Hi all, this link may be of interest. I was looking for some else entirely, and ran across this little graphic illustrating botanical terms. Might be a good reference to go to, and something to look over in any case. Exposure to the terms helps to learn them...
https://www.clemson.edu/cafls/research/weeds/weed-id-bio/index.html
Don't forget to sign up for the April bioblitz!
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/2024-north-florida-south-georgia-city-nature-challenge
You may recall I mentioned in class about projects that capture audio data…. My two observations of barred owl last night, two diff individuals with different calls were picked up by two audio projects. If you look at the projects, there’s a big “ADD OBSERVATION” button. But I didn’t see how the addition of an costing observation gets picked up.
This one is for any sound made by any organisms:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/audio-observations-from-around-the-world
And this one for just owls:
USEFUL LINK HERE. This documents all species of vascular plants known to occur NATURALLY in Florida.
It DOES NOT include cultivated plants because that'd be impossible to document the many thousands of those species. Plants are added to it as they are discovered.
https://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/
You can search the data base for any plant name at any taxonomic level, or by common name but you have to select what you're searching for. Just play with it and find your way around.
Note, its "distribution maps" represent the counties from which the plant has been physically collected and deposited into a herbarium. There are, or were, till the retired FSU herbarium curatorm Loran Andersen, passed away in Dec 2022, people who were travelling about collecting specimens in counties in order to expand the database. A couple of records were found in Leon County by me, and Loran Anderson collected them. iNaturalist rules!
I found the link to a moss database on the home page interesting, it taught me what I need to document in order to get names on mosses. That all went quickly over my pay grade: take the pictures but also take a sample to look at under a microscope... I keep meaning to do just that though.
Lastly, this data base program is used by at least some other states, for example Alabama: http://floraofalabama.org/
KNOW BEFORE YOU GO SO YOU DON'T FORGET THINGS...
INATTING CHECKLIST!
• Phone &/or camera – make sure it’s fully charged
• Wide-brimmed hat, e.g. Tilley hat
• Maybe case or backpack to carry your stuff and have hands free
• Spare battery. Photos and uploading obs sucks battery life
• Croakie for glasses so you don’t step on or lose glasses
• Backboard, such as old plastic calendar cover (dark in color)
• Knife for mushrooms
• Ruler to measure and show scale
• Compass or map – might be on your phone but beware battery life!
• Umbrella – rain and for photography shade
• Weather gear
• Sweat towel if hot
• Mozzie repellent for some of you
• Rubber boots for watery areas
• Bring books for groups you’re most interested in, to help with IDs, if you’re off camping
• Water & snack
• Dry clothes to change into if needed
• Take pic of the place you’re going out, on arrival – map, sign with name of the park etc – it’s a place holder in your phone for the pix and aid to memory, even navigation.
• Drop a pin in your Google Map so you can find your way back to car!
Citizen science at work here! Yesterday I recorded a patch of Mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum. Flower bud not yet open but I hope to see that in a few days. The somewhat umbrella-like leaf structure is distinctive, and varies from having 3 to 9 lobes per leaf. It grows to maybe 1.5’ tall and the entire plant is toxic except for the fruit when ripe yellow. The plant spreads via rhizomes underground and sprouts up individual new plants, which are thus clones, forming a patch of plants, which are all the same individual, like trembling aspen!
I looked up its known distribution - Jackson county only, in Florida! Both INaturalist records and the Florida Plant Atlas are Jackson Co only. The plant is native and its range extends to Canada!
This is a great article from IFAS on tree identification. This gives good clues about what sorts of photos are needed to ID trees.
Hello all, this identification just came in for one of my observations in Tanzania, from 2018, something I uploaded earlier this year when going through old photo albums in my iCloud albums. Copy/paste this link into your browser and take a look! See the red CR button, click that and see that it's a critically endangered vulture species, I had no idea! I had learned in 2018 that vulture species were not nearly as abundant as they were a couple of decades ago. FYI, that CR button won't appear until the observation is Research Grade.
Note, the photo is not spectacular - I did say your photos do not need to be art, right?! It was the best I could do with an iPad, with multiple species in the same frame. You can solve that by "DUPLICATE" your photo, then crop out the extra organisms to include just the target.
Now that (almost) everyone has joined the 2024 Ollii Course Project per my instructions, we can use the Journal to communicate. Only folks who've "Joined" the Project will receive these Journal posts. I use these to send messages in bulk to the peeps who've joined, sending things like links that contain information useful to the task of getting to know organisms. Some of these are links to a FaceBook page, such as a mushroom ID post. Or, I'll send news or notifications to everyone, which may be of interest. You will receive this post in your daily email feed from iNaturalist, along with identifications that I or others in the iNat "Community" [including any of you] have made. Messages to you personally come in a separate email, originating from the "Message username" button on someone's Profile page.
To me, these mesage & notification communications are something I look forward to in my daily AM email feed, coming in around 07:00 AM. Hopefuly I'll have something to contribute to your email feed daily, if you're doing your HOMEWORK!!! Let me encourage you to input at least a couple of observations every day!
iNATURALIST RULES!!!
