When is a plant no longer considered "cultivated?"

So I have made a thread with a similar concept, because I’ve but heads with quite a few people on here about whether or not a plant is cultivated or not (my favorite being the poison hemlock that seeded itself into a pot that someone thought was cultivated). https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/should-organisms-in-novel-microhabitats-that-proliferate-on-their-own-be-marked-captive/10529 . Context is really important here.

If they’re reseeding on their own and spreading and you’re truly not maintaining them, they’re wild. If it’s something like a boxwood or azalea or a tree someone planted long ago and you’ve ceased maintenance of it but it’s not spreading, it’s still cultivated. At my school there are many planted Cercidiphyllum japonicum trees that aren’t maintained in the slightest. But they were planted so I would mark as cultivated. Their offspring, however, are wild. The parents may have been introduced, but the spread is on their own.

26 Likes