chauncey's Journal

This list is courtesy of iNat member yerbasanta, Thank you.
Quick tips for what to document for plant ID.

OAKS (and trees generally):
1) Please photograph the underside of leaves! This helps a surprising amount for identifying oaks in particular (as well as many other plant species)
2) Acorns and acorn caps attached to the plant
3) Trunk texture
4) Overall habit: Branching pattern, height, canopy spread

LUPINES:
1) Reveal and photograph the keel petal (hidden within the wings) to document the hairs (if any) on the upper and lower surface along the entire length.
Keel image: https://tchester.org/plants/analysis/lupinus/pix/lupinus_formosus_g4_17_crop_70_label.jpg
2) Guide to documenting lupines in more detail (including calyx, banner spots, etc): https://tchester.org/plants/analysis/lupinus/identification.html#fig_1_caption

WILDFLOWERS (IN GENERAL)
1 Area beneath flowers (involucre/hypanthium/calyx): this is surprisingly helpful, especially for ROSACEAE, ASTERACEAE, GROSSULARIACEAE, PAPAVERACEAE etc.etc
2 Basal and stem leaves
3 Close-up of stamens, carpels, petals

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/identification-etiquette-on-inaturalist-wiki/1503/2

This was written by Tony Iwane (tiwane) and it was so well said, I wanted to refer to it:

Hi, welcome to iNaturalist! iNat is primarily meant for wild organisms. If you do upload captive or planted things like house plants, garden plants, zoo animals, or pets, please mark them as "captive/cultivated" on the add observation screen. That helps make sure the range maps only represent wild populations. Here's a short video showing how to do it in the mobile app: https://vimeo.com/331151155

On the website, you can also mark it after uploading the observation by clicking the "thumbs down" next to "Organism is wild?" in the Data Quality Assessment section at the bottom of this page. Thanks!

Some trees are really obvious and easy to ID but, to make ID easier, my habit is to include photos of:

• the whole plant to show overall form/stature,

• a very closeup of leaves,
  on big trees when I can not get close to leaves, I might use a telephoto to get the best view possible.
  In pines, looking for number of needles per fascicle and needle length; in the cypress family, juniper in
  particular, looking for scale leaf overlap, tip shape and leaf gland visible or not.

• close up of seed cones (in pines, what looks like miniature cones are likely pollen cones; in junipers, tear
  open a fleshy seed cone to check seed(s) size and shape.
  Notice if both pollen and seed cones (monoecious) or only one or the other (dioecios)

• a portrait, so to speak, of mature bark.

This is the most informative article on juniper midge galls that I have seen yet.

http://coo.fieldofscience.com/2016/01/juniper-gall-midges.html

I'm walking the JMT in September and taking my camera.
Any requests for species to watch for?
Taking a fly rod also, hoping to "collect" a few fish.

See associated observations: sample from both trees are shown together:
J. osteosperma sample on the left, J. scopulorum on the right.
samples taken from the observations associated with this post.

J. osteo......................................................J. scop.

single large seed.....................................2 (3) seeds

leaf margins finely...................................leaf margins entire/smooth
denticulate/serrulate

branchlets thicker .................................branchlets slender
stiff, chaotic.............................................less stiff, more elongate, sweeping

Range overlaps substantially, seems to be somewhat sorted by elevation but not entirely. I do not know how consistent this is. Temperature? UV exposure? Seasonal highs or lows? Soil? Moisture?

For a long time, the large junipers of the west were known as Western Juniper, Juniperus occidentalis.
Then people started identifying consistent variations and the debate about subspecies, varieties, and separate species began.
If you accept the Jepson manual's section on Juniperus, you find J. grandis applied to the large junipers of the Sierra Nevada rather than a previously accepted taxon of J. occidentalis subsp. austrailis.
Generally, J. occidentalis is found in the Cascade range and J. grandis is found in the Sierra Nevada and in the eastern portion of a couple of the Transverse Ranges of southern California.
According to Adams, there is an area of hybridization in the Beckwourth, California area where the species meet.

It seems funny to me that the tool I'm finding most useful for mapping trees is my old compass in concert with Satellite photos. Of course reading and feeling topography is important too, perhaps more than I realize because sensing topography has become so innate.
But, GPS is not adequate for mapping individual plants in dense groups. Finding physical features on the landscape that can be identified in satellite maps is the only solid way to anchor discovered plants to a map. However, when finding plants in dense forest/vegetation those physical feature are out of site. I draw diagrams showing relative positions of trees, then with my compass I can shoot bearings and work some triangulation from known-location-trees. The new tool I've added is making scatter plots of tree coordinates. This gives me a stripped down diagram of trees plotted relative to a coordinate grid.
geez, bet that does not make sense to anyone. Oh well, that's what you get from wandering around and talking to junipers all day.
Gotta love it.