Diario de whichchick

Let us consider the following image, which I took and which belongs to me so I can freely discuss it here. It's a cellphone shot of a rock under fairly substantial macro-ization. The rock, which is a sandstone-y rock next to the creek behind my house, has several blotchy things on it. I know, by way of being only partially uninformed, that the blotchy things on the rock are called lichens. Probably. Probably there is some kind of lichenosity going on there on the rock. Let us regard the rock:

Having recognized that there is lichenosity going on with respect to this rock, next I need to determine how many different kinds of lichenosity are going on here. How many. Well, heck, I don't know much about lichens.

I can see that there are "ones with black dots on them", that's one kind. They're pretty easy to spot and actually what had me in the yard taking pictures of rocks in the rain in the first place. The black dots look like they're arranged in a vaguely concentric pattern, too. That might be a thing. Noted. Lichen Sort #1: Grey-green ones with black dots on them in a vaguely concentric pattern.

There is a green one with lumpy darker-green bits, only one really good example, and it's visible on the left hand side of the image. This looks to me like a different sort than Lichen Sort #1. So, Imma call it Lichen Sort #2.

There are a number of little pale patches of nearly-white that don't have a border around them. Lichen Sort #3.

And then there are bigger, grey-green patches with dark borders around them and no interesting features. Lichen Sort #4, I guess. They could just be grown-up nearly-white ones. I have no earthly idea, here.

So, here's a picture of how I adjudge the lichenosity of this rock. This is just a theory, next I'll need to go look at some lichen information and figure out how to tell them apart and stuff. I don't really know that there are four kinds here. I suspect that there are four kinds here. Being able to tell stuff apart is like 50% of the field naturalists job, if not more. It's not always easy and I am no pro. This is my first draft about lichenosity, here. I am learning to see.

When you start looking at things and trying to know things, it is important to get some experience in looking at things IN PERSON and IN REAL LIFE. The computer is helpful, field guides are helpful, all of that is wonderful but even more wonderful and super and great is going out INTO THE WORLD and looking at things, hopefully a lot of things.

Let me illustrate. Let's say that you have three species of tree that are native to your area... let's say they're (a) Prunus serotina (black cherry) and (b) Betula lenta (black birch) and (c) Fagus grandifolia (American beech). Here is a picture of them, side by side for easy comparison.

You know from your tree guides that each of these trees has an alternate leaf structure and fairly slender, graceful twigs. If it were summer, you could compare leaves, but it's winter and you still want to look at trees. This is where some time in the real world (or a dendrology textbook that is priced beyond the realm of mere mortals) will help you.

With some time in the real world, you get to know your trees a bit better. You might learn that Prunus serotina smells horrible if you bruise the bark on a twig or break one off. Seriously, it's a bitter, poison smell. (A fairly small quantity of wilted black cherry leaves can kill horses. I think it has something to do with cyanide-ish chemicals in the leaves.) Good to know and also diagnostic.

You might notice that Betula lenta smells (and tastes) like wintergreen. It's a very nice, strong wintergreen-y smell and it is not subtle or easy to confuse with other things.

For its part, Fagus grandifolia doesn't smell like much of anything but if you spend some time in the woods in winter, you soon learn that its slender, graceful twigs tend to retain their leaves. For this reason, you can spot an American beech pretty far off in the woods during winter, once you know to look for the light brown, pale leaves clinging to it.

(There are a lot of bark pictures posted here on iNaturalist and that's all right as far as it goes, but bark is hard to judge without scale and many trees exhibit different bark forms at different parts of their lives. If you want to go by bark, I'm not exactly your huckleberry over here. Bark should only be one part of your winter diagnostic tool set, not the whole of it.)

But even more than helpful and fun facts about what trees smell like (and if you think that's not diagnostic, you've never smelled black cherry, sassafras, tulip poplar, black walnut, hickory... seriously, smell is a helpful diagnostic sometimes.), getting to know your trees in person means that you can differentiate these three twigs (above) even when they're one-by-each and not stacked together so that you can see how different they are despite being all 'slender branches with alternately-arranged leaves".

Practice and experience will help you learn that Prunus serotina has tiny, roundish buds and a very straight twig structure that doesn't zig-zag at all.

Practice and experience will teach you that Betula lenta zig-zags a little bit and has slender, pointy buds that diverge from the stem a bit.

Practice and experience get you to where you find the extremely long and very pointy, strongly divergent buds of Fagus grandifolia diagnostic even if you didn't notice the retained foliage when you gathered the twig to study.

Real world experience helps you base your identifications on more than just one quality. You don't identify using just one thing (most of the time) -- you use several things. I don't know it's black cherry because it smells bad. I know it's black cherry because it smells bad AND the buds are right AND the bark is right AND (let's be honest, here) it's growing alongside my yard and I remember the dangling white flowers from last summer. It's a black cherry I know personally, OK? (It was like 37 F and snowing out when I gathered these twigs for you. I wasn't going to go hunt up a different cherry when I had one mere steps from the door.) But even if it wasn't the one in my yard, I would still know it for a black cherry because of a variety of markers.

I don't know it's a black birch because of the wintergreen. I know because of the main trunk bark and the wintergreen and the graceful twigs that are planar on the branch (very flat) and the brown bark on the twigs and the pointy-ness of the buds. There are many things that go towards "black birch" and not just one thing.

It's an American beech because of the smooth grey bark, the almost formal pyramid shape of the tree, the retained blonde-brown winter foliage, the extremely long, very divergent, super-pointy buds. All of those things go for American beech, not just one.

My point here, iterated three times because it is important, is that identification of these species should be a gestalt for you... not just ONE point of comparison (slender, alternately-arranged leaves) but MANY points of comparison. Field guides do the best that they can, but most consumer ones are not going to include all the things that you will notice (and remember) for yourself out in the field. Real world experience at identifying actual trees, will make you a better identifier, a more confident identifier, an identifier for all seasons.

So, get out there and look at some trees!

(For those of us in the mountains of the Northeastern US... Quick, before the leaves get here!)

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.