I felt bad bumping all these old ones from @jtklein app, but that’s what they were there for…
In the process I started figuring out a few of the Burkina Faso plants, like the shea tree that is a frequent obs. Also, Combretum fruit shape is easy to spot and looks like a big 3D elm seed (botanists, is that generalizable to the genus across Africa?). I’ll round up some examples for the M:I project in the next couple days.
Related to figuring out trees, Side Mission: Annotate! lol. Fruits and flowers are probably going to be the easiest starting point to recognize in iNat photos. So helping to basically pool some obs for others to look at, even if you’re at the " just dicot" level, can help speed the id process. Edit: Same mission as @annkatrinrose has been on. ;)
I’ve been making bolder-than-usual educated guesses. If I leave it a level or so above Genus it won’t get to RG by mistake. And yeah, I’ve also begun to recognize some too! Those Combretum are pretty indeed. I’ve also had good fortune in recognizing a number of species as belonging to genera from Israel, as well as garden plants in common.
I’m a happy amateur, and even North Africa, where I’m trying to id unknowns and Plantae now, is a real step out of my comfort zone. Like astra I’ve been bolder than usual, sometimes all the way up to genus based on CV and knowledge of similar species in Europe. But there will still be sooo many dicots/monocots/tracheophytes from me…
same here- even guessing dicot/monocots feels brave for a flora that is not even remotely close to what I am used to. But I’m excited to see where my dicots will end up in terms of genus and species to help me learn
good news! we’ve found a first record (on iNat, but possibly altogether) of Euphorbia opthalmica in the country of Ghana. And actually, the first on that side of the continent!
Why that species name? Medicinal use?
PS fun surprise - added to our map!
PPS @sedgequeen is collecting thistles. Who knew there was an Afroalpine one?!
And with 63 obs it is Pending for the next CV update. Ticks ALL the boxes - thank you!
@nathantaylor may have an inkling, if he wants to comment here. I certainly can’t be bothered to dig up the original description even though it’s probably not that hard to find.
That thistle (Carduus keniensis, Afroalpine Thistle) reminded me of our alpine endemic Cirsium peckii. I like Cirsium peckii and Steens Mountain, the only place it grows, so I pursued your bigger, bristlier version. Fun.
Now back to non-flowering trees with simple entire leaves, mostly photo’d from a distance. I like the suggestion that annotating observations helps identification because people can search out just observations in flower or fruit, so I’ve started doing that. (Lots of “No evidence of flowering.”) Makes me feel useful even when I can’t ID much.
To create statistics I have set up an umbrella project and flora projects for african countries or regions.
To be honest, I am not fully satified with the result and will try to improve it. Here is what I did so far: 01 Africa, Plants by region, umbrella project test · iNaturalist
We will probably get a more official update from @koos_the_reader soon, but in the meantime here are the latest numbers around 8pm EST on August 6 2023 using the links provided!
Number of observations in thousands for Africa excluding the Cape (counts including Cape in brackets).
Well, Persoon (the original describer) didn’t say. The glomerules come in pairs, so I like to imagine that he was thinking of a pair of eyes (almost certainly not the case, but fun to imagine). More likely, Euphorbia hirta (a very closely related species) has been used for at least one eye-related disorder: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23506674/. As such, I imagine the name pertains to some folk remedy involving the plant.
End of week 1 update: Since the start of the project the number of observations at Species level or lower has been reduced by 2000! Of which 1400 have been outside of the Cape floristic region. Observations stuck at Unknown and Plantae (Kingdom) have also dropped by about 8000 (!) most of which seem to have been moved to the upper ID layers of Flora of Africa.
Reminder: if you would like to help but are not familiar with African species, you can add annotations to fruiting and flowering plants. This helps by screening out difficult to ID obs for those who are more familiar with the local flora. link to forum post
You can all be very proud of progress thus far :) Best of luck for week 2!
Number of observations in thousands for Africa excluding the Cape (counts including Cape in brackets).
Most recent counts shown as change relative to baseline (02-08-2023)
02-08-2023
07-08-2023
Not in Flora of Africa
Plantae at Kingdom
20.7 (28.5)
-4.7 (-5.1)
Unknowns
10.5 (15.1)
-3.1 (-3.4)
Flora of Africa
Phylum to Class
37.3 (54.9)
+5.2 (+5.4)
Dicots
18.9 (28.0)
+4.0 (+4.1)
Subclass to Subtribe
50.3 (99.0)
+0.8 (+0.7)
Genus to Complex
129.6 (315.4)
+0.8 (+0.7)
Species and lower
180.0 (363.5)
-1.4 (-2.0)
Captive
Unknowns
4.0 (9.4)
-0.3 (-0.3)
Plantae
75.8 (179.1)
+0.3 (+0.5)
Graphs of the observation counts over time. The black lines are including Cape.
