I want to learn more about taxonomy, but I’m not a biologist and know only basic things. I find myself often tagging “Plantae” on unknown… but I really want to learn !
I’m a bit confused on how though… is there a method or a usual way to go about it ? It feels really intimidating right now ! I don’t want to know every branch and species, just enough to be more “useful” x)
One way to be useful, is to annotate plants as flowering or not flowering.
This helps everyone, including you, by adding important phenology details.
For any plant that piques your interest, you can click on the taxonomy tab, and see if you can understand why it is that family, or that order, or that class. This will give you a gentle and practical introduction to plant taxonomy.
Others like @DianaStuder and @sedgequeen and @rupertclayton might have more advice, but this is a practical starting point.
There’s some useful advice here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/taxonomy-for-dummies/37134
Beyond that, I’d say that if you have a particular place that interests you, go out and buy a local field guide - they generally explain the basics of taxonomy along with how to ID local species. Beyond that, try to find local natural history groups that have field trips, such as a native plant society, and go on field trips and ask questions - most people who organize field trips love to share their knowledge.
Most of all, have fun learning, and take a break when you get frustrated.
oh thanks ! I had not found this topic when searching around, it sure will help.
A plant does not have to have flowers when observed to be a flowering plant. And the next step is to tell whether it’s a monocot or a dicot. (Properly they should be classified into monocots, eudicots, magnoliids, and various basal clades; but to fix this would require editing millions of observations and would require telling magnoliids from eudicots, which isn’t as easy as telling monocots from dicots.) Then there are some families and orders which I can tell by the flowers, or by the way they branch.
For fungi, if it looks like a mushroom, whether it has gills or sponge-like things under the cap, it’s in Agaricomycetes. If it looks cuplike, it’s probably an asco. If I don’t know what kind of fungus it is, I just call it a fungus.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Some ferns, like Ophioglossum, do not have pinnate leaves like typical ferns, and I’ve placed them mistakenly in monocots or something. There’s an observation of a fern on top of something like a palm trunk; I thought it was a palm, even though it does have typical fern leaves.
I like going from bottom up. That is genus/species in flowering plants specifically. sure there can be always be lookalikes and flora taxon splits, but fixing on flowering plant is easier for ID as its more stable than other stages in lookalikes, and more so if you have seen it in field too, you can then focus on learning and IDing that taxon itself. There are field guides only for flowers to and so are some books for plants - families but especially learning flower and plant characters and terminology can help and see which of those are stable for which clade as you observe things and keep IDing and notice others coarser IDs on your broader ones.
So yes you will miss the immediate unknown → which family/genus plants on most observations, but as you learn few common ones and build your recognition methods you will get there for broader top levels. Also browse through top 100 species in your area (and most importantly the lookalikes or conspecifics of those possible in region from sources outside of inat like KEW or such) or top invasives reported in your regional surveys and learning those alone is better to get started in the initial overwhelming phase.
I usually observe a flowering plant → figure out family based on CV suggestions and comparisons → then go find local list of that family or genus → use key to find exact species → then ID other observations in area for that genus from what I learnt. Its fast and manageable and rewarding as I am mostly just pruning choices to get close to answer.
Taxonomy – the naming and classification of organisms. I think about it both in a formal, abstract sense and in a practical way. Unfortunately for you, I’m going to start with the abstract. You can forget this as soon as you read it.
Basic idea: Organisms are classified – put into groups – based on how similar they are. There are levels and levels of similarity – bird, duck, Mallard, for example. Taxonomists love to name things so we name those levels. If you go to the Taxon Page for any organism you’re interested in, you can click on the Taxonomy tab and find its taxonomy laid out in a simple way. One look, and you’ll understand the levels better than all my words here.
You don’t need to know what we call these levels!!!, but I’m writing them down here because I want to write about them. (Ignoring bacteria) the biggest group, the highest level, is the Kindom, then Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, species. Each big group can have many smaller levels in it. For example, each family can have many genera and each genus can have many species. Each smaller level belongs in only one group at each higher level; a species belongs to just one genus, just one family, just one order, etc.
We want to group organisms together by how similar they are, but how to do it? You could classify plants by trees/shrubs/herbs or by flower color, or wetland vs. upland species, native vs. introduced, etc. In formal taxonomy we want to classify by the very basic similarity that results from shared evolutionary history – from having the same ancestors.
Our rule is that each named group should be a “clade” – a group that includes all the organisms that are descendants of one ancestor and no other, less related organisms. As you can imagine, figuring this out is difficult and taxonomists argue about it all the time, sometimes changing the classification and therefore sometimes the names.
The Big Three kingdoms are Plants, Fungi, and Animals. (There are others, but they’re much less often posted on iNaturalist.) Sorting observations into these groups really helps!
Of course, sorting them into lower groups helps too. Among plants that have true flowers (imaginatively named Flowering Plants), we use mainly the classes (basically Monocots and Dicots) and then the families. Among the insects, we often classify to order, such as Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Coleoptera (beetles), Hymenoptera (wasps, bees, and ants), etc. These families (plants) and orders (insects) can attract lots of experienced identifiers.
