Hello Round Rock naturalists! This is your first nature challenge.

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As spring rolls in, flowers will start to appear... but as a citizen scientist, I won't trust that you have seen them unless you provide evidence in iNat observations ;)
Right now it's nearly the start of spring, and the anemones are in full bloom!
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Right now in March they are at peak season—I'd be quite surprised if you haven't found one yet. But if there's no evidence, then there's no proof ;)
There are two levels to this challenge. One is quite easy and the other... is not.

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1. Make an observation of an anemone
   In order to make your anemone observation ID-able, get at least two features—a shot of the stem(technically it's a scape) where you can see and a shot of the basal leaves - see here for a better explanation
   When you have done this, post a comment on this post tagging me @arnanthescout saying "I found an anemone!"

2. Jackpot: Find the rare Edward's Plateau Anemone
   Most anemones around here are the Tenpetal Anemone, A. berlandieri. However, there are a select few species that occur around here which are much harder to find... most likely the Edward's Plateau Anemone, Anemone edwardsiana

The main difference is that this anemone can have multiple flowers growing out of the same scape, coming out from the bracts.
This anemone is endemic to Texas (occurs here and nowhere else), and grows in limestone outcrops around the Edward's Plateau, west of Round Rock. If you believe you have found this species, post it as an observation, and then comment below to tell me. It's a needle in a haystack, don't expect to find it easily ;)
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For more details on the 5 species of anemone here, and how to ID/take pictures of them, check out this journal post!

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• BONUS: Find a Dwarf Verbena
  Dwarf Verbena (Glandularia pumila), is similar to the more common Prairie Verbena/Dakota Mock Vervain, (Glandularia bipinnatifida). However, the leaves of Dwarf Verbena are much less dissected than that of Dakota Mock Vervain, and the flowers are in smaller clusters:

While Dwarf Verbena is much less common than Dakota Mock Vervain, it blooms earlier, peaking right around March, while Dakota Mock Vervain has yet to start blooming en masse. Miss it and you'll probably have to catch it next year!
If you think you have found this plant, post it as an observation and comment below.

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You can upload to iNaturalist using any method: the mobile app, the website (using my two described methods or something else), as long as you can get it on the site.
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Tips on making observations:

• Make sure your photos are recording location and time... that metadata will come in handy
• Cover the plant with shade (using your shadow or a hat) so that the plant doesn't look like this. All full sun or all shade are best—try to make things visible and not too "contrasted" as I call it.
• Usually, when tapping on a phone screen, the auto-focus will put that point in focus... and also make that part medium brightness, changing up the brightness of the screen. Keep that in mind.
• If you have trouble focusing, you can put your hand behind the part you want in focus to help the camera's auto-focus focus on your hand, and thus the plant you are taking a photo of.
• Manually focusing the camera is life-changing. Android's default camera has an option for manual focus in its manual mode, which can be very useful. Apple's default camera does not, but there may be other camera apps that can.
• It's usually better to have too many photos than not enough... you can delete them later.

• If you have any problems with uploading photos/observations, contact me on Remind or message on iNat ;)
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  IMPORTANT: NO STEALING OF IMAGES THAT DO NOT BELONG TO YOU! This is not only cheating, but also breaks the community's trust in you as a user and harms iNaturalist integrity as a tool for citizen science. This is no place to be idiotic... be an honorable person ;)

‎WORK IN PROGRESS: May be due to overhauls and improvements

In this post, I'm going to be going over the technical part of iNat: how to upload photos, location and time metadata, obscure observation locations, and more.
Note: most of this applies to using a cellphone to take photos.

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Recording location and time data

Photos will have something called metadata that records other information about the photo. When you upload photos to iNaturalist, the metadata will automagically be added into the observation fields.
Letting your phone record location and time data for you will save a lot of time, make the process more enjoyable, and is way easier than manually doing it by hand :)

Most photos are already pre-set to record the time a photo is taken. As long as the time on your phone is correct, there shouldn't be any problems. I made that mistake when I took a small camera to Philmont (This was before I started using iNaturalist). The photos recorded time data... but the time was wrong! Luckily I was able to derive the time, at least to the day.

Location data is not always recorded on a phone. Usually it should be pretty simple to turn on or off.
First turn on location data and make sure it's allowed for the camera app you're using.

