What seed is this?
Collecting some good photo observations of seeds as an aid to identifying seeds found - for interest, to help reduce the numbers of invasive plants by preventing their germination, and to help confirm the identify of seeds collected for dissemination on restoration sites or for propagation.
NB - wild seed found under kereru roosts, including those in dense mature nikau groves, is nowadays, and increasingly, likely to include seeds of invasive exotic species such as Bangalow, Queen, Chusan, Fan and other invasive palms.
Any additions to the Project are welcome. To add observations, Join this Project, then in any suitable observation, open the "Projects" Tab on the Right of the Observation, type "Seeds of Plants found in New Zealand", select it from the drop-down, then in the dialogue that opens, add the Field "Seed", and click "Add to Project"
Comments
Nice project. I see that you've made a new observation field called "Seed". Before this takes off, did you instead consider using the long-established observation field plant life stage? It contains the option "seed" and it's what we've been using for several years. You can see all of the New Zealand observations currently labelled as seed with this field at http://inaturalist.nz/observations?place_id=6803&subview=grid&&field:plant%20life%20stage=Seed
I did indeed Jon, but sadly I am not able to add the rule Value must be Seed...as I have found with other such projects. Can you help with that? I will check out your project, and maybe delete mine, or perhaps make it more local, for interest.
Oh, that's not a Project, it is an Explore Search. What I like about Projects is you get the link in the obs, so you can easily navigate to other obs of interest at the time of viewing
Thanks. I didn't see that Explore search as replacing your project, I just thought that it would be helpful if your project helped to add values to the "plant life stage" field. With two fields in use, such an Explore search becomes more complicated (you've got to make two of them and combine the results off site).
True. Is there any way i can make the project filter to a specified value of the Plant life stage field, ie Seed?? I tried that field first, as I have already used it to indicate most of the obs I planned to add at start up.
I did ask in the forum, in a general way, but the suggestion offered was to use Explore instead of Projects.
@meurkc I just came across your Plant Seeds, Fruits and Propagules Project. I think this duplicates it, do you agree? If I had found yours I wouldn't have started this. Would you mind having a look at the observations in this one and if they are all acceptable in yours I will see if I can add them to your Project and delete this one. I can let the few members know and I am sure that, like me, they would be happy to have only one place to go to see Seeds!
I just came across your project (ok @dave_holland pointed it out :-), and was going to suggest merging with Colin's one, but I see it was already suggested. I can email Colin if you like, might be more likely to get a response. I have added all the observations in this project to Colin's one already. I can probably add the plant_life_stage field too. I will see if Colin can make you an Admin of his project, he'd probably appreciate having someone active looking after it :-)
well I don't know that I have time to do any more than I've been doing, which is to add observations! I did communicate with a few other observers initially but I won't be able to do mcuh more than cast an occasional eye over it for any glaringly inappropriate entries. And if the pic of the seed/fruit etc is not the first image, it would take too long! I had been adding only obs that were primarily of seeds/fruits etc.
This Project sure is looking good now with your work Tony! How about you take over a combined Project? It is a great resource to have amongst us, that's for sure.
Perhaps what we need is to get people with obs including a seed/fruit etc to post a separate observation with just that, or perhaps we actually need to make a guide instead, and add only the photos that suit. Hmm, all a lot of work. Perhaps we should just include observations where the first photo is of the seed, and on those others ask the observer to either re-order the photos, or post a separate obs with just the seed/fruit etc (if we haven't already got another example included)?
Ok, got the go ahead to merge these projects if you want. I made you a manager of Colin's project too.
Great work Tony! As discussed elsewhere, having the seed/s photo as first image is the key to what I was doing, and yes, when we see an obs we really want in the Project we could ask for either a re-order or an additional obs, if htat's not against the rules. But I don't think I will be being that pro-active unless its a really special case, so it's your call boss:)
My only suggestion is to keep the blow-by-blow instructions (edited to reflect whatever you decide are the requirements for the merged Project) for adding an obs to the project...and I'd quite like my text above to be included somewhere:) The specific point about the kereru roosts and nikau is extremely relevant here in Auckland. just yesterday i saw a local obs of a kauri in kauri forest, and in the background were two adult bangalow palms.
but perhaps I am being too local. If I am not careful you'll hand the job back to me.
Ok guys (gender neutral term ;-), I have been wondering how to add observation fields without completely re-inventing the wheel, or mis-using existing fields. I looked at the 'standard' list of fields used in NZ projects
https://inaturalist.nz/pages/extra_fields_nz
but didn't find anything better. So I looked at how they handle it in https://inaturalist.nz/projects/seeds-and-fruits and I see they have multiple fields that indicate whether the observation contains photos of cones, flowers, fruits or seeds (cones shown?, flowers shown?, fruit shown?, seeds shown?). Which seems a good approach, but for our purposes it might be best to interpret it as "shown in the first photo", then it is easy to get pages of mug-shots of seeds or fruits to browse through.
