I’m not sure if this is the right place to put this…
Currently when a user posts a photo of Forsythia in the Eastern United States, they are only getting one suggestion: “Golden Bell”, which appears to be a new species based on how few observations there are of it. I’m curious why other options are not showing up any more. Previously, Border Forsythia was most commonly suggested.
I’m not sure if this represents a taxon change, or if the computer vision is being too limited in its selection of options.
Forsythias are a bit odd because they require stem pith to be identified most of the time. As a result, there aren’t many RG observations, which I think causes some odd interactions with computer vision suggestions. This also varies with region. The entities involved aren’t new, and in checking taxon histories there doesn’t appear to have been any changes recently.
I’m starting to not like this change. Many hybrid taxa are common in the wild, especially for plants (Freeman maple, Acer × freemanii, is an example). Even when they are sterile hybrids, I still believe that they should be offered as a suggestion. Many people upload observations of cultivated plants and don’t mark them as such, which is a different issue, but hybrids are being observed so often that they should be suggested as well to prevent misidentifications.