Train the vision model on cultivated plants

[danaleeling]

@tiwane

Do you have some example species? How many observations of those species are on iNat?

This post is just another example where a cultivated/captive plant can provide images of benefit to training the image model to the benefit of wild plant identifications and is provided fully aware of:

@tiwane

The vision system is trained on captive / cultivated records. However, our automated suggestions are based on vision results and nearby records, and the nearby records part of it is currently only using RG records, so if vision ranks Canary Island Pine highly, it might get knocked down by the legit lodgepole records in the Transverse Ranges.

This post is also related to the discussion from What Image(s) Are Used for "Training" Computer Vision?:

@tiwane

…but its position in an RG observation doesn’t determine its selection for training.

I was looking through Ixora casei Research Grade and could only confirm that one of the eight is likely to be Ixora casei. Based on distribution and appearance, a couple others could potentially be Ixora javanica. The remaining observations seem more likely than not to be other Ixora. Ixora casei is a native in the islands of Micronesia, Marshalls, and Kiribati. The bulk of the images being used for training the computer vision seem to be likely to mistrain the computer vision.

I am also certain that this Ixora here on Pohnpei is Ixora casei and will be a valuable addition to proper training of the computer vision. The plant is cultivated/captive because I moved the plant from the forest nearby to a more accessible location on campus as a field specimen for my ethnobotany course over a decade ago.

I must confess that the images are of the same plant but span time. I visit the plant two or three times each academic term as part of an ethnobotany class. I could separate the images into observations for each time, but these would all be casual and would all be the exact same plant.

I would note that the lead main image on the Ixora casei taxon page is not likely to be Ixora casei. There is a beautiful type specimen for Ixora casei from Kosrae island dated September 18, 1884. Fun trivia: the location listed in the record was miscopied from the herbarium voucher. The location “Valan” should be “Ualan” which was also known as Strong’s island and is today known as Kosrae. Ualan was possibly a misunderstanding of the Kosraean word walung which refers to specific land sections at the far end of a municipality away from Lelu. The compound of the king of Kosrae was located on Lelu island which was also the harbor into which foreigners usually arrived. Pointing to the main island and asking what that place is called may have generated a response along the lines of “walunge” - away from Lelu.