This is rather frustrating in many ways. Most people follow Fryer&Hylmö as do all flora’s (see e.g. Flora of North America on efloras.org). According to at least one curator, Inaturalist chooses to follow POWO (a completely random treatment dreamt up by someone who had a couple too many drinks).
Now, if Inaturalist chooses to adhere to POWO, that’s perfectly fine, but it does only partially so (and even more: Cotoneaster adpressus is not a synonym for Cotoneaster horizontalis according even to POWO). It would be nice to make a choice and stick with it. As it stands, adding obs of Cotoneaster or submitting an ID to one such observation is a complete waste of time (I have to say: many observations are of obviously planted specimens).
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Hi @spins - if you see an issue with the taxonomy on iNaturalist, please flag the taxon/species in question. It’s preferred to use the flagging system rather than the forum. Only a small number of iNaturalist users also have forum accounts and curator work is primarily handled via flags.
iNaturalist’s policies regarding plant and other taxonomy can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#policies
thanks!
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