I wanted to confirm because I am a new user on the platform. I understand a lot of people use this for species ID and things like that for different plants, animals, birds, etc. I understand it can be annoying for cultivated or garden plants but if we genuinely do not know what a flower or such is… is that allowed or..? I understand a lot of people use this for WILD plants and animals but I thought it would also be useful for some people to ID plants they DID NOT plant in their garden as some are sprouting as I know I don’t know some plants/flowers growing in my garden as it was a “chaos” garden at some point by prior owners and not sure what is growing back.
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Hi! Welcome to iNaturalist! I have a lot of cultivated plants from the old owners of my house that have since spread to other parts of the yard, and I have took some pictures of those and put them on iNat. It should be fine for you to do the same, as long as you’re not uploading dozens of these observations.
For identifying things in your garden, Seek might be a better fit for you: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/seek_app
But for things in your garden that you did not plant, I think those would be fine for iNaturalist, since, well, you didn’t plant them. Also, people post observations of cultivated plants all the time; they just get demoted to “casual grade” since they’re not the most relevant to the platform. I have a few casual obs myself, of plants that I was unsure of, that turned out to be ornamental/cultivated.
TL;DR if you’re certain that something was planted/cultivated, I would use Seek/iNat Computer Vision instead of submitting the observation like you would for a wild organism. If you truly have no idea if something is cultivated or not, then I don’t see them harm in submitting it as normal.
But that’s just my take. I’m sure others have their own opinions.
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You could upload pictures to the app, select location, then click “what did you see”. That will let you look through the computer suggestions. Once you’re done, just cancel the observation. Make sure to select a location first, otherwise the computer will give you results from around the world.
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Post what you will, really. There’s uncountable quantities of potted plants, plastic plants, blurry splodges on the ground/wall/sky, splodges of green water, decayed tissue paper -
Some of those are memes, some of those are genuine confusions, some of those are useful comparison posts for the next time someone asks if the decayed paint is a slime mold. Feel free to post your cultivated plant; just make sure to mark it as cultivated by the time you get to a trustworthy species ID. I remember reading somewhere that, whilst highly unintended, iNaturalist is a half-decent source of data on domestic species distributions (though probably a better one once several million (I think I’m underestimating a lot but hey) observations are correctly labelled) which is its own kind of useful.
Cultivated plants are a major source of weeds and breeding grounds for pests. Domestic animals are repositories of all kinds of things.
You also don’t have to upload, it is true, though machine view can absolutely suck with domestic plants and you might want human eyes on that.
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I think from official iNat guidelines, things like garden plants are definitely allowed. From my understanding, the annoyance of cultivated and garden plants from IDers is that they clog up the lists of observations needing IDs. For me, if it’s a genuine observation with good photos AND NOTES, I genuinely don’t mind. I’d prefer 100 of those over 20 of the blurry, completely unidentifiable observations or observations with 5 species and no input from the observer on what the observation is for. I think if you include a note about the context and add even a high level ID, it’s not likely to bother (most) people.
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I get twitchy around distribution and seen nearby issues, myself; I have no more issue with the low-quality cultivated photos than with the low-quality wild photos (I try not to be a hypocrite) but I do like to know if the distribution for that garden plant has changed…
Good point. I typically ID in non-recent “Unknown” and “Kingdom only” observations, so I see a lot of sub-optimal photos (when I’m not IDing diatoms, which is a whole different can of worms). Honestly, I think knowing where garden and cultivated plants are doing well is seriously useful information that could be gathered with iNat.
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There’s definitely not a problem with posting plants that you’re genuinely unsure about the origin of. If it turns out it was planted there, it can always be marked as “cultivated” later. iNat isn’t primarily for cultivated plants, but there’s no harm in posting some occasionally. For example, I’ve posted cultivated plants because
-I’m trying to make a survey of insect hosts in an area, and the insects don’t care if the plants are cultivated or not
-I’m not sure about the plant’s origin
-The plant has escaped cultivation nearby, and I want to document where it was planted deliberately as a possible source
-The plant was being used by some other wild organism (fungus, insect, bird, etc.) and I want a record of the plant to link to in the wild observation
-There’s something particularly odd about the plant’s growth that I think is noteworthy
And in all those cases, I mark “Cultivated” if I’m relatively sure they were planted there.
