'Needs ID' pile, and identifications

[fluffyinca]

I asked essentially this same question in a different topic.

@fluffyinca

Is it acceptable to work through dandelion observations (Needs ID and/or Research Grade), bumping them back to genus and checking “ID cannot be improved” to make them RG at genus level? I did this to a page or two but then realized it might offend someone - will it? If so, is there a better solution? It bothers me that there are so many with Community ID at species when they can’t really be identified that far.

These are the responses I got:

@upupa-epops

Theoretically a dandelion observation that shows a good view of the leaves should be identifiable to section/macrospecies, and if it shows leaves and the bracts under the flower it could be identifiable to microspecies. The only issue is that there’s only like one person in North America who’s confident in identifying to that level. And without knowledge of even which sections exist in which states it’s hard for others to start. There’s maybe 2-3 people on iNat in Europe, but they’re not big identifiers.

If the images wouldn’t be sufficient to distinguish T. officinale and T. erythrospermum, which are both accepted by FNA, then it should probably be at genus level anyway given that both are common and widely distributed.

@annkatrinrose

I don’t think doing this indiscriminately to all dandelions is a good approach. It depends on location, the identifying features shown in the pictures associated with the observation, and the keys available for that location. For example, the floras for the southeastern US only have two species listed (with a note that more may exist), T. officinale and T. erythrospermum, and a key how to distinguish them. If an observation shows the characters noted in the key, I don’t think it’s appropriate to bump it back to genus just because there are different keys published for other locations or based on the assumption that things are more complicated and current keys are insufficient. However, if the pictures show none of these features (e.g. no leaves or seeds), that’s different as it cannot be keyed out beyond genus, at least not using the key in the southeastern US flora. It seems more work needs to be done on sorting this out for the eastern US but that’s way over the heads of the average iNat observer or identifier. Meanwhile, I think using existing keys should be acceptable and not be bumped back to genus.

@charlie

whether it’s appropriate depends on what taxa scheme we buy on to. I mean personally I don’t really ever use that “no further id “ button unless I believe the ID is actually wrong, but that’s a debate that happened long ago and I know people are allowed to use it how you do.