For fun, I tried to see what would happen to photograph trees while driving along the roadside. Since I dont know trees, I added them to the https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/trees-of-southern-africa-id project
At present the status of these are:
June 2021 Kruger: mainly gravel speed 60km/h - 636 observations.
Status after 18 months
- 204 No ID (32%)
- 182 Plants (29%)
- 18 Dicots [almost all these "plants" are dicots]
- 5 Family-Tribe
- 46 Genus (7%)
- 181 Species (28%) - 169 RG (27%)
Kruger has relatively many active tree identifiers working in the lowveld.
@wynand_uys gave some useful ideas for improving the photographs (camera speeds, use oncoming trees, ...more ↓
For fun, I tried to see what would happen to photograph trees while driving along the roadside. Since I dont know trees, I added them to the https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/trees-of-southern-africa-id project
At present the status of these are:
June 2021 Kruger: mainly gravel speed 60km/h - 636 observations.
Status after 18 months
- 204 No ID (32%)
- 182 Plants (29%)
- 18 Dicots [almost all these "plants" are dicots]
- 5 Family-Tribe
- 46 Genus (7%)
- 181 Species (28%) - 169 RG (27%)
Kruger has relatively many active tree identifiers working in the lowveld.
@wynand_uys gave some useful ideas for improving the photographs (camera speeds, use oncoming trees, etc.).
August 2022 Caprivi tarred road 100km/h - 2,307 observations (lots of driving!)
Diverse: lots of tree species. Status after 4 months - not many tree specialists active on iNaturalist in this area.
- 2,035 No ID (88%)
- 65 Plants (3%)
- 10 Dicots [almost all these "plants" are dicots]
- 5 Family-Tribe
- 65 Genus (3%)
- 110 Species (5%) - 84 RG (4%)
August 2022 Kalahari (Botswana & Namibia) varied roads 100km/h - 1,822 observations (lots of driving!)
Thornveld: not so diverse. Status after 4 months - not many tree specialists active on iNaturalist in this area.
- 1,489 No ID (82%)
- 5 Plants (3%)
- 8 Dicots [almost all these "plants" are dicots]
- 17 Family-Tribe
- 31 Genus (2%)
- 272 Species (15%) - 163 RG (9%)
So all in all: not very fruitful, although in none of the above where people specifically approached to help identify the species. This has been entirely passive.
The question is - Is it worth it?
Want to help with IDs - i.e to Family, Genus or Species? Please click:
Trees of southern Africa (ID)
