I love inat work but my health prevents me from getting out much. I’d like to start id’ing but I’m a little overwhelmed. Where should I start? I’m partial to plants of Hispaniola, or at least plants that have fellow genus members on Hispaniola, but besides that I don’t know where to dive in. I somet…

This is another easy way to hone and develop your ID skills. Pick a taxon that appeals to you and make the phenology graph useful. It is surprising how you can flip thru hundreds or dozens of photos - and one leaps out, that’s NOT … https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/using-identify-to-annotate-obser…

If you can, get hold of a field guide to plants of your area. Leaf through it. Get a feel for some families. Follow up interesting plant observations on iNaturalist. Identifying unknowns to “plants” is a help. Identifying observations labeled Plants, Dicots, or Monocots to family is a big help. …

[image] rose: How about some of you that are experts in a particular genus share your knowledge and hand over a genus to people like me? People are pretty busy and most aren’t on the forum, and it’s a big ask to get specialists to “just” summarize all their knowledge in a handy package for ot…

If there are particular taxa you are interested in learning more about, that’s a great place to start. IDing should be rewarding for you! Nowadays there is a lot of material available online, but if you get stuck, it’s perfectly OK to contact people on iNat whose IDs and profiles indicate that they…

[image] upupa-epops: If you tag someone in the comments of an observation and ask for them to explain in more detail about something you’re confused about, usually they’re quite happy to do that. Yes indeed.

[image] rose: There are 10 sidas on the island and they are all pretty similar. Where can I find a key for something like that? How do I find an easy genus to get my feet wet on? I did a Google Scholar search for “Sida Malvaceae Hispaniola” which should bring up any peer-reviewed literature t…

Hey, it is great that you want to help to identify. :D I only really have two recommendations: Don’t worry about it too much. Start slowly, skip observations, and ID what you think are confident with, and if you make a mistake, so what? Check your notifications often (ideally at least daily). If …

[image] spiphany: I’m not sure whether it covers Hispaniola, but I imagine there is enough overlap that you can use it to follow up on specific genera. There are shared genera, and even shared species, although these tend to be the widespread Neotropical species. The Greater Antilles also hav…

You don’t need to be an expert in anything to get started. Helping can be as easy as filtering by “unknown” and getting observations into categories like “beetle”, “flower”, “mushroom”, or “mammal”. If say a mycologist is filtering by ‘fungi’, that mycologists will miss all fungi that are currently …

Suggestion to help those who want to id

General

phoekman November 19, 2024, 8:47am 15

Just want to wish you well on your journey! And please consider voting for this proposal which is about providing an easily-accessible place for exactly the kinds of resources you are asking for.

Topic		Replies	Views
Overthinking plant identification General	27	4950	January 29, 2021
Ways that users can start identifying easily General	65	3221	December 2, 2022
Resources for IDing unknown specimen Nature Talk question	20	736	June 16, 2024
What new identifiers should ID / What is under-IDed and feasible? General	100	2426	November 3, 2025
Help me identify (non-experts welcome) General	65	8763	April 5, 2023

Suggestion to help those who want to id

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