For Apple devices, it looks like GPS location for the camera is turned on for default, but if it's turned off you can turn it back on: https://www.imore.com/how-disable-geotagging-camera-app-iphone-and-ipad
(The link shows how to turn it off, so you should be able to figure out how to turn it on)
(Other info: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207092)
Also check and make sure location services is ON.

For Android, check first that location data is on: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3467281?hl=en "Turn location on or off for your phone"
Then, go to your camera app and check that the "Save Location" setting is on (Sometimes it'll say location tags or something else).
For the default Camera app, go to Settings
https://www.upphone.com/learn/how-to/android-how-to/settings-android-lh/android-camera-settings/
If you use another camera app, search up how to on the internet. It shouldn't be hard to find.

A quick way I test if the location is being recorded is by taking a picture, then tapping the three dots/info button. It will probably tell you if the location is recorded, and maybe even show a map!
Sometimes location data takes a while to turn on after turning on the phone (like on my old phone). Sometimes that won't be a problem. Sometimes turning on airplane mode or something else will turn off location data. Know how your phone works with this, and you won't end up with any problems.

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Getting your photos from your camera to iNat

Besides using the app (which is pretty straightforward), there are other ways to upload your photos onto iNat.
In both of these methods, you are getting photos from your phone onto your computer file system. I have a folder for all my iNat photos, which I organize by date:
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Each of the photos for each day I put into separate days (usually the day I upload them). I usually then move them into months folders but really you could just delete them after uploading.
From there you drag the photos from your computer files onto the iNat uploader (accessed by clicking the green "upload" button on the top right). Dragging photos on top of each other places them into the same observation.

These methods are useful if you take a lot of photos for a lot of observations, as it's much quicker than doing them one by one through the app ;)

Using Google Photos:
Advantages: Can crop and edit photos through Google Photos, plus all your photos get backed up on the cloud.
Disadvantages: Process can be much slower for slower computers/wifi

To get started, first turn-on Google Photos's back up and sync setting: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-photos-backup

Now, when you take photos on your phone, Google Photos will back up your photos and you will be able to access them on your computer.
From there, select your observation photos, and click download (for me it's under the three dots) or use the [Shift-D] shortcut. There you can choose the download location and name.
It will download as a zipped file (.zip). You then extract the image files, and the drag them into the uploader!

Using a USB cable:
Advantages: Much more straightforward than using Google Photos
Disadvantages: I don't know yet

By using a USB cable, you can connect your phone to your computer/laptop/chromebook, access your phone's files, and then either cut/copy them into your PC hard drive or drag and drop directly (second option didn't work for me, but it might work for someone else).

They should be contained in a folder called DCIM

For Apple: See these: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/connect-iphone-and-your-computer-with-a-cable-iph42d9b3178/15.0/ios/15.0 and https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/transfer-files-iphone-computer-iphf2d851b9/15.0/ios/15.0

I'm going to be honest, I don't use Apple so if there's anything I'm missing please tell me.
Other links that could be useful:
https://www.easeus.com/iphone-data-transfer/transfer-files-from-iphone-to-pc-free.html
https://davidvielmetter.com/tips/access-the-dcim-folder-on-your-iphone/

For Android: See here: https://support.google.com/android/answer/9064445?hl=en

Thanks to the iNat forum for suggesting this to me.

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Obscuring the location of your observations:

If you don't want people to be able to see the exact location of your observations (like those around your house, or maybe to protect the location of an endangered species), you can obscure them. See here for more info: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#geoprivacy

The easiest time to do it is when uploading observations (on the website uploader).
Select the observation blocks (which turn green). You can shift/ctrl click to select multiple observations. Then, click the dropdown on the right and select "Location is obscured" Don't forget to click "Save Observation" when done.
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For editing individual observations, there is a drop-down field where you can also obscure the location as well:
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For multiple observations already created, you can use Batch Edit (Profile picture (on top right) >>> Edit Observations >>> Batch Edit (blue text on white)). Select the observations you want to edit, and then change the field for each one. Unfortunately, I do not know of a faster way...

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Storing your photos with an SD Card:

If you end up iNatting as much as I do, your phone memory might get full really quickly. You could delete all those extra observation photos (since they'll be recorded on iNat anyways) after you upload them (or just move them over directly to your PC). Or you can add extra storage to your phone via an SD card.

Usually you will be able to change the storage location of photos on your phone camera app. I'm not going to explain too deep into it, but it might be something worth looking into if you get deeper into iNat.

