Relatedly, I had an earlier post where I was thinking to build a starter/coarse key of some kind. I could not ultimately find a good resource to make that sketch into a kind of usable diagram.
But seeing that @graysquirrel has made a useful wiki out of this thread, could a similar wiki/thread be set up for a “coarse id’ers’ guide” that people could add to? Maybe it could be in the form of some kind of question-style key, like for starters:
-Does it look like it’s made of plant tissue? if so go to (link below or some subsection notation)
…animal tissue? fungal tissue? (and add simple cautions where necessary, like about algae or slime mold or galls or various underwater things- “just call it Life for now”)
I’m just a chemist though, so there are probably people here way more informed on how to do this kind of key thing.