I think where people get bothered is when cultivated plants are posted because
-A school class was told “You must post 20 things!” and the 50 kids all go outside and post the first Siberian elm tree they find planted in the school parking lot
-Someone decides to post all the flowers they planted in their garden and they leave them all marked as wild
As long as you’re making a good-faith effort to make the cultivated/wild distinction, no one should have any problem with your observations.
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Here’s my two cents, as an ID’er:
Just be transparent. If you’re not sure, say so. Captive Obvs can be helpful in many scenarios. For example, in the world of tarantulas, where I primarily ID, there are many species much more common as pets than seen in the wild. Sometimes those casual obvs can be helpful to get a better sense of what the animal looks like, both for ID’ers and Computer Vision. It’s mostly just annoying when someone posts a captive obv and tries to pass it off as wild. I did this once myself, although not on purpose. Took a picture of a cool looking cactus without realizing that (in restrospect, very obvious) it was cultivated. The folks here were quick to correct me. If you post something cultivated, or if you’re not sure, just say so in you description, no harm no foul. Often people who are familiar with certain species will be able to tell right away. Obviously, everyone has different opinions, but personally I don’t see anything wrong with posting garden plants as long as you’re being honest to the best of your ability.
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Upload whatever plant interests you. If you know it is planted = Not Wild, then say so. If not sure, wait and see what IDs come in.
You can also make a project for your garden (I use a pinned location for my suburb, don’t want my street address on iNat)
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/elephant-s-eye-on-false-bay
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/home-projects-umbrella
It totally okay and normal to post cultivated plants, just mark it as much so the quality grade is set to casual meaning that it is removed from research purposed observations unless researcher states otherwise. However, it is very annoying when people post non-living things such as rocks but if you can not tell if it is living or not (such as confusion between clothes fibers and fungi/molds), then that’s okay just add a description about it.
And don’t be afraid to make a mistake! Everyone does at some point. Some of us (me) do so often enough.
Most are politely pointed out and easily corrected.
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so true. I always make mistakes so many times especially when learning how id new species. everyone makes mistakes and mistakes are the learning process so do not stress much about any corrections.
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Love rocks - but I use this comment for iNat
iNat is for life
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Hi, Welcome to iNat and the forum. You’ve gotten good feedback on the question of ‘is it okay to post’. I’ll just add this - I will occasionally try to ID cultivated plants in my area. iNaturalist’s Computer Vision (which makes a suggestion about what the ‘system’ thinks it is) will do a decent job with garden plants that are also natives in the area, and garden vegetable plants. It doesn’t do a good job at all at exotic houseplants or plants that are not found naturally in that area.
When I encounter one of these types of observations, I use Google Image Search or Google Lens. I’m usually working on my desktop and I can just use a right click on an image. On my phone, I can pull up Google Lens to check out that unfamiliar shrub or flower in the planter by the restaurant door. There are other apps that help with plant ID that I think have a broader data bank then iNat’s focus on wild/native.
This is not a suggestion that you use those options instead of iNat. Cultivated plants are not the focus of the site but they are allowed. They just need to be marked (at or soon after upload) as ‘cultivated’.
But those other options are a suggestion for when iNat just doesn’t offer any good ID suggestions. Most plant identifiers in my area will not touch cultivated plant IDs - largely because they focus on natives and non-natives are outside their expertise. So it’s possible that you may not get good feedback on some cultivated plants.
For the record, I’ve also used Google Image Search and Lens on those weird Unknowns where we’re not even sure what Phylum to put it in! It’s a good option to try when others aren’t working.
Here’s hoping you find the site a gateway to a new way of interacting with nature. Danger: may be habit forming! :-)
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for those you use Visually Similar, not Seen Nearby (or Checklist)
My exotic and invasive lupin is ‘your Texan bluebonnet’ and it is on iNat.