I see conflicting opinions in the Forum regarding wild vs cultivated. Some of my wild seed observations get marked as cultivated. I theorise how dispersed pollen and seed will be wild by iNaturalist standards.
Pollination
Pollen are wild living organisms when dispersed by the wind, water, or other forces apart from humans. Cultivated plants release wild pollen in this case by iNaturalist standards.
Wild male pollen landing on a cultivated plants female stigma is the start of a paradox that the plant is both wild and cultivated at the same time.
Fertilisation
During fertilisation, the male pollen gamete joins with the female ovules gamete, and develops into a seed.
Seeds are wild living organisms when dispersed by the wind, water, or other forces apart from humans. Cultivated plants release wild seed in this case by iNaturalist standards.
Sprouting
Seed sprouting is yet another stage of the wild life cycle; as descendant plants, of plants that had been planted by humans.
Life is complicated. iNaturalist sets up some arbitrary but useful standards to simplify that complexity. Fruits and seeds are generally considered part of the maternal parent plant (the cultivated plant in your example). However, the seedling that germinates from the seed can be considered wild, assuming that the seed got there without intentional human help.
I would note that pollen isnât an âorganismâ in and of itself since it isnât capable of reproduction on its own. An observation of pollen (or any gamete) would just be an observation of the gamete-producing individual, treated the same way as a leaf or feather or other piece of the individual organism producing it. So something like an observation with a micrograph of pollen, if the pollen were produced by a captive/cultivated plant, would be cultivated as well.
Not quite botanically accurate - pollen grains are gametophytes, a separate generation in the plant life cycle from the sporophytes that produce them. Pollen grows from haploid spores through cell division and eventually produces sperm (2 per pollen grain), but they themselves are multicellular gamete-producing haploid little plant weirdos, not gametes. Itâs probably true that they depend nutritionally on first their mother plant, and then the recipient plant after pollination, but they are very much their own genetically distinct entities.
Fruits are composed of tissue from the maternal parent. Theyâre as wild or cultivated as she is.
Seeds are more complicated. The outer layers, the ones we see, are the seed coat, again made of tissue from the maternal parent. Inside, we find the embryo (formed from gametes from male and female parent) and often endosperm (formed from one pollen sperm uniting with 2 or more maternal cells; it it could vote, it would be maternal tissue). Since what we can see without damaging the seed is maternal tissue, categorizing it as weâd categorize the maternal parent makes sense.
Many things we call seeds, e.g. grains of grass, sedge seeds, dandelion seeds, are actually dry, one-seeded fruits. In most cases, theyâre achenes. Grass fruits are different and (most) are called caryopses (singular, caryopsis). Fruits of dandelions and other members of the plant family Asteraceae are also different from achenes in detail. Theyâre called cypsellae.
So . . . Pollen could be considered a distinct plant, though we wouldnât, and weâd find it very difficult to classify it as wild or cultivated if flowering plants in both categories are present. Fruits and seeds are parts of the maternal plant and therefore are treated as wild or cultivated depending on her state. The seedling itself is a distinct plant and could be marked wild or cultivated, depending on how it got to where it is growing.
This is some meaty philosophical discussion hereâŚdown in the weeds! Pollen (gametophytes) actually reproduce the same way that we humans reproduceâby producing haploid cells that combine their DNA with other haploid cells to produce a zygote. Itâs just that they are very tiny and consist of very few cells compared to us (yes, theyâre haploid, but thatâs not relevant). Itâs easier to see this in fern gametophytesâwhere the gametophyte is larger and lives a life more like its parent (the fern gametophyte is obviously not a part of the parent plant and is living a life of its own). Pollen is the biological equivalent of the fern gametophyte (just reduced in complexity). http://www.yorku.ca/planters/Fern_Babies/
Back to the OPâs discussion regarding pollination creating a paradox that the plant (the one that has been pollinated) is both wild and cultivated following pollination, I donât think thatâs correct. A pollinated plant is like a female mammal that has sperm in their Fallopian tube. That doesnât change the motherâs status, it just means there is now a wild organism (the gametophyte) inside the cultivated organism (the sporophyte). But I think it would be a waste of time and mental effort to dissect out the sperm which emerged from the pollen grain just so one could document a wild specimen of that species.
i see the main point of the wild vs cultivated distinction as being able to document populations growing on their own - native species in their habitats, invasive or other introduced species spreadng on their own, novel ecosystems that grow in cities but without any tending. There are grey areas for sure, but i wouldnât want to track pollen blowing away from a corn plant in a farm field as wild because the corn itself is still only there because of humans, and we want to distinguish that from something like a weird little population of corn that is surviving on its own in a ditch somewhere. So i personally would not want to mark pollen from cultivated plants as wild.
There are a bunch of other issues here around how iNat discourages observing cultivated plants, so people try to find ways to justify them being wild so the data can be valued and used fully. But i donât think pushing this boundary helps with that, personally.
