While I tend to agree and don't really mind, I'm curious- are there any real drawbacks to having varieties in iNat? I mean, more information is always good, isn't it? in terms of public engagement, being able to identify something to a more specific level would increase engagement. In terms of research and biogeographical data, there is, without a doubt, gene flow (and often direct escapes/naturalization) between cultivated and wild populations. As such, having data about where different cultivars were at different times could be very valuable in the future. In terms of the platform, it seems like being able to label specific observations with more information would only help. After all, it makes it possible to do mass changes like taxon swaps and whatnot. If you merge all varieties into the species/genus level, you just lose data which would make it more difficult to separate potentially problematic observations. So... does including varieties create issues in the iNat platform or something?

As I said, i don't really care all that much, but it seems like there are more potential benefits to having the ability to label varieties than there are drawbacks.