Whether you’re an avid iNaturalist user or you’ve only just heard about it, your plant identification skills are requested! The Native Plant Society of Oregon is requesting help with their Flora of Oregon: Vascular Plants project to help verify identifications for as many plants as possible during this virtual event from November 9th to 17th (although help before or after is great, too!). 

iNaturalist is a tool used by many citizen scientists and professional scientists to collect, report, and use data on any plants or animals they observe or research. Anyone can use this free tool – just make an account and begin uploading photos or identifying observations made by other users. Research scientists can usually only use verified observations, and observations can only become verified when at least two users agree on the species identification. So there is a need for identification on iNaturalist – the Native Plant Society reports that there are over 350,000 unverified observations of plants in Oregon alone!

To join in on the efforts, just log into iNaturalist, go to the Flora of Oregon project, and begin identifying any unverified observations you can confidently identify. If you’re unsure of how to identify plants in the app, there are instructions available here. If you’re unsure of your identification skills, you can sign up here to be assigned a mentor from the Native Plant Society. You can also sign up to be a mentor at the same link, if you have over 5,000 identifications in iNaturalist.

Your efforts will help contribute to a better understanding of the plant species found in Oregon!