And there is an additional field that they don't use, but we could: Asexual propagules for Colin.
@dave_holland, @kaipatiki_naturewatch, @jon_sullivan
I do not see why we need obs fields as all? Just put the seed or fruit or thing we are showing in the first pic. Further pics to prove ID of plant. The picture is explanation enough, adding obs fields is a waste of time and energy. We just could add the thing to the project. Boom. Like other simple projects. Who ever is administering the project can just check the ones that have been added to make sure they have either a fruit, seed, or propagule as the subject of the first obs. If not then removed v it from the project with a note to the observer to sort it out.
The idea is so that it is easy just to look at pages of seeds, fruits or propagules. Not too bad at the moment, but once there are thousands of observations it becomes more tedious - the extreme case would be if you're looking for a propagule and 99% of the photos in the project would be other things.
How about a different way of operating, just add an observation field, and I'll run a script every day or so to collect up all observations with the appropriate fields and add them to the project. (I sort of do this for the lichens project, but based on whether they're in a long list of lichenised fungi)
I've added links to the https://inaturalist.nz/projects/seeds-fruits-propagules-in-nz project page so that you can easily select seed/fruit etc. The exact fields used don't matter, but if we agree on some standard then this works well. If you are trying to rule in/out a species or genus, enter that in the species box and iNat will just show you those.
Those Fields and links are brilliant, thanks Tony
Re "How about a different way of operating, just add an observation field, and I'll run a script every day or so to collect up all observations with the appropriate fields and add them to the project" - that makes it even better, for me. I often bulk add obs, and adding the Field to the bulk uploader is ok, but I get a nasty bug happening when adding Projects, in that unwanted Projects get added and take a lot of manoeuvring to remove. So much so that I try to avoid adding to Projects there.
So, if I understand it, we just add the Field "Seed", and you will scoop up the obs, and add (or reject) it later?
I think that will improve the wuality of the Project no end, because you will be more aware of what other obs there are that may make a poor quality image not worth adding, or in some case worth adding. In addition to photo quality, provenance and location and season are also of interest in some...but ththat's how the thing gets unwield or untidy, and you - I - Dave? - have a goal of a reference project, so you can remind us of that if we are querulous.
I just remembered, @derekcraig contributes to the Seeds Project, with an aim of tracking phenology and perhaps location for ecosourcing purposes. So you may have to negotiate that.
Yes that's the principle, but as suggested above we switch to using "seeds shown?", "fruit shown" etc as they are at least used in a similar existing project. I'm currently cleaning up the "Plant life stage" fields that I've previously added (generally converting them to "Adult" when it shows fruit on a tree etc). And will add whatever new fields we agree on to all the project observations as appropriate.
People will still be able to add obs directly to the project too, but it is technically difficult to go back and check whether they added the right fields (unless we make them a required field which is a bit clunky).
Plant phenology is a separate issue as lots of our obs will be of fallen fruit/seed etc, not easy to determine when it fell.
I get it now about the new fields. Sounds great. Thanks
Ok, I have asked it to merge the "Seed" field with "seeds shown?", the immediate effect is that the Seed field has disappeared from observations and nothing has replaced it :-(. But I expect it is just a symptom of the lag in back end processing, and it will eventually pop up :-). If it doesn't I will just have to manually add the replacement field :-(
Hold off adding the new field manually to observations already in the project, or it will cause problems when the system eventually gets around to finishing the merger.
You can add the new fields to any observations that are to be newly added to the project.
Anyway all the observations from here should also now be in the "seeds-fruits-propagules-in-nz" project.
Good luck with the popping-back-up. You could ask each of us tobulk edit our obs to add it, which I would be happy to do, though we might make an error or tao re the category.
I forget, are you able to edit the values of that field on other people's obs?
Oh, I forgot, the bulk editor Search does not offer Project as a filter.
You can usually edit other peoples observation field values. You can manually add not_in_project=seeds-fruits-propagules-in-nz or project_id=seeds-fruits-propagules-in-nz into the bulk editor URL, but if you make any changes to the other filters, as you try to narrow things down, you will loose that one and have to reinsert it.
I've already added "fruit shown?" and "cone shown?" (perhaps mistakenly ;-) to a bunch of obs. I was hoping that it is just the slowness of observation field updates that is causing the apparent loss of the seed field, but its looking more like it had a problem doing the merge (which always used to work!), and it just carried on and deleted the old Seed field anyway. I can easily add the new field to all the obs that are marked "Plant life stage=seed", the trouble would then be working out which ones are still left without it that need it.
I can do half an hour on it sometime if you like, just going through some from a date you suggest
Or maybe kueda could help restore the Field, as it may be related to current changes?
I've done most of them, the remaining ones without a "seeds shown?" field now should be "fruit shown?=yes" I think, the old Seeds field info won't help (as they were labeled seeds and really should have been labeled fruits.
good to know
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