This project was mostly made to overcome some limitations of documenting horsetail morphology in the iNaturalist website. Phenology and sex are currently recorded for flowering plants, but the same functionality is not available for non-flowering taxon like horsetails. This project will set a standard for documenting this morphology and other variables.

To participate in this project, post your horsetail observation and use the observation field to document the specimen’s morphology. Please use one of the following three codes when documenting the morphology.

1. “Fertile”
2. “Sterile”
3. “Fertile/Sterile”

Use (1) if the observation contains only fertile stems; use (2) if the observation contains only vegetative stems and (3) if the observation contains both fertile and vegetative stems. Please stick to the quoted text exactly if you participate so that the data is the highest quality possible.

This project really just formalizes a process I started a couple months ago and collects observations that I apply this standard to. I hope that this project will help this practice catch on and maybe encourage iNat to explore taxon specific annotations. More than anything of course, the point is to have fun and learn, so I hope you all can contribute your great pictures and interesting biological data! less ↑