June 11, 2019

Bizarre observation

I was hiking near Lake Chaplain on Sunday and found the strangest horsetail specimen I have ever seen. The specimen appeared to be a E. telmateia stem with both fertile and sterile characteristics. Specifically, it appeared to have a stem with branches (typically on sterile stems) and a strobilus (typically on fertile stems). Images of the specimen can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26702147

I have three questions that are uniquely relevant to this group.

  1. Is the E. telmateia? E. sylvaticum can have morphology like this, but this observation is extremely unlikely to be that species?
  2. Is this something that is natural? An odd mutation? A confused E. telmateia?
  3. Do you have any recommendations for cataloging other kinds of morphology in a consistent manner? This specimen doesn’t neatly fall into the three “Sterile”, “Fertile”, and “Fertile/Sterile” categories.

I am very interested to hear thoughts from the iNat community about these questions! This observation has got me scratching my head and thinking about how this project can accommodate the diversity of real-world horsetail morphologies.

Posted on June 11, 2019 07:04 AM by space_coyote space_coyote | 2 comments | Leave a comment

April 24, 2019

1000 observations

We have just hit the 1000 observation milestone. I am delighted to see this group begin to accumulate members and share observations from around the earth.

The honor of 1000th observation goes to @erin49, which can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/22627748.

Posted on April 24, 2019 08:02 AM by space_coyote space_coyote | 0 comments | Leave a comment

March 9, 2019

Look out for fertile observations

The overwhelming majority of observations in this project are Sterile, and fertile stems are beginning to pop up across Puget Sound. Now is an excellent time to look for fertile observations to contribute so we have a more balanced dataset of horsetail morphology.

Posted on March 9, 2019 09:53 AM by space_coyote space_coyote | 0 comments | Leave a comment

June 3, 2018

New species

For the past couple months this project has been operating, the contributions have always been of the species E. arvense or E. telmateia , however there is no reason that must be the case. With that being said I would like to recognize @selaginel_la for contributing the first observation in this project that breaks this pattern. The Wood horsetail observation can be viewed here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13055301 .

I encourage you all to contribute more of your or other’s horsetail observations, regardless of species! The main goal is to have a standardized annotation system that can be queried in iNat, for all locations and relevant species. Keep up the great work and have fun learning and observing!

Posted on June 3, 2018 08:32 PM by space_coyote space_coyote | 0 comments | Leave a comment

May 4, 2018

Milestone

All 44 observations of field horsetail in King county have been added to the project.

Posted on May 4, 2018 10:33 AM by space_coyote space_coyote | 0 comments | Leave a comment

Archives