The rarer plant taxa lack a representative image. Often there are herbarium images in Global Plants (and others), and illustrations that are out of copyright.
I wonder if iNaturalist could have a dialogue with Global Plants to see if there is a methodology that their herbarium specimens could be used by those with Global Plants access to remedy such situations, for example a certain max resolution with credit added, or perhaps it could be run through a graphics program that turns it into a sketch or similar. iNaturalist for its part would need to provide (if not already there) for some way for interested people to add such images in unless the image were added as an observation with an old date and very broad location.
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If we have the taxon on iNat, there are obs, and we can add taxon pictures from those obs?
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So, I’m referring to ones lacking observations, I think it’s important for many such taxa to have an image against them.
Usually it would be someone with an interest in a geographic area or plant group who would be likely to provide a non-observation picture to such pictureless taxa.
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Okay. I see the - please add missing species side, when there is a new obs for a ‘not yet on iNat’ sp.
But iNat is about our engagement with nature - so something we have seen and taken our own photos of.
My idea of having a picture would be to help people familiarise with the plants to expect around them, and also reduce plants being assigned to taxa which are not matched (among other things).
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I hear you. I share your intentions, which is why I help to ID Unknowns across Africa and to add those missing sp. Better to have - Seen Nearby - and visually similar from CV.
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Global Plants is not licensed for reuse on iNat. However, anything that is public domain can be uploaded to wikimedia and then it will be automatically available for use on iNat.
You may also be interested in this existing feature request: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/import-photos-from-smithsonian-open-access-for-use-on-taxon-pages/10443
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Thanks jwidness - so the other feature request seems to support the concept of ensuring taxa have images where there are no observation. It will be interesting to see where that one goes (and what organisms it has in its database).
For GP that was why I suggest there could be a dialogue, as you are a major player in the natural world. Global Plants and Plants of the World Online already give public-facing low resolution specimens, so my thought was that it might be possible to find something agreeable at a lower resolution (even 800 px would be useful).
But I’ll leave it for the iNaturalist steering committee to decide if they want to take up that dialogue, I think it would be a good one.
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