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Improving Camera Focus and Exposure:

Auto-focus on cameras is not always the best. Sometimes, you can help it by "framing" the plant/organism behind a piece of paper or your hand. That usually will prevent the camera from focusing on the background.

Sometimes, the auto-focus just won't focus on the right thing, no matter how much you tap the screen. In which case manually focusing the camera would be better.

For Android:

With the default camera app on Android, there is an option to change from Auto to Manual focus.
The two important things here are the focus and the exposure compensation settings. Tap on the little symbols and there will be a scale that pops on screen (tapping out will cause the scale to close).‎

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With focus, I usually turn the focus level to the lowest it can go, and then move the camera closer or further away so that the organism in question gets in focus. For a image further out you can move the focus out a bit and shift the camera so that what you want in focus is in focus.
Exposure compensation (the +/- thing) can be used to adjust the photo if it is too bright or too dark.

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Plant Club members: If you are having troubles using iNat, add a comment to this post or message me on iNat. I will try my best to help out.
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Some plants are really easy to tell apart!
Others have... well... have a lot of discussion and debate in the botanical world.
I mean, look at this forum post on the Dandelions!

But anyways, my goal is not to overwhelm you with minute taxonomic complexities. It's rather to allow you to read the plants, appreciate their incredible yet hidden diversity, and reveal their hidden ecology, edible and medicinal uses, all manner of plant lore. Don't get too bogged down or overwhelmed by every extremely tiny morphological differences. Particularly with the dandelions.

I want you to see the great diversity of plants. We can get into deeper botanical discussions on smaller species differences if you want, but not too much. It's interesting to a point. Unless you're planning to be a botanist when you grow up, I think you might lose the fun in studying plants 😉

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Now, I'm probably going to struggle with this a lot with you people (because I am a nerdy botanist person and tend to get obsessed with the tiny nitty gritty taxonomic details).

That's why I'm planning on doing larger field expeditions using iNaturalist and sharing observations with each other next semester. Because that's where things get fun.
The struggle is going to be with getting people to use iNaturalist correctly, so that might take some time...

...but if we can get to that point then you will get see the world in a completely different way. It's like seeing again.

You will learn to notice, to pay attention to fine details, which will help you with much more than just plants.
You will appreciate the many beautiful species of plants (such as milkweeds, and learn to get excited when you see a new and uncommon species like the Texas milkweed with its pure white flowers - I've always wanted to see one in person!)

Copyright CC BY-NC 4.0, @caadams07 on iNaturalist

You will understand the weird and wonderful things about plants, from the Erodium seeds that somehow manually drill themselves into the ground, to the unusual behavior of the Resurrection Fern.
And, with that knowledge, you will be able to work with plants much closer and start to use them to their fuller extent, such as:

• Foraging wild dewberries
• Making Yaupon tea, from the only natural caffeinated plant in North America
• Daring one other to eat a Chiltepin pepper—just make sure to properly identify it first!
• Using certain plants for healing poultices (yarrow for helping blood clots, for example)
• Weaving baskets out of willow twigs... or creating a rooting hormone from it!

By identifying plants, the natural world becomes your playground, your workshop. It's a bit like playing Minecraft. It even carries over to the gardener's branch; You will know which plants would grow best in a garden on campus... because you'd have observed where they grow in the wild.

That's one of my greater visions for the naturalist's branch, and what makes me excited for this club!

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I want you to be amazed at the diversity of plants, but not overwhelmed by it. Don't boggle your mind too much about some of this crazy taxonomy stuff (remember this is science, so things can change). Otherwise you're going to start hating plants. And we don't want that.

Stay happy,
arnanthescout

So for those of you wondering… what is iNaturalist?

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I'd start by watching my favorite video explaining the gist of iNaturalist and how to use it, created by Dr. Joe Hanson on It's Okay to Be Smart. Or read what's below. Or both!

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So, where to start...

Have you ever caught butterflies or bugs before? Think about iNaturalist as a tool, where instead of catching something with a net and keeping it in a tank/cage, you catch it with your lens and then keep it as an observation on iNaturalist, on the web forever! It’s more friendly than actually catching a butterfly or bird, and still a lot of fun!

But wait: there’s more!

