Hi everyone, This might seem a bit silly but lately I feel like I’ve been increasingly doubting my plant identifications, to the point that I’m having a mini “crisis” regarding them. To start, I should mention that I’m completely an amateur - I have no formal training in botany, I just read field …

Ah I feel this way too! I tend to overthink all the time, then just don’t ID because I don’t want to make too many mistakes (some are ok, as making mistakes is an excellent way to learn). I’d be curious to hear what others respond here. I’m also a little worried about IDing someone’s observation to…

@someplant I’ll start by saying that I’m an amateur as well, not just with plants but all taxa. It seems to boils down to experience and knowing that some plant (animals & fungus) groups are hard to identify without close magnified inspection.and others are unique enough to allow easy ID at a glanc…

Ah yes, the ol’ Dunning-Kruger effect strikes again. [1.-Dunning-Kruger]

If you’re dealing with family level then families have specific characteristics that can be used outside of keys, you can see Brassicaceae or Asteraceae and explain why it is a specimen from those families. First of all, it’s okay to be wrong, we’re here to learn, and iNat deals well with wrong ids…

I, too, am not very confident. I look for the plants with few look-a-likes in my region and am more confident putting a species ID on them. Several more I can get to genus but not distinguish the species because there are too many local possibilities with relatively small differences. A lot of other…

I almost never use keys for iNat purposes. Because the keys are written for these who sit at the microscopes with a specimen in hand. I just learn species, I check the ecology, descriptions of similar species and illustrations in reliable sources. If I am not confident about the species, I leave i…

I’d agree with the thread I see through many of these replies of focusing on your geographic area of familiarity- going with your asteraceae example, at this point (having keyed out many specimens from my local region’s various habitats) I’m pretty confident IDing quite a few Symphyotrichum species …

Follow your notifications. Even older IDs with lots of agreement … can move later. The learning curve for me is more like a stepped pyramid, with the bit I know below / behind me, and ALWAYS another flight of stairs ahead / above.

[image] er1kksen: between the “general feel” (gestalt is a term you’ll see to describe that) and certain key features here and there (usually not the features relied on in dichotomous keys). This is a perfect definition of it. I just could not find the right expression.

I am also very new to IDing plant species, but a good rule of thumb I use when IDing really anything is that if someone questions my ID do I have a reason or answer to back up my ID? This can sometimes be a very small answer that could be proved wrong, but if I at least have something like “It’s the…

Overthinking plant identification

General

natemarchessault December 14, 2020, 5:38pm 4

Ah yes, the ol’ Dunning-Kruger effect strikes again.

How has your confidence in ID’ing changed over time?

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Overthinking plant identification

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