If a plant volunteers in my garden, it is wild. I did not plant it. If I decide to leave it there, and occasionally mulch or water it, does it become cultivated? How about if I move it 1 foot to the left?
Another example:
How about if I plant some things that are native and common in my area in the woods behind my house? My new plants are cultivated, even though it is in an uncultivated area. Has the planting area become cultivated?
When the plants spread by seed and/or rhizome, and form little patches, are the new plants wild or cultivated? 2 years down the road, when this patch has crowded out the garlic mustard (fingers crossed), is this patch of C aurea and May apple wild or cultivated?
Third example:
In an uncultivated area, I remove invasive garlic mustard and discover several patches of native Avens. I mark these and return often to remove newly-sprouted garlic mustard. Am I now cultivating these native plants? Have I created a cultivated area?
Anything that is intentionally planted is considered “not wild” on iNaturalist.
The offspring of cultivated plants spreading outside of the intended gardening area are considered wild (from here).
I don’t know that there is an official “policy” for these two cases.
I think most people on iNaturalist would consider both “wild” especially the latter. Though without further explanation by the observer, would be likely to mark the first example as cultivated based on how it appears in photos.
Of all the endless threads discussing every possible edge case of this issue, you have raised one that I don’t think has been discussed yet. Good job.
If we say that this is a cultivated area, we would have to say that almost every managed parcel of land is cultivated. The iNat community wouldn’t like that very much, because we like to imagine that nature still exists. There have been debates on the animal equivalent scenario: a population of deer who live free-range in a deer park, but may receive periodic veterinary care. Your coming back to remove invasives is providing care for the native plants. Mulching or watering is even more so – it shows human intention to preserve the plant there and then, beyond simply leaving it to grow on its own.
Cultivation is any plant/fungus/etc. that has been intentionally placed at a specific location by a human(s).(Animals are typically deemed captive, not cultivated). These include everything from city trees to garden tulips to botanical gardens(mostly), etc.
Any plant that takes advantage of mulch or water would be wild if you(or someone else) did not plant it. For animals, this is the equivalent of the same robin coming to your birdfeeder every day. Moving the plant 1 foot to the left would make it cultivated, similar to if you moved that robin to a birdcage. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to recognize if it is cultivated though(and unless you explicitly stated it I would not mark it as cultivated).
Plants spreading from rhizome are cultivated since they are all one organism. If a new rhizome forms, the new rhizome is not cultivated as it is a first-generation offspring of a cultivated plant. Unless explicitly stated some identifiers will likely not mark it as cultivated if it commonly escapes or is native(me included).
The native avens are still wild, similar to if the robin visiting the birdfeeder had ticks on it and you removed them.
Hope this helps. My personal rule for observing/identifying plants is I need to see direct evidence of cultivation before I mark it as cultivated.
I think there are some good examples in posts with some ideas about where to draw the line about what “cultivation” is for volunteer plants, ie, if a human does something that clearly causes the individual to survive when it otherwise would not. So, if I have a tropical plant volunteer from a seed that I wrap in the winter so that it survives when it otherwise wouldn’t (ie, it would freeze and die), even though the plant was an unintentional volunteer, I wouldn’t consider it wild due to my intervention. Or if there is a plant that someone cages/screens to prevent its death from predation, I’d also consider this cultivated. There are similar scenarios with semi-wild animals that roam fairly widely, but are confined in large park areas and are rounded up/captured for veterinary treatment every once in a while. Again, borderline case that I personally would not consider wild as humans are intentionally intervening beyond what would occur in a natural context.
With the case of the garlic mustard, I’d probably call this wild, though, since while pulling the mustard is probably an advantage for the native plant, the plant was already surviving with the garlic mustard present. It might be getting an advantage, but it seems like it would be present and alive even without the human intervention.
I would say it depends. I use this approach: if it is something that has come from abroad your garden, ok it is wild. If you have planted a tree which has produced some offrspring in your garden, well, I would not consider it wild.
If they are there because someone has planted them, they are cultivated.
Again I would say it depends. Have they spread outside a cared area or inside your garden? I really would be very cautious when considering wild what grows inside a garden.
They are still wild since no one has planted there.
That is an interesting point. By removing other species from the area, I might be “helping” the white avens to survive, but without human intervention it was already surviving and maybe thriving, having already somehow found its way to the now-wooded former farm land.
The nearby patch of mayapples, P aurea, and astilbe is cultivated because I planted things that were likely to have been in the land before it was farmland. It will continue to be cultivated because I fully intend to allow these plants to spread themselves within this third of a wooded acre, and even into my neighbors’ adjoining wooded areas. Their descendants will never be outside of where I intend them to go.
On the other hand, the next owner of this property, if they were to be using INaturalist, would probably record them as uncultivated native plants, because they won’t know I put them there on purpose.
There is no bright line.
Just me cutting down autumn olives and bush honeysuckles and transplanting maple, oak, black walnut, and hybrid chestnut seedlings out of flower beds too close to my house.