On iNaturalist, you can learn what type/species of organism you’ve observed. There’s a built-in AI (or as it's called Computer Vision) that will be able to tell you what organism you found. The AI isn't always right, and can struggle with similar species, but it usually gets pretty close. No need to spend time running through the internet to find what that plant or butterfly is called. User and beginner friendly.

But wait: there’s more!

iNaturalist isn’t just a tool; it’s a community. Other users can agree with your identifications, and add comments as well. You can find people ranging from casual birders and nature enthusiasts (like me) to Master Naturalists and academic researchers. There's even one user who has done their PhD on the systematics of the Family Polemoniaceae!
(In all seriousness, he's an incredible person, check out his profile!)

You can:

• Talk to people within your observations
Get advice from other users on differentiating species and whatnot, which can be very insightful. Or you can always ask.
• Check out other observations in your area and see what others have found! Also read discussions in other observations
Often those that are favorited (have a star on them) can have interesting discussions.
• Write journal posts and view posts that other people wrote
Journal posts can be used to make notes or reflect on what you've found. Or they can be used to share something interesting with other people. Identification guides are common topics for journal posts as well.
• Message people and follow them to get updates on their new observations
It's a good way to communicate with friends, share your findings, and help each other identify what you find!
• Go to the iNat forum (https://forum.inaturalist.org/), where you can read and contribute to discussions, ask questions, submit bug reports, and even suggest feature requests

And a lot more.
Basically, it’s social media. For naturalists. Very cool.

One last thing!

By adding your observations onto iNaturalist, you are actually contributing to citizen science. These observations make up a giant database that can be used by scientists. There are research papers written thanks to this site.
And besides the research potential, there have been some incredible discoveries made on this site: The Dumbéa River pipefish and the recently discovered Gonolobus naturalistae are examples of that.
And who knows? Maybe you will be the next one to find an important discovery...

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So yeah, that’s iNaturalist in a nutshell.
But there’s only so much that words can explain...
...so the best way is to jump on the bus and find out!

Cheers,
arnanthescout

Note: Most updated version here: https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/arnanthescout/57230-helpful-tips-and-resources-for-beginner-plant-inatters-and-common-beginner-mistakes

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iNaturalist isn't just a website to post your observations, but a community of people. It can be daunting at first, especially if you don't know the hidden manners and norms. Lots of people will post observations that will never get identified due to minor mistakes, and many get a bad impression and leave.
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These images show some common hiccups with rookie users (I'll go over these in detail below): bad photo exposure, unfocused/blurry pictures (though this one can be persistent—my camera focus is evidence), taking photos of cultivated plants, unaware that they should be marked captive/cultivated and that iNaturalist is focused on wild organisms (this can frustrate people when their observations get marked as casual), taking photos of the whole tree/plant , but no closeup of leaves/flowers, By the way, these are all my photos from old observations. I was once one of you!

However, get past the newbie troubles, and you will find a knowledgeable and welcoming community, and a powerful tool that could change your life! This is here to help you get a good introduction.

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Getting Good Photos for Documentation

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Good photos are tantamount to good observations. It's not that hard to create good photos even from a phone camera... if you know what to do!

Making observations count: https://bushblitz.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/BackyardSpeciesDiscovery_Factsheet-2_Make-your-observations-count.pdf
Getting Great Plant Photos in iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/abisko-plants-and-phenology/journal/17621-getting-great-plant-photos-for-identification-in-inaturalist

These two resources are probably the most useful in my opinion. Some other resources (I'll probably add more):

Official iNat guide: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started
How to Make Research-Quality Observations in iNaturalist: https://www.segrasslands.org/recording-species-in-inat-website
Random Tips: https://www.inaturalist.org/posts/5360-tips-for-making-inaturalist-observations

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Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them

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I've noticed a lot of common errors by users that eventually dissuade them from using iNaturalist. For the sake of all of us, I'll address them below. Fix these hiccups, and I guarantee you will get more ID's and enjoy iNaturalist better!

1: Taking pictures of cultivated plants—without knowing the norms for that

This is probably the most common. People will take picture of ornamental flowers in garden beds, planted trees, potted succulents. That's completely fine! Sometimes I'll find an interesting cultivated plant and want to know what that is.

With these plants, however, you should mark them captive/cultivated, so that they'll be casual observations. iNaturalist is focused on wild organisms, and a plant in a garden placed there by a human is not Research Grade material. If you're confused on what counts as captive/cultivated, iNaturalist has definitions and examples here:

In terms of identifying that unknown plant in your garden, you can always use the iNat AI to help. You just won't be able to verify those observations with other people, since most identifiers don't identify Casual observations.

