Diario del proyecto KNPS Wildflower Week 2022 Botany Blitz

Good morning fellow Kentucky botanists! We're coming down to the wire here. The BotanyBlitz officially starts tomorrow, and as of this morning, Friday April 1, Kentuckians in 2022 have made

- A little over 6,100 plant observations in total, consisting of
- 615 plant species

These observations were made by a whopping 810 observers, and only a fraction of these folks have joined the BotanyBlitz and year-long Kentucky Botanists Big Year projects! We gotta pull more of these iNatters into the fold, y'all. If you enjoy botanyblitzing this week, you should definitely click "join" at the Big Year project as well if you haven't done so yet, just sayin' ;)

A hearty welcome to new project members who joined since the last time I posted here: @acostelle, @laura3570, @noelmansfield, @kentuckycourtenay, @chooshemataha, @dperkins, @jason_gaines, @rosemary71, @klburt, @inaturecenter, @ns_mar, @robin512, @jamie_strang, @cindy411, and @naba-centralky . Glad to have you with us! If you haven't seen previous journal posts here, you might want to scroll through the rest of the project journal where you can find discussions of helpful ID tips for several common plants.

If you need ideas for some interesting plants to hunt for, check out this blog post at the KNPS Lady Slipper. Depending on where you botanize in Kentucky, you may encounter one or more of these uncommon to rare wildflowers during the BotanyBlitz.

Is there anything in particular you're looking forward to seeing in bloom this week across Kentucky, or next Friday and Saturday during Wildflower Weekend at Natural Bridge State Park? Anybody got a hitlist for special species you're on the prowl for?

First off, thanks a million to our iNat tutorial hike leaders across the state for sharing your knowledge and your love of Kentucky natural areas! Hope everyone had a lovely (if slightly brisk?) day outside, I know I did. Second, welcome new project members! We now have 133 wildflower fans in the BotanyBlitz project :)

Yesterday, we had

• 52 observers who made
• 747 observations, which were comprised of
• 204 species! Awesome stuff, you guys. (Numbers may change over time as more members add their observations.)
• 50 identifiers helped get 59% of our observations to Research Grade, which is a pretty dang high %RG for Day 1 of a botanyblitz -- thanks especially to @m_whitson, @emileee, @burls, and @john_adams who each made over 50 identifications for BotanyBlitz members!

If you have a little spare time to volunteer, can you help improve our Research Grade ratio by adding and confirming identifications for your fellow botanizers? Click the link below to pitch in:

--> HELP IDENTIFY

Another way you can help is to keep an eye on the "Unknowns" rolling in throughout the week. Sometimes new users accidentally create observations without adding an initial ID, and these no-ID obs can't be collected into the BotanyBlitz project unless they've at least been ID'd as Kingdom Plantae (although some of them might be for animals or fungi, so just ID accordingly). Literally any ID you can add will bump these obs out of Unknown Limbo, and is a huge assist to the observers. Click here to help monitor these lonely observations:

-->RESCUE THE UNKNOWNS

And of course, some pics

Finally, here are a few observation photos I'm admiring from yesterday:

Two-leaf miterwort (or bishop's cap), a true special snowflake and an exceedingly challenging flower to photograph at less than 1/4" across, by @hitmewithyourmesomphix

Extra fancy rue anemone by @laurabaird

Always photogenic white troutlily by @dperkins

True blue Virginia bluebells by @reupurtbones

Very pretty color form of the normally deep burgundy red trillium by @john_abrams

How about you?

What was your favorite thing to see yesterday? Did you meet any new species for the first time? Let us know in the comments :)

Browse through the rest of the BotanyBlitz observations here!

The leaderboard has been a rollercoaster ride! You can click here if you want to view your current rank, rankings can be sorted by Most Obs and Most Species.

Some details for this evening:

• We broke 2,000 obs!
• We're very close to hitting 400 species, currently at 384 at time of reporting.
• @davidenrique joins the 50+ identifications club, and @laurabaird and @emerlee are right on the edge with 49 and 45 ID's, respectively. From far away in that other great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, @burls has rocketed into 1st place Identifier, with nearly 400 identifications made for Kentucky botanizers.

If you're curious what species have been observed this year that we didn't observe last year (and vice versa), keep an eye on the Compare tool throughout the week (page may take a sec to load). A lot of the differences in species lists between 2021 and 2022 will be due to this year's blitz being held a touch earlier in April, as well as a slightly cooler and slower start to spring. But some of the differences are interesting: nobody in the project observed Houstonia pusilla last year? Weird. Anyway, if you scroll down to where the "seen in 2021 and not in 2022" starts, there's a whole boatload species to put on your hitlist for the week.

Interested in helping with identification?

There are a lot more observations this year, and any IDs you can add or confirm helps to preserve the completeness and accuracy of Kentucky iNat data. It also helps train your eyes for the next time you're out and about. I've divvied up the most frequently observed taxa into somewhat more bite-sized units for folks who want to join the ID effort, you can click the links below to focus your efforts on particular groups of species.

If you'd like to make some ID's but you're newish to the world of wildflowers, you might want to try The Classics, Level I - This includes our most distinctive and iconic native species that many beginners can identify confidently, such as Virginia bluebells, mayapple, dwarf larkspur, bloodroot, wood poppy, blue-eyed Mary, and more. However if you're more experienced and want a challenge, you should try your hand at...

The Classics, Level II - This includes many common genera that require a closer examination or a little more experience to ID, such as violets, waterleaves, phacelias, toothworts, buttercups, ragworts, and others.

Monocots excluding Poales - Some of the most elegant and photogenic spring wildflowers, including Trilliums, jack-in-the-pulpit, trout lilies, Solomon's seal, orchids, and friends.

Bryophytes - Kind of niche for many of us, but check out this selection if you have any moss ID experience (@morghan-mccool might be able to help us out here?)

Unknowns in need of rescue - Sometimes new users accidentally create observations without adding an initial ID, and these no-ID obs can't be collected into the BotanyBlitz project unless they've at least been ID'd as Kingdom Plantae (although some of them might be for animals or fungi, so just ID accordingly). There may be a few lonely observations in here from time to time, any ID you can add will help bump them out of Unknown Limbo.

Looks like we've got a rainy couple of days coming up, hope you get a chance to get outside between showers!

Blitzers: last week was truly an incredible showing, AND it was great to finally meet some of you at the KNPS Wildflower Weekend!

Does anyone have any more observations to upload? Don't delay! We're currently at 4,496 obs -- just 4 more and we hit 4.5K for the week.

We'll take some time to keep identifying observations for a week or so, then announce the winners of Most Species, Most Observations, and Most Identifications. As always, click here to help out your fellow botanyblitzers by adding or confirming identifications:

--> HELP IDENTIFY

Thank you all for a great week and weekend celebration, I hope you had a blast!

-Vanessa