What makes iNaturalist special?

I already love iNaturalist, but I am only just starting to see what it can do for you.

While I was away in the West Indies for a month in May, a contributor here asked me to photograph coastal plants for him, and so I did -- it was fun for me. There was quite a lot of rain for two of the weeks I was there, so a lot of bushes and trees flowered and some annuals grew up out of nowhere rapidly, and blossomed.

The contributor was able to identify almost everything I photographed, even though my images were not very good. I learned a lot about tropical plants from this, and it re-awakened a dormant part of my natural history interests.

Since I have been back home in the Northeastern US, I have been paying much more attention to the wild plants around me, even though in NYC I mostly see what a gardener would call "weeds", rather than gorgeous native wildflower species.

And... after I posted a lot of not very good photographs of these NYC plants, now a lot of them have been identified by other contributors. And, I have been able to ID a few myself, thanks to images that were already on here.

So I am happy to say, I am becoming a bit more of a naturalist, and a better naturalist, thanks to iNaturalist and the help I have received from its wonderful contributors!

Posted on June 21, 2016 11:45 PM by susanhewitt