2: Photos for the same plant spread out in multiple observations.

Unknowing users who take multiple pictures of plants (which is good!) often post each photo in its own observations. This can happen when you drag multiple files into the uploader, which puts them all into the same observation, and don't realize you can (or should) put multiple photos in an observation.

With the web uploader, you can drag and drop the photos on top of each other so they go into the same observation. You can also drag separate observations on top of each other to combine them into one. For observations that have already been created, see this forum guide.

3: Blurry/Unfocused/Overexposed photos

While technically there's nothing wrong with these, it is definitely a lot more difficult to ID things if it's hard to make out details.
In terms of blurry/unfocused photos, there are some ways to deal with this. If the plant is moving due to wind, let that die down before taking a shot, or if the wind is relatively weak hold it with one hand to keep it steady. For plant parts that are just fine and thin, which will cause the camera lens to focus to the background instead of the foreground, you could put your hand behind the plant so it focuses closer up (or use a piece of paper, or a notebook). If you know how to manually adjust your camera focus, that helps a lot.

Sometimes a plant will be "contrasted" (maybe sunlight hits some leaves but not others, or half of a flower), and that'll cause the camera to adjust the exposure to either the bright area and make everything else really dark, or to the dark area and make the bright area really bright. I make sure to keep my lighting relatively even (all bright under sunlight, or all dim). If I have a problem with exposure I'll usually huddle over a plant with my shadow so that the light is all even.
On taking plant pictures at night... it's preferable to take pictures during the day and not at night, unless you have a reason to do so, like observing a night-flowering plant. Using flash can help, but I don't have much experience with night photography and so cannot help much here.

4: Photos of the entire plant (the whole tree or bush), but without any close-ups of leaves or flowers... or photos of just the flower.

Overall images showing the entire tree/plant can be helpful for showing the habit of a plant (whether it is low growing or standing, a vine or shrub or tree), but they usually don't show enough to reach a definitive ID.
Similarly, a photo of just the flower is great for normal photography, but if you want a species ID you'll probably need more.

When taking pictures of plants, Here's my rule of thumb: flowers from the top and side, leaves (maybe 3-8 in a photo), and the entire plant. This is usually enough for an identifier to get a plant to genus, at the least.
If you want to be really thorough, you can do the bottom side of the leaf and the bark as well.
In addition, I'll photograph anything unique or unusual features about the plant. Does it have thorns or other prickly things on it? Is there fruit or seedpods? These can be helpful for identification.

NOTE: Some plants require more specific features to be identified. You can usually figure that out by asking around the community or checking identification guides—here's a hub for some of those.

If an user corrects you, or marks an observation casual, don't take that personally! Most of them are just trying to help you learn these hidden "rules". Usually when I correct users or point mistakes out I make sure to keep my tone friendly so you don't misinterpret my feelings. Others might not, and tone can be hard to convey in just words. Keep that in mind!

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Other Tips

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• A good way to learn how to make good observations are to look at other people's observations. After all, there are plenty of veteran users who have stellar observations!
• Make observations wherever you can—walking to a class during school, around the parking lot of a supermarket, etc. The more observations you make, the more experience you'll get.
  
• Sometimes it isn't obvious if a plant is a vine or a shrub, which can confuse identifiers, so add in the description "vine" or something of the like.
• If there are multiple plants/organisms in the photo, it helps to write in the description which one you want identified.
• For info about geoprivacy obscuring observations (If you want to obscure observations near your house, for example), location and time metadata, getting photos to the website uploader, and other technical things, see this journal post: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/rrhs-ecological-survey/journal/60932
• I HIGHLY recommend reading this for broader advice on how to get more identifications on your observations: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-get-identifications-for-your-observations/26429

I also suggest that you do not start identifying plants until you are well versed with them—say maybe 100-200 observations—but to try and give it a shot. When you see what it's like from the other side, you'll understand much better how to improve your own observations!

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I implore anyone who read this to share this with anyone who might find these tips handy!

If you have questions or concerns about iNaturalist, contact me by tagging me to an observation (@arnanthescout ) or messaging me on iNat!

Feel free to add comments below!

Last updated: 11 September 2022