That’s another reason to ask them to observe not cultivated, cities are filled with wild things.
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Even I have a few casual observations – because when I made the observation, I was not aware that it was casual. This Frangipani tree in Hong Kong was observed on the same forest trail as several wild plants that I also have uploaded as observations. Not knowing my Hong Kong botany, I didn’t pick it out as having been planted.
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Inaturalist may not be the best platform. But it is / it could be a starting point , a point to appreciate, and then document diversity.
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I agree totally. The biodiversity project I’m starting up for my company is going to be looking at metrics like percentage of locally indigenous vs ‘area indigenous’ species, as well as percentage of aliens from other areas of the globe. @schizoform makes a very good point about gardens. We are also looking to track indigenous, dangerous invasives like Giant Hogweed on our UK site. It would be great if we could tag observations in a more nuanced way… like ‘locally indigenous’, ‘non-locally indigenous’ and ‘alien to this continent’. ‘Cultivated’ is too broad. In Durban, where I live, we are encouraging people to plant locally indigenous to support pollinator populations and establish the natural predator-prey food chain. It would be great if we could quote iNat-based information to back up our arguments. We should be able to detect greater biodiversity in areas where locally indigenous plants are in the majority.
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I just think that a project aiming at mapping the species known as being invasives where they are cultivated close to sensible habitats would be cool.
On the contrary, most of all those observations of plants cultivated in gardens are of no interest for iNat. At maximum they could be used to study what in the “green world” attracts people.
In my visits to tropical places, there are wild plants I was able to identify because of having seen them, or photos of them, as house plants. There are families that I have learned to identify from seeing the common features of cultivated plants in that family.
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Do you have an iNat project for your garden? - @dianastuder
Yes! Flatbush Gardener’s Garden.
Also check out Home Projects, started by @carrieseltzer in 2020, for other examples from around the world. If/When you have a project for your own home garden, you can ask her to add yours!
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Edit: I’ve updated photos of Queen Anne’s Lace (below) to link together relationally in observation notes.
I find growing and documenting captive plants to be very useful. It provides more detail than is typically found with just wild observations, which tend to bias towards “showy” features like flowers.
This observation of Queen Anne’s Lace (Dauca carota) shows me the cotyledon leaves (long, grass-like), which are rarely seen in most “wild” observations.
Other times, I grow for personal use, but have a bonus observation for future comparison: Cheeseweed (Malva parviflora), Catnip (Nepeta cataria).
Lastly, casual grade is often the source of invasives, so knowing what people choose to cultivate by filtering for casual grade, helps with learning what is and isn’t native. For example, in my area there’s a popular Lantana for landscaping, some species of which can become invasive.
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If an exotic invasive species, or cultivated naively, then for sure some aspect of morphology or color will be off, therefore useful for science.
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As a newer user I find this conversation fascinating and would like to offer a point I haven’t seen yet–cultivated/captive observations, especially for plants, can be an invaluable tool for users to train their eye and practice using the app/documenting observations in general. When I joined, I chose cultivated plants for my first couple observations because they were easy to access and photograph. They were also clearly separable from other plants (no wondering which leaf belongs to which bush) and generally tended such that identifiable traits were more obvious. Recording cultivated plants was crucial to helping me figure out how plant ID works and how to use iNat!
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iNat’s officially stated primary purpose is to connect people with nature, and therefore plants cultivated in gardens are definitely of interest to iNat.
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Things can change…
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I don’t get how a planted rose can connect anyone to nature, cultivated plants are as far from nature as plastic ones.
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but it is on ‘planted roses in a garden’ that we can observe insects for you.
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Insects can be found everywhere, but we don’t call garden toilet wall a way to connect with nature, of course every small piece of the world can be a connector and a spark that starts the fire, but helping to diverge interest from cultivation to actual wild things that grow/live at the same place, that would be a more important mission iNat can work on. And insects you mention are part of it, many can jump over “all I care about is this pretty hortensia” phase quite easily.
i think observations of cultivated plants that are outdoors are rather valuable, especially in urban areas, as they are part of the ecology and cultural systems. I think they need to be marked as cultivated, but should be added if someone wants to. I think things like houseplants and pets are pretty useless to add… harmless and if someone wants one observation for each potted succulent in their house (marked captive of course) for their life list or whatever, it’s fine. But pretty useless to others. But plants that are planted outside, especially persistent ones that come back year after year (woody plants or perennials) are worth adding
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In my own experience, someone wanting to know “what is that houseplant?” has served as a way to introduce people to iNaturalist, and from there to a larger conversation about Nature in general.
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Yes, the official purpose of iNat could change in the future, but currently it is for connecting people with nature.
And while it could change, I, for one, sure hope it won’t!
As a user and coarse identifier, I feel the same frustrations expressed here; however, as much as I dislike some of the problems we see with cultivated observations – especially things like student observations from botanical gardens, aquariums/zoos, their own school or home landscaping, etc, – if those help inspire concern and passion for nature, then they have value. Especially in places where access to nature is limited.
As long as teachers take more of a hands-on approach to what their students submit to mitigate some of those cultivated observation issues, of course. 
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I do not see any problem in that. Anyone has the right to foster his personal view on iNat.
Actually, many users who would possibly prefer a more “wild” nature-oriented iNat, at the same time, are in favour of keeping visible the observations of non-wild organisms just to make their identification easier.
As a biologist and as a person who has made divulgation to the public I really think that the use of iNat just as an alternative of an automated app for the identification, for example, of potted plants can be considered, at least, questionable. And believe me, I see many of these users. The vast majority simply stops using iNat after few observations. The reason? I cannot know the reason but I can hypothesize that, in some cases, there is simply no real interest in nature. Maybe the same happens for people who are suddenly pushed to use iNat without knowing what it really is and what they are really doing.
Just to conclude, I think that trying to encourage users to put their attention to wild organisms wouldn’t necessarily mean that iNat would become less user friendly or less popular. We could try to get to a satisfying solution.
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In my experience people posting that expect an automatic answer, rarely get any and then leave, I know quite a few people who are just impossible to get interested in posting, so I believe people you’re referring to already got the right mindset and were interested in nature in their hearts if not minds.