for me and I can’t get pictures of them.
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Since you are photographing plants anyway, you might try examining them for galls and small invertebrates hiding on/under the leaves or blossoms. Galls are generally good about holding still for photos and in central Europe I find that it is possible to get an ID for most of them. Bees and most flies are difficult subjects, but I’ve had better luck with bugs, many beetles, and lepidoptera or symphyta larva. Tephrid flies also tend to be fairly sluggish and they like to hang out on flowering plants.
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