Now to look at it another way.
How to learn about taxonomy in ways useful for identifying? Think about an organism or group of organisms that interests you. Then look into their taxonomy. How can you learn about that? Most field guides sort organisms into taxonomic groups. If you can buy one (often available used) or check one out of the library, look through it. (Don’t get a plant book that organizes flowers by color.) Pay attention to the genus and species names. What organisms are in the same group? What makes them look similar? Which ones live in your area?
Or just look the organisms up on the Taxon page in iNaturalist and click on the Taxonomy page. If you click on similar species, what higher groups do they share? What makes them look similar? Wikipedia pages also provide a simplified taxonomy for each name they cover well.
If a group interests you, look into it. You can’t possibly learn all the groups – no one can – but you can find out how to identify some groups and branch out from there.
It’s very useful to go out in the field with other people interested in nature. You may find groups near you for people interested in birds, native plants, weeds, fishing, etc. Attend some meetings and especially field trips.
I don’t ID as much as I should online, but ID things for people often in my daily work.
Outside the skills itself, I would say, start with what interests you. If there is already a group you know somewhat, you can look to expand that group.
Or you can try to start mastering whats around you. Like if you explore by your district, you can look at the most common species being IDed in you area.
Like I think its quite fun to to use the &unobserved_by_user_id= url edit, to know what you still need to find in an area like
I am about halfway, in the current list. By seeing what I havent photographed yet, I have a challenge to know what I need to look for to go out and add it to my list.
Learning should be fun, by expanding on what interests you, and getting to know what exists around you. That will also grow how you can use that knowledge to help others.
Like coprosmas can be tricky to learn, so a few years back, I made it my goal to learn how to tell apart the local coprosma species.
Today’s ID-a-thon target is for you. Echinoderms and
Flowering plants https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/id-a-thon#flowers
Clearly presented by @kestrel out of her CNC and iNat staff experience. 
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?taxon_id=47125&lrank=subphylum&hrank=subphylum&place_id=any this URL contains half a million obs waiting at flowers (Angiosperm) Use the available filters to bash it down to a manageable size, starting with your preferred location. Then sort by Date Observed (same flowers will come up in their season) and Date Ascending (satisfying to clear an obs that has been ignored for months or even years!)
And learn from each notification that rolls in to meet you.
Maybe not where a novice at plants wants to start, since these will often be the difficult observations that nobody has been able to take further.
I have my URL open - not seeing difficult obs there, just missed their initial chance for an ID. ID-a-thon comes with kind advice to skip what you are not sure of. Pick a bunch of roses and leave the shrubby green stuff to someone else.
Try all the different approaches to identify, till you find one that works for your knowledge, and your interests.
I choose to pick out what I recognise first. Then the obs with multiple IDs. Then the residue. Next page.
I really like this way of picturing it, in school we were taught to think about it as Russian dolls :)
I would love that ! but I’m in a fairly rural area and hadn’t find any group yet 
I feel it too, I can sort flower plants/not flower plants but more than that I don’t think myself confident enough ^^’ Impressive challenge though !
I feel your difficulty! For years I lived on a farm 40 miles from the nearest nature-oriented meetings. Making contacts was difficult. Nothing like the difficulty connecting that many rural people face, though!
Personally, I learn from a variety of places regardless of topic. I, too, am learning taxas/taxons. I have most basics down for being able to move observations (obs) out of Unknowns, but wish to be able to identify lower. It is frustrating at times. Three things I think help me are/would be:
I also use the taxonomy tab to see how which bit fits where in the taxonomy. I chose the wrong Family, can I remember the right one next time ?
I think you misinterpreted the post by @AdamWargon - I also misread it the first time through. I think he is suggesting that annotating plant flowering phenology is useful in itself as an alternative to identification, not as a means of classifying Flowering Plants (Angiospermae) vs other plants.
IME plant families are much more difficult to identify than animal ones. There are some that are immediately recognizable, like Asteraceae (composites) and Fabaceae (legumes), but most are defined based on minute characters like the number and placement of ovules in the flower and development of the fruit, which are not clear to an observer. Some have a gestalt appearance that makes them easier to recognize, like Solanaceae having four petals which is uncommon elsewhere; but there are also a lot that contain very different-looking things, like Sapindaceae. So for the most part you’re probably better off learning the genera and species, and then working up as you note which family they belong to.
I think there are around 400,000 vascular plant species, compared to around 20,000 terrestrial vertebrate species?
So there are around 20 times more plants than animals, in the way that non-iNatters define it (we know that mites, nematodes, etc. are animals, but many people don’t think that way).
When you add in “plant blindness” (it’s green, so “plant” is as far as I can go), that makes it hard! Hence
Not meaning to discourage you! Actually meaning to encourage you, because it’s hard and it’s complicated. Give yourself grace. You will learn this!