Help with identifying Western Australian native plants.
I am fortunate to have regular access to areas of bush near Wandering in Western Australia. Potentially there are around 100 or more pea flower species present in this area, plus lots of acacias and a host of tiny plants that are hard to identify.
iNats does not really help much because it is difficult or impossible to identify these species from even a few photographs as the flowers, in particular, can appear remarkably similar.
Recently, the Kings Park Herbarium staff (Kevin Thiele, Chris Hollister) have added many new scientific descriptions to Florabase, greatly improving online access to information to help with plant identification. Previously, one had to delve into botanical journals over several decades to obtain this data. Some data is also available from profiles at the Atlas of Living Australia and other state herbaria websites. See, for example, https://profiles.ala.org.au/opus/foa/profile/Thysanotus.
Even with these detailed scientific descriptions, identifying a particular plant can be challenging for an amateur citizen scientist. Botanical journals typically provide a key for a species family to help with scientific identification, but using the key may require careful dissection of a flower or plant specimen to obtain the required data.
As a result, it is not surprising to find many iNats IDs that appear to be inconsistent, for example, a bunch of photographs with apparently similar flowers, but the leaves in the background have inconsistent shapes and morphology. This reflects the relatively limited information resources easily available online to help us amateur botanists.
There are some online identification tools available to help:
https://florabase.dbca.wa.gov.au/keys/
For Pea flowers: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/the-pea-key/
For Acacias: https://apps.lucidcentral.org/wattle/ complemented by http://worldwidewattle.com/.
You can find more here, such as a tool to help identify West Australian native orchids: https://keys.lucidcentral.org/search/
Whichever tool you use, an online botanical gloassary will probably be helpful, such as:
https://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&glossary=yes
These tools are not perfect. The underlying software works by eliminating species that don’t match a set of observed plant characteristics. Recently I found an acacia species near Wandering that was mis-identified. I had to resort to the WA Herbarium for help.
As an experiment, I compiled a spreadsheet to help identify the Faboideae we may have in our bush, and this might be useful for others too.
The scientific description data is presented in a table format. Using the drop-down menus at the table header, it is easy to work through dozens of potential matches. For example, working just with the pedicel length and whether it is hairy or not can eliminate many potential matches.
I am working on another sheet for our Goodenaceae too.
There are columns to distinguish species by leaf morphology, size and aspect ratio (from broad leaves to very thin leaves).
Let me know if you think it might be useful, and how it might be improved.
It might be helpful to draw the attention of iNats users to these tools, particularly when working through the “IDENTIFY” tasks. Also to draw attention, particularly with the diversity of West Australian species, to the need to observe details such as stem hairs, and collect measurements such as pedicel, stipule, calyx and corolla sizes to help with identification. By encouraging more people to use computer-based identification tools, we can improve the quality of iNats observations and help spread more knowledge about the wonders that nature has bequeathed for us to enjoy.
@margl
@bushmonger
@thelifeofpy
@hillsflora
@thebeachcomber
@michaelcincotta
@sweetpea28
@annbentley
@alan_dandie
Comments
Spreadsheet looks really great, one for Goodenaceae would be very useful as well - a lot of observations from this family sitting at genus due to the difficulty identifying through often a single photo, a reason I often skip over these. I agree that promoting tools to others users is helpful, although their levels of receptiveness and often willingness to use external sites/tools is limited at best; I feel a substantial quantity of newer users will consider iNat a one-and-done, 100% accurate tool with it's automatic identification function. Which it isn't unfortunately.
I think users collecting measurements is unlikely to happen, although I do often successfully request additional photos of leaves and/or other parts of plants to make a confident ID. There will always be a minority of people who treat this site as a social media to flaunt their 'pretty' flower close-ups which contribute little value unless the plant is very easily identifiable (shame this isn't a suspendable offence).
Honestly, it took me personally a while to work out that you often need additional photos and not just the flower or at the very least, take the photo so it gives enough detail about the plant to make an ID!
A well-written journal post with a clear message James, bookmarked for a quick reference when relevant during identification. Perfectly happy to throw a few more comments out there promoting these tools/resources mentioned to hopefully raise a bit more awareness of the complexity and diversity of our flora.
Thanks James,
It's certainly hard being an amateur botany enthusiast in WA, especially a fairly recent one. I've found the people on here to be quite helpful and I've started taking more photos of the plants I see to help with identification, although sometimes I forget. iNat certainly has a long way to go with WA species but the links you posted will help a lot with our individual identifications.
@bcwells - you might be interested in this too
Any resources are helpful James, I have done the same in the past for particular small projects. I was wondering if you found the key to peas/fabaceae https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v4/wa-herbarium/Fabaceae.html difficult to use? I know most keys have bugs in them which is the result of no secondary testing (or rather no volunteers to test keys, when you do the detail yourself it is hard to find the bugs). Chris Hollister has lamented not having some help with constructive feedback on things that dont go right. Anyway thankyou for the link. and thankyou for your identifications.
Thank you @hillsflora, @bcwells and @margl to helpful and encouraging comments.
I will make another journal post to see if I can encourage more measurement and data recording with the web links.
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