I live in South Florida, this is a climate completely different than anywhere else as far as the U.S. is concerned. So why do people outside of this locale take it upon themselves sometimes to mark things as casual, which may very well be wild, by iNat definitions? Here is a latest example. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/42987403
Coleus reseeds like crazy here and it is also a perennial as opposed to an annual anywhere else. You can see in the photo this plant is getting ready to re-seed everywhere. I gave this observation the original ID and did not mark it as casual, because I know how easily it reseeds. Yet, it has been given 2 casual marks from iNat. I thought the general rule of thumb was to go by the posterâs assessment unless it is blatantly obviously wrong?
One of the two votes was automatic â there are a lot of other cultivated observations of this species in this area, so the system automatically voted it cultivated. The other vote is @tiwane, so he can probably explain why he voted that way.
If you know that your observations are likely to be incorrectly voted captive, the best things to do are to add something in the description stating why itâs wild, and to vote up on wild even before anyone has a chance to vote down. When you leave it blank, other people are likely to assume that it might be cultivated and may vote not wild.
But I donât currently see any assessment by you in the observation, either by positively marking it as wild in the DQA, or by having a description like, âfreely reseeding in my yardâ. Did you delete something?
Definitely always a good idea to explicitly say âgrowing wildâ or something similar in the description for any cases where you suspect other users may perceive as cultivated, e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/32581797
Given that the location looks to be in a tended/maintained surburban garden surrounded by a mown lawn, itâs easy to see why it would get marked as ânot wildâ even if it is reseeding within that specific setting. The ground also looks mulched, which can lead a viewer to the conclusion that itâs a plant thatâs actively desired in the garden and not being weeded out, and itâs a non-native common garden plant, that likely originally didnât seed itself in that location naturally (even if that individual plant did).
In this particular instance I can see why people would bump it down to casual.
The issue of âwildâ or not is already complicated, and when it comes to non-native, domestic, or ornamental species that are still under what appears to be cultivation, itâs even more messy.
Agreed ⌠adding a short simple note that the plant is wild, not planted/cultivated, eliminates any confusion.
If I saw a similar picture of a commonly cultivated plant in the UK I would consider marking as cultivated unless the observer had voted that it wasnât and/or commented that it wasnât. I might comment to ask if it was planted. My experience (of UK observations) is that lots of obviously cultivated plants are posted without the observer marking them as cultivated. Looking at 30 random plants in the UK on identify I see 7 Iâm fairly certain are cultivated.
Guilty part here, sorry about that! The location is right next to a house and the substrate made it look like part of a tended garden, hence my vote. I should have asked if it was wild (which I often do if Iâm unsure) but didnât do so in this case.
Iâm not sure if the onus should always be on the observer, but itâs something to keep in mind when uploading. Just as if youâre identifying you should ask before voting one way or the other if itâs not totally clear.
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