With more than one and a half million observations of plants in New England and New York that currently need identifying, we will have to work hard this coming weekend to reach our goal of making a noticeable dent in this giant pile of Needs ID observations. So, in this post I'm going to give some hints for how to make IDs in time-efficient ways. If you have other suggestions, please add them in the comments below.
Filtering
Here's the link to all the plant observations in New England and New York that we're working on this weekend: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=Plantae&place_id=52339,48. That's the view in the Identify mode; here's the same information in the Explore mode, if you prefer to work from that: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=52339,48&quality_grade=needs_id&iconic_taxa=Plantae
No matter which mode you prefer, if you just start at the beginning and scroll through looking for plants you can ID, you're likely to get frustrated fairly quickly because it will feel like you can help maybe only 1 in 30 observations, if that. You might hit pages of leafless brown twigs, or microscopic photos of algae, or out-of-focus green stuff you're not even sure is a Vascular Plant. This is when you might feel the need to go fold laundry or vacuum the living room or something useless like that (hint: do all that today, before the ID-a-thon starts).
Instead, it helps to filter. For example, if you want to look at observations that are already at the species level and therefore might need just one more Agree click to reach Research Grade, you can select the Species level in the high and low Rank boxes in the Filters, like this: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=Plantae&place_id=52339%2C48&hrank=species&lrank=species
For real efficiency, you can filter for just one species. Here's an example of filtering for White Meadowsweet, Spiraea alba: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=Plantae&place_id=52339%2C48&taxon_id=126823 (more than 900 observations needing IDs!).
Or filter for a particular date or month. If going through more than 900 White Meadowsweet observations seems tedious, filter for White Meadowsweet observations made in June and July, when it's likely the plants are in bloom: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?iconic_taxa=Plantae&place_id=52339%2C48&taxon_id=126823&month=6%2C7
If you're not sure how to filter for a group of observations you're interested in, let me know in a comment or message and I'll help you construct a filter that works. Poales on Mt. Washington in August? Marine algae around Long Island? Your particular town? We can get you there.
Tagging in Other Identifiers
Another way to move observations to Research Grade efficiently is to team up with each other by tagging, or mentioning, other active identifiers. This brings an observation to the attention of a second identifier quickly, rather than leaving it to chance and hoping someone comes along.
Here's an example of how that works: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/173820677. I filtered for the genus Epipactis and came upon an observation where the original observer chose the wrong species in the genus (a mis-click, perhaps? we all do that). Another identifier identified it as Epipactis helleborine, I agreed with that ID, and I mentioned @peakaytea in a comment. Peakaytea swiftly looked at the observation, agreed with the ID as E. helleborine, and the observation became Research Grade (thanks, Patti!).
So, if an observation needs just one more ID besides your own, please tag someone to come help. Feel free to tag me, although I'll warn you there are many plants I can't ID, and if you feel comfortable having other people tag you in, please mention that in a comment below.
Cultivated Plants
Filtering and tagging are two ways to move observations quickly to Research Grade, but on the other hand, you are likely to come across many, many observations of cultivated plants that are not labeled as Not Wild. Once they are labeled Not Wild, they become Casual and drop out of the Needs ID pile. iNaturalist prioritizes wild organisms, so cultivated plants and captive animals are Casual observations.
Particularly in April, May, and September, when biology teachers tend to assign iNat to their students, those students haven't quite grasped the concept of wild vs. cultivated, much less remembered to mark observations of garden plants as Not Wild. So, if you see a plant in a pot, or a street tree in its small square of earth, or a shrub or tree with a circle of mulch around it, please give it as best as an ID as you can can (even just Dicot) and mark it as cultivated.
If you're a gardener and know the common garden plants in our region, it can be productive to filter for, say, Delphinium or Tulipa, and look closely to see if the observations are of garden plants. This also works for university campuses and botanic gardens, as it's quite likely many of the larger plants in these sites were planted by humans. You could even filter for, say, the genera Rhododendron or Spiraea or Rosa and pick out the cultivated observations.
I hope these hints help you make the most of your time making IDs. Please add any hints you have in thew comments below.
