Ok, so I’m confused, I was under the impression that if a tree (non-native or not) is not planted by someone then it is considered wild and not casual. I found what appears to be a red maple seedling (I could be wrong about the ID) in the middle of a state park, but it has been marked casual grade. Is that an automatic assignment or am I misunderstanding the casual grade vs, research grade when it comes to trees? I’m providing the link.
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I’d guess it could be an attempt to use automation to try to improve the constant, hugely irritating “plants in cultivation not indicated as such by OP” problem, by assuming that a species that’s usually found in cultivation in a certain area, actually is in cultivation. Perhaps the instances of valid contradictions of the “not wild” assumption are few in number compared to when this assumption is correct, such that it’s more efficient to put the onus on the OP to explain when it is NOT in cultivation?
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Possibly–makes sense. I was checking out other observations of Japanese maples in the area–and many are research grade. My guess is that most are planted. I can see why someone would want to err on the side of casual in most instances.
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The usual solution to this problem is to click the thumbs up button next to “Organism is wild.” You may need more than one user to do this, in which case you can tag other people and ask them to do the same.
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A person didn’t vote it as cultivated (although this isn’t always the case, sometimes this happens). It was iNaturalist itself because that species is usually cultivated in a given area. The system is working as intended.
A problem I’ve encountered is that in my area we get a lot of cultivated Rhododendron observations. These get marked as casual. I noticed that wild Rhododendrons not marked to species, so just the genus Rhododendron, are being marked as casual by the system too :(
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It could be. Click on the number next to the thumbs down to see who voted that way. If it says iNat it’s automatic. Otherwise another user voted that way and you can mention them and ask why. Either way you can countervote with a thumbs up.
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Thanks. I did do that. I just thought I might be misinterpreting casual grade when it comes to trees.
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Thanks for clarifying–I thought it might be, but I wasn’t sure, so I thought I’d ask.
It’s automatic, as you can see it was added by iNaturalist. This is done when there are at least 10 of that species marked by users as casual in the general area.
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This is a good point to raise. If this individual was definitely wild, which it was from what you describe, then it’s always helpful to push back by clicking the thumbs up for “Organism is wild”.
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Working as intended. One iNat automated vote, is easily countered.
Not hidden - a single click is all it needs.
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Thanks, it’s not hidden–at least not if you’ve been using iNat long enough–like me. But I was unaware of the automatic feature whereby iNat assigns the grade of casual based on the species. I don’t think it’s bad idea to indicate that it’s an automatic assignment somehow though I don’t know how doable that is.
(PS I should add that initially there were 2 votes for casual. I would have needed someone else to vote wild besides myself in that instance. )
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problem I’ve encountered is that in my area we get a lot of cultivated Rhododendron observations. These get marked as casual. I noticed that wild Rhododendrons not marked to species, so just the genus Rhododendron , are being marked as casual by the system too :(
That seems to be an example of how over-simplified solutions can result in inaccuracies.
https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=448
The Kruse Rhododendron State Natural Reserve still has lots of native rhododendrons.
This is the time of year to go see them. It was still pretty impressive last time I went through that area. Although, the rhodys are being slowly displaced as the forest regenerates after a large forest fire many decades ago.
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I can understand the need for an automatic assignment to casual. I wouldn’t say arrogant necessarily because I’m sure it’s extremely frustrating to identifiers to have to keep marking garden plants casual, and it does guarantee more accuracy in terms of research grade. I see the value, but perhaps some indication that a species will be moved to casual might be helpful.
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I’ve started adding a Note to my plant records saying it is or appears to be wild if there’s chance that it might be interpreted as cultivated. You essentially did this in your maple record.
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Pleas mark them as you see those, in some areas there’re tons of unmarked trees (I don’t know why nobody clears them), so any help is appreciated.
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if you would like to be notified of this change - make a feature suggestion.
There is always more to learn about how iNat works - makes it an interesting learning curve. Or not. As you wish.
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Will do. :)
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Let’s try to keep things civil - the ‘arrogant’ comment was completely unnecessary and possibly hurtful.
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It’s fine to disagree, but to call someone arrogant is beyond the pale.
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