âiNaturalist helpâ gives a concrete definition of wild for pollen and seed: âliving organisms dispersed by the wind, water, and other forces apart from humansâ.
Seeds are the descendants of plants. Mother plant (ovules); father plants (pollen); thousands of dispersed individual seeds that are genetically both mother plant and father plant. Where is the iNaturalist rule that requires germination into a seedling to be regarded as wild? Or is this a constructed concept from an opinion?
Keep in mind that iNaturalist help, sets a conceptual framework used to make conceptual distinctions and organise ideas in a way that is easy to remember and apply.
I think this is the crux of the issue. Iâd say the main point of the captive/wild distinction is to provide a way to see whether a species is growing naturally in an area or only present when humans plant them there deliberately. Yes, technically the embryo in a seed is its own organism. But from a practical standpoint, treating all seeds as wild organism observations if they havenât been moved by a human seems like a loophole that would allow literally every plant to be observable as a wild organism once it goes to seed. I can buy any plant I want from Home Depot, wait until it produces a seed, then post an observation of the seed as itâs falling off the plant and say âhey, itâs wild because itâs now dispersed on its own.â While philosophically one could defend this practice based on the âletter of the lawâ of the iNat rules, I donât think this is in keeping with the spirit of what âwildâ is meant to denote on the website. If this is allowed, I could easily add hundreds of species to my life list by going to a botanical garden in the fall and photographing all the seeds falling off the plants. I think everyone knows this is not a preferred practice, but as is the case with all these âboundary casesâ that get brought up on the forum, one can easily interpret the words in any definition of âwildâ to encompass more than what was intended. I could argue that âliving organisms dispersed by the wind, water, and other forces apart from humansâ includes a lobster I bought at the supermarket if I put it on my driveway during a windstorm and it got blown a few feet onto the porch- âit was precisely on the porch because wind blew it there; all I did was put it on the driveway nearby!â Sure, that technically meets the wording of iNatâs definition, but⌠come on. At some point the definition of âwildâ comes back to that old saying about pornography- âI canât define it, but I know it when I see itâ. No matter how carefully you word the definition, someone will come along and find a special case that breaks it.
The guidelines do at least help with part of the scenario above:
when they say for âWildâ:
" garden plant that is reproducing on its own and spreading outside of the intended gardening area"
So if the seeds had just fallen in the gardening area, they still would be captive (not that I am advocating for considering seeds wild prior to germination at all).
but you can also add them to your life list by just observing each one time and marking as cultivated. I do this sometimes in that situation especially if itâs a genus that is important to me, such as Carex or Salix. Then i have photos and information and can help remember when I saw it. The dynamic life list on iNat allows for toggling these on and off so you can also see your wild-only life list.
The iNat population, especially power users, are often of the âletter of the lawâ sort or are unabl to read inferrences very well Maybe it would be better if the staff just said plants shouldnât count as wild unless theyâve germinated on their own and persisted for at least a year (to account for seasonal conditions) and in the case of annuals, that would mean likely two generations. Obviously we sometimes donât know for sure, but clear rules help us guess well. Also, reducing the push to discourage observation of cultivated plants - just let people do it, and donât funnel them to âcasualâ but make it easy for people to filter out - would reduce the motivation to find loopholes.
really iâd like a way to distinguish natural populations from introduced ones, which can be tricky for native species - for instance people planted red pines all over Vermont, but itâs also a native speices that only occurs in very specific conditions, so itâs nice to be able to tell the native populations. But, thatâs very complex and maybe best managed with fields and projects and such.
To put some perspective on the original post: an observation of a wild seed in the wild, that is from a wild plant in the wild; iNaturalist rules determine the seed to be wild. What need is there for the seed to germinate to be classed as wild?
If the seed came from a wild plant, it is wild. Youâre right. The issue is the status of seeds from cultivated plants. They are treated as cultivated, but the seedlings that germinates from the seed can be wild.
A seed in the wild is wild by iNaturalist definition i.e. dispersed by forces apart from humans. iNaturalist is quite clear that the defining point of seed from a cultivated plant becoming wild is during the dispersal of the seed.
Where are you getting reference to a seed in the wild, dispersed from a cultivated plant, that the status of the seed is treated as cultivated, until it germinates, then changing its status to wild? This would be in direct conflict with iNaturalist rules.
Cultivated seed can only produce cultivated plants i.e. planted in the ground or scattered by humans. Only wild seed can produce a wild plant. Cultivated seed cannot produce wild plants because thereâs a definition incongruence.
I disagree. Seed from cultivated plants can be dispersed without human aid. The unintended seedlings from these plants are wild, at least if theyâre outside the garden area. Just real. If there seems to be a definition incongruence, perhaps the definitions need refining.
That wasnât what chaste meant by cultivated seed, though. âPlanted in the ground or scattered by humans,â meaning that the seeds, themselves, are cultivated.
You and chaste appear to be in agreement on this point: the seed dispersed, not by humans, is not considered cultivated, either before or after it germinates.