INaturalist, redux
Take a walk this week with a guest writer, some poetry, and community science
By Kris Roberson
Kris Roberson, hiker and nature writer, is a Kennesaw State University graduate student. Kris is currently writing a YA fantasy novel with the working title, Blood Burning. She will graduate in May 2024, when she hopes to realize her career aspirations of continuing her professional writing with a focus on editing scientific, medical or technical topics.
Have you ever been hiking, seen a wildflower, and been dying to know what it was called? I do every time I leave the house. In the past, I’d whip out my phone and take a picture, then stay up late scouring the Internet for comparisons until I was sure that what I’d seen was really a Hairy Vetch or a tulip tree. Then, I got introduced to iNaturalist.
iNaturalist and I
An app that lets you take pictures of flora (and fauna) and helps you identify them revolutionized my walks and hiking. It also made them slower, to the vexation of my father, my usual hiking companion.
“Are you going to stop for every flower?” he asked me last weekend on one of our routine, twelve-kilometer walks that we would take through multiple neighborhoods and shopping centers. (Don’t underestimate the nature at every roadside.)
I was squatting off the road and trying to get the perfect angle on a plant I’d never seen before: it had bright yellow, almost corn kernel looking berries and a woody stem. There were quite a few of them poking up from the dusky pine needles in a patch halfway between an old house and a churned-up construction site.
“Nah,” I said. “Just the interesting stuff.”
It took me a while to work out just what the thing was. With iNaturalist, once I took a picture of my subject I could scroll through different suggested identification options, based off the data provided by others in my area. Because iNaturalist enables the community to provide data on wild and cultivated plants around them, the app’s AI develops a keen sense for matching plants. Much of that data is also funneled to scientists, who use it to observe the state of flora and fauna across the world.
What iNaturualist told me was that I was looking at a Carolina Horsenettle, Solanum carolinense.
This brilliantly berried plant goes by many names, including Bull nettle, Horsenettle, Apple of Sodom, Radical Weed, Sand Brier, and Tread-softly. Although nettle is in the name, its place in the nightshade family shows how confusing plant titles can be. You never really know what you’re looking at without a guide or experience. As I lacked the latter, I was thrilled to have the former.
“Isn’t this cool? I’ve never seen or heard of this before,” I told my father.
“Yeah,” he said. “You learn something new every day.”
From there, we went on and started examining all the wildflowers and trees we could around us: flowering dogwood, redbuds, dandelions, wild violets, white clover, wild onion, holly, yellow poplar. I’ve been fixated on a tree or flower before, but I hadn’t truly realized just how many different plants were constantly around me. Knowing their names and being able to point to one and say, “That’s wild grape” or “That’s a Field Madder” gave me so much more insight on the world I walked through.
I’m a writer, and the fantasy novel I’m working on draws a lot of inspiration from the flora and fauna in the Southeastern US. While I’ve dug through dozens of books about plants and the region, but there’s nothing like taking a hike and knowing what you are seeing and then coming home, tired and sweaty, to throw yourself in your desk chair and feverishly writing what you now know.
Writing About = Not Forgetting About
Writing about nature lets me take that walk over and over again. The wary eastern cottontail, a twitching brown shadow lurking under an azalea. White clover scattering over a field like bits of tissue in my pocket after it’s been in the washing machine. A leaning dogwood with its sprawling branches and diminutive height (for a tree). When I write about them, I never forget them, and I can feel them under my fingertips as much as I do the plastic computer keys.
Bird-watching today, I saw the usual American Robins, Blue Jays, Crows, Northern Cardinals, and even some Baltimore Orioles. I also saw Dark-eyed Juncos dabbling in the bird bath. It occurred to me that I’ve never seen Juncos this late where I live. According to All About Birds, Dark-eyed Juncos treat Georgia as a nonbreeding vacation retreat before returning north in the spring.
I don’t think mine got the memo.
While I write about nature for the sake of creativity and preserving my memories, the most important part of writing about nature is recording it for those who study it. Scientists can’t be everywhere at once. What there is, though, are thousands of everyday people walking, hiking, and exploring—with their phones. These people, me, us, we, you, are the eyes of scientists. iNaturalist connects everyone who is observing the nature around them and lets them collaborate to identify it and, therefore, help preserve it because every photo and note brings more attention not only to the expected animals and plants but to those lesser-seen or increasingly sought after because we are slowly losing them.
iTurtle
Just the other day, a comrade-in-nature of mine, Pam, the usual author of this newsletter, saw what seemed to be a turtle trapped in a watery ditch.
“I could not get a close picture, but the overall shape was definitely giving turtle,” she told me, adding that the ditch was far from the pond and was only water-filled because of a massive overnight rainfall. “So how could a big old turtle––big as two whole grain loaves of bread side by side––even be in that ditch?”
She said she stood there a long time watching, trying to get some pictures. Finally, when she made out the pointy line of ridges along the shell, she said yes. Turtle. Then, she decided, we’ve got a dead turtle because of two reasons: it looked like it had drowned and was listing sideways, and didn’t move even when she tossed a rock into the water. (She assured me the rock landed off to one side, no turtle harm occurred.) Pam said she went home, did some research online and decided it might be some sort of snapping turtle. Also, she submitted her pixilated close-up photos to iNat.
Over at iNaturalist, others swiftly responded to the photos.
Six experts looked—and said yes. It was a Common Snapping Turtle. Something I’ve (Kris) never seen outside of an aquarium. Even better, the pictures were labeled “Research Grade” because so many experts weighed in.
iNaturalist explains what Research Grade is: First, the photo must be considered a verifiable observation. This is achieved if the photo has a date, has coordinates, and isn’t a captive or cultivated plant or animal. To become “Research Grade,” a photo goes through an iNaturalist vetting process. When more than 2/3 of the iNat experts who look at an image (plus backup data like location), and agree on what it is, that photo becomes “Research Grade.” Once that coveted status is achieved, that picture becomes invaluable to researchers and is used in further scientific inquiry.
One more note: Pam told me she went back to the flooded ditch the next day. The water was still there, but no turtle. So, she’s thinking: Alive Common Snapping Turtle. By the way, iNaturalist wants your pictures of animals alive or dead (recently dead, like roadkill), if there are enough identifying features in the image.
After all that, you deserve to see one of the not-so-great photos of that turtle.
What are You Waiting For?
From cave paintings to smart app identification photos, humanity has spent lifetimes recording nature. Such writing doesn’t have to be poetic. (But it can be. See Mary Oliver’s sensuous poem, “Spring,” below.) Even casual observations can become critical once posted to an investigative community. With tools like iNaturalist, anyone can be part of the continuous research into the migration and preservation of thousands of species.
So, take a walk. Look around. Record it. Remember it. Share it. You never know what you might find or how important it might be.
Spring, by Mary Oliver
I lift my face to the pale flowers of the rain. They’re soft as linen, clean as holy water. Meanwhile my dog runs off, noses down packed leaves into damp, mysterious tunnels. He says the smells are rising now stiff and lively; he says the beasts are waking up now full of oil, sleep-sweat, tag-ends of dreams. The rain rubs its shining hands all over me. My dog returns and barks fiercely, he says each secret body is the richest advisor, deep in the black earth such fuming nuggets of joy! (American Primitive, 1978)
Coming up:
A story about the rare Diamorpha of Arabia Mountain and the Georgia Conservancy.
Information about Georgia’s Project Drawdown.
News from the Climate Stories Project.