Disagreeing with others on the internet...
It shall come to pass that you disagree with others on the internet. Note that I said "shall" and not "may". It shall come to pass. You may not want it to come to pass and you may not be INTENDING that it come to pass, but if you are on the internet and express an opinion, someone, somewhere is going to disagree with you. Let us regard a photo.
This, I think we can all agree, is a picture of some sort of plant. The photograph was taken in North Carolina, United States, information I am providing because it can be helpful in narrowing down what the plant could possibly be. The photo was taken in late March, but the plant displays what appears to be fully mature foliage, suggesting that it's an evergreen sort of a thing.
Now, here is where it gets a little difficult. First off, I do not know how many kinds of broadleaf evergreen things might be found in North Carolina. Hollies and such, I guess, and mountain laurel. Rhododendrons, regular and catawba, probably. Are any of the magnolias evergreen? I got nothin'. The only ones I know up north drop their leaves easily. Could be some evergreen-ish magnolias down south, I wouldn't know.
What I DO know is stuff that lives around me and that stuff REALLY influences my guesses in a prejudicial way. (If you live in Africa and hear hoofbeats your odds of being correct when you guess "ZEBRA" are way better than my odds here in Pennsylvania. Here? It's someone's horse. Or cows. Or deer. Or a very thuddy golden retriever. It is not a zebra in Pennsylvania, most of the time. I mean, it COULD be a zebra, but there would have to be some pretty substantial aligning of cosmic forces to have the hoofbeats be a zebra here. In Pennsylvania, zebras are not the way to bet.) Where I am, in the ridge-n-valley part of Pennsylvania, the referenced photo (which is not mine and which I am not crediting because I don't want a flame war over a plant ID) looks like some kind of Rhododendron thing. It looks more like that (to me) than anything else.
Is it? I have no idea. I don't know, with any certainty, what it is.
I THINK it's a Rhododendron-thing because that's what it maps onto the best OUT OF WHAT I KNOW and OUT OF WHAT I AM FAMILIAR WITH. The depth of my "broadleaf evergreen" chart is not particularly great, either. I got Rhododendron maxima and Kalmia latifolia and that's about it. I know hollies as a group exist but I couldn't tell you much about them, not how many kinds nor how to tell one kind from another. My point here is that if all you have is a hammer, it's easy to go around thinking your problems are nails. Am I having a "hammer" problem with this plant ID? Quite possibly.
How does this feed into disagreeing with others on the internet? The internet (or at least the iNat portion of the internet) has decided (at the time of this writing) that the above referenced plant is a K. latifolia, a mountain laurel. There are sufficient "agree" votes on the ID for it to have research status. In my heart of hearts, I do not think that the pictured plant is a Kalmia latifolia. I do not. I think it's a Rhododendron. However, I have been outvoted.
While it puts sand in my gears to be disagreed with, I am not certain enough that it's a Rhododendron thing to stand by my vote when outvoted. I am not a botanist. I cannot put real clear reasons on why this looks like a rhododendron thing to me instead of a kalmia thing. The leaves are too oval? Not shiny enough? Not pointy enough? The leaves are too flat and not creased along the main vein? The stems look too clubby and thick? The leaves are arranged in sort of droopy rosettes and kalmias aren't that rosetty and droopy at the same time? While these are my reasons, they sound weak and insubstantial, fuzzy-wuzzy and handwave-y. They are not reasons that convince anyone else... they still think it's a kalmia.
So maybe I'm wrong. I withdrew my ID because this is not a fight I'm willing to take to the mattresses. It's not. If the leaves were blue and K. latifolia NEVER EVER had blue leaves while R. maxima always 100% had blue leaves, then I'd be more firm. But the... too oval, not shiny enough, not pointy enough, too flat and uncreased, too clubby and thick, droopy rosetty arrangement? Yeah. It's handwave-y. It's not worth dying for.
Inat is a for-fun thing I do in my spare time and I know very, very little about what I'm doing. Many other people here know a lot more than I do about this stuff. There are some things I know (not very damn many) and some things I do not know (many many many) and sometimes even the things that I think I know, I do not actually know. I'm Jon Snow'in it up in here, you betcha.
So, I withdraw IDs and I hazard guesses. I am sometimes incorrect. I do the best I can and I try to do better and I withdraw when I feel I am wrong or might be wrong. It's difficult for me to accept that I will sometimes be wrong and NOT KNOW OR THINK I COULD POSSIBLY BE WRONG even when being smote by cunning and reasonably-convincing arguments from the loyal opposition, but I'm working on it.
At the end of the day, I try to remember that identifying things confidently can be rather tricky (Meadowhawks -- Sympetrum species -- I am looking directly at you.) even for experts and I am no expert at this.
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