So in 2017, iNaturalist introduced annotations, which is a way to add metadata to an observation in an iNaturalist-controlled way rather than relying on the free-for-all that is observation fields. We wanted to start out with some basic ones, such as Sex and Life Stage, as well as Plant Phenology (which, I know, many botanists have argued should be Flowering Phenology) and there were many other requests, but the subject died down without anything else being added by iNat, aside from some taxonomic tweaks. I’d like to revive that discussion here and see if we can add at least a few more annotations to iNaturalist and reduce some observation field confusion. So please reply with a request, if you have one. It would be best to define the annotation, possible values, and which taxa it would be applicable to. Please keep the following in mind: Annotations should be attributes that can be independently determined from an image or sound and are useful in the places where we use annotations, eg the taxon page charts and the taxon page photo browser. We want to restrict annotations to qualitative values, so annotations with numerical values will not be added. Values should not be arbitrary, either. These are not photo-level annotations, so the annotation should describe the observation as a whole. In general I’d prefer that the annotation not be of very niche use but can be used for a good number of observations. We can’t promise your suggestion will be added, especially until we implement a user interface that will not display15 annotations on an observation’s page all at once.

I am working with an odd situation re: flower annotation. For Waldsteinia (aka Barren strawberries so there will never be any fruit to annotate), the flower stem, sepals and filaments stick around for a long time, well after all petals are gone and after the anthers/pollen are gone. I don’t know how to annotate them. Should it be no flowers or fruit, despite the old structures lingering around? And at what point, once all the petals are gone? Looking for advice!

According to Missouri Botanical Garden, “Fruits are not berries, but are single-seeded achenes which are inedible, hence the common name of barren strawberry.” Technically, any seed or seed-bearing structure of an angiosperm is considered a fruit.

What about ferns? The new “leaves” annotations do not say anything about fiddleheads and how those should be handled; I think that breaking leaf buds should apply only to leaf buds breaking the rhizome, and thus for easier understanding fiddleheads should be considered. Also, sori, spores, or something about reproduction should be added for the sporophyte IMO. The same could be said about gametophytes, but there are fewer observations for those.

Presently conifer annotations include only “Leaves” and “Sex” in the “Attributes” column. It is my understanding that additional attributes may be added in 2025. I have been unable to find where these possible additions are being discussed? Does anyone know??

This is the main thread for discussing ideas for annotations. I’m unaware of a specific/official thread for conifer annotations.

From the recent post about the latest additions for plant annotations: [image]Updates to plant annotations We know that these changes don’t advance mosses and other non-vascular plants at all, or reproductive structures for conifers, ferns, and other non-flowering plants. We welcome continued discussion for those in the long annotations thread , but don’t anticipate adding new annotations before 2025.

I have been trying to add annotations but find there are far too many places where I can not. For example the entire fungi / lichen area seems to be ignored. The entire bryophytes seem to be ignored. For trees there is no way to add anything on barks or cones.

You may use observation fields for that and even define your own.

+1. I find that “Annotations” are most useful when they can be applied to the entire taxa that they are associated with. There isn’t a group for example that would include all “trees”, or shrubs that would have some sort of a bark. Observation fields are a really good fit for this, the downside being that you need to extract and plot any data from them yourself, as far as I’m aware there is no built-in solution to display a timeline or graph that includes observation fields, like the one for annotations.

[image] shroomsnjunk: I think it’s much better than having “wing”, “leg”, “scale” and other specific options. I’m not for or against a “fragment” or “segment” (for arthropods) annotation, but I think “wing” should be added as it’s own annotation regardless. A lot of pterygota can be IDd to family from wing veins, but it takes an amount of effort to study each individual observation. I think it’s rare that something like a Dragonfly wing gets to research grade, even though it should be able to most of the time. I think it’s because people who are looking to identify Dragonflies are looking for bodies and don’t want to deal with studying veins, and people who want to identify Dragonfly wings know they’re going to get buried under other observations of Dragonflies, even if they sort by 'Dead" or “cannot be determined.” I think having “wing” as it’s own annotation for pterygota will help get a lot of insects out of “needs ID” limbo, whether they can be put as casual grade or bumped to research grade

Let's Talk Annotations

General

tiwane July 22, 2024, 10:01pm 724

From the recent post about the latest additions for plant annotations:

Topic		Replies	Views
Are annotations about the observation or the organism being observed? General	19	659	July 24, 2026
Annotations that do not fit General	26	3529	February 9, 2020
Adding annotations - does anyone use them? General	89	2758	December 30, 2025
Updates to plant annotations News and Updates	124	5108	January 26, 2025
Annotation Sunday General	56	2416	January 23, 2025

Let's Talk Annotations

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