I noted this statement in the guidelines: “The iNat Forum is also not a place to seek help with identification”. However, I often use iNat to identify plants, especially natives versus invasive and noxious weeds. I have 20 acres bordering on Roosevelt National Forest and the Larimer County Colora…

Welcome! There seems to be some confusion. iNaturalist and the iNat Forum are two different things. You should use iNaturalist for help in identifying these. You should come start discussion topics about your work with invasive species here, in the Forum. :)

Thanks, Lucy! And would it be okay to post pictures of young plants here? Or should I only post them on iNaturalist? What I’m really looking for is an catalogue or archive of young plant pictures that I can use to identify my weeds versus native sprouts.

You might try searching for observations with the annotation “no flowers or fruits”, e.g. mustards in Colorado without flowers or fruits: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=34&taxon_id=47204&term_id=12&term_value_id=21

I wonder if a Project is what you’re after? There are some that seem to fit what you are doing. Colorado Noxious Weeds seems especially apt.

You should only post them on iNaturalist itself, not on the forum. And may I say, what you’re trying to do is great.

Thanks for all the suggestions, this is very helpful! And I joined the Colorado Noxious Weeds project.

What you’re trying to do is very useful. As others have said, the photos themselves should be added as iNat observations, but the Forum is certainly the right place to go about it. As you may already have seen, there was a recent change to how iNat displays images of visually similar organisms and …

There are a few existing projects for sprouts and seedlings that might be relevant (these are all non-specific regarding the regional scope; there are some focused on a more narrow area but I did not see any specifically for Colorado): https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/cotyledons https://www.in…

Many plants have juvenile leaves vs the mature ones. That would be a useful new annotation. (We got ‘coloured leaves’ for Northern deciduous) Otherwise we wait. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lets-talk-annotations/627 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/76850673 invasive alien pine seedlin…

Many seedlings, especially ones with only a few leaves, are difficult to impossible to ID to species with confidence. They may be identifiable to genus or family, but closely related species might need fruit or flowers to identify. One way you could help would be to take photos of small seedlings on…

More pictures of sprouts and young plants

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More pictures of sprouts and young plants

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