Sorry im new here so I am unsure if the tag is correct. I was wondering if there is a difference between the inidian and african species of snakeweed or are they both the same? Google doesnt provide me with anything useful and I need to know as I am thinking about planting it if it is native to my region.
Try AIs. The more information you put in the prompt, the better the answer will be.
no. absolutely not. generative AI lies, often. it is programmed to create an answer and has no idea how to differentiate between truth and lies. if it cannot find enough information in its (stolen!) database it will make something up.
@whatisbobs I am on mobile so I cant link to good sources right now – do you know the sceintific names of the species?
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some searching led me to genus Stachyterpheta.
S. indica “Indian Snakeweed” and S. jamaicensis - what you call African Snakeweed are close relatives. It seems that they are both used as garden plants as they attract butterflies.
if you are going to get your plants from a store, they might be hybrids. or mislabeled. what region are you in?
if you go to the iNat taxon pages for each species, there are links under the About tab > More Info which provide a great deal of information about each of the two species. you can compare and contrast from there.
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Please don’t. On questions relating to biodiversity, even very specific with lots of information in the prompt, the output I’ve seen from ChatGPT is complete nonsense. Generative AIs are not yet reliable for anything where you require accurate information.
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That should not be the first reaction when encountering a slight difficulty in research. AI language models have there place but that is not in researching.
@whatisbobs I would like to help you but I am having difficulty finding the plant you refer to as snakeweed, at least a snakeweed that is both asian and african, does it have any other common names, do you know the latin name for it? Is it the genus Stachyphera?
It looks like you are based in Singapore, in which case neither is native.
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It seems that calyx shape is the best diagnostic character:
https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/TEL/article/view/7536/7988
srry for the late reply. I was abit busy. The genus is indeed stachytarpheta. the species are indica and jamaicensis.(idk if my spelling is correct) the reason i thought either could be native was due to an online pdf by the National Parks Board, titled A field guide to plants of Singapore-common wildflowers-. It was only after posting this that I reread the pdf and realised that it did note that some of these wildflowers could be non native. I apologise for any confusion made.
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Would it still be beneficial to native wildlife if I allowed the plant to continue growing? or will it harm the native biodiversity? ( I have already found some native plants but am just wondering if i should continue planting the snakeweed)
if it is naturalized, you can leave it. wildlife benfits most if you provide a mix of species and microbiomes. native species are best but it doesn’t have to be all native to be beneficial to biodiversity.
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Stachytarpheta species originates from central and south America. Although one species carries the name indica, it is also from America.
You can grow it if you want. It attracts butterflies and maybe sunbirds.