Ημερολόγιο της/του ccoslor

It feels like spring is already here. I saw a cabbage white butterfly last week.

In the spring and summer, I work as the Pest Board Coordinator for Skagit County. I am looking forward to this time and I hope to put my results together in a way that is more accessible to people. Some of that may involve putting more observations on iNaturalist. There are also some services offered through Washington State University that would be a great way to share data.

I would also like to publish weekly blogs or listserv emails that summarize data and trends.

Some of the things I want to monitor for in addition to my main pest species are new invasive insects and weeds. I recently took on some new duties with regards to weed management and while I've been paying attention to them, I want to redouble my efforts. Palmer amaranth is an invasive newly found in the state. While it's unlikely to appear in Skagit County I want to keep an eye out for it.

I also have picked out a couple monitoring sites for emerald ash borer. There is one stand of ash trees near the Skagit Regional Airport and another in south Burlington. I will check on these periodically. There are other ash trees in the area as well.

I don't usually post journal entries but this could be a good way for me to collect my thoughts.

Some notes, for my reference.

https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/search+urls#multiple-places

On the above linked page, there are instructions for how to exclude specific places. They must be entered into the URL string as their place ID (which is a number string).

I have been having issues searching for new observations because the simple 'Description/Tags' box scoops up everything with the word 'knife', for example 'Big Knife Provincial Park'.

So I just add [&not_in_place=149037] to the URL string. Boom, no results from that location. Of course, if there were any observations from Big Knife with a Swiss Army knife in the photo, I would not see it.

This is the URL I tried:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?not_in_place=149037&not_in_project=swiss-army-knives-of-inaturalist&place_id=any&q=knife&subview=table&verifiable=any

I'm still having trouble though. It seems there are places with number strings and places with text strings. I'm not sure how they differ. Also, there are still some results for 'Big Knife Provincial Park' that appear in the search results. Is that because there are two different 'places' in the system?

A new noxious weed has been added to the Class A list as of 2024. Palmer amaranth, Amaranthus palmeri was found in the state recently and so I am adding it here too.

https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/palmer-amaranth

Also added hybrid variable-leaf milfoils https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/variable-leaf-milfoil

Actually I did not add this. I flagged the genus for curation. For now there is no Myriophyllum heterophyllum x Myriophyllum hippuroides taxon available on iNaturalist.

Added beach grasses, Ammophila breviligulata, A. arenaria, and the hybrid A. breviligulata x A. arenaria.

https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/beach-grass-american-european-and-hybrid

These are listed on iNaturalist as Calamagrostis spp.

I added gray sedge, Carex divulsa, and cape pondweed, Aponogeton distachyos, which were newly added to the Monitor List in 2023. Apologies for missing them earlier.

https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/gray-sedge
https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/cape-pondweed

Rubus bifrons? R. armeniacus? Which one? Are they the same species?

I won't get to the bottom of this issue in a single journal entry. But I thought it would be prudent to outline a bit of the issue.

There is clearly a debate going on over whether to combine R. bifrons and R. armeniacus or not. iNaturalist adds to the confusion somewhat by keeping them separate instead of making a determination. 'Flora of North America' lists them as synonyms and defaults to the older name (http://floranorthamerica.org/Rubus_bifrons). Many of the flags on the iNat taxon pages refer to this.

However, you will invariably see curators point out that iNat does not use FNA as its plant authority. This website uses 'Plants of the World Online': https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:735202-1

So there is a difference of opinion at a high level.

It is interesting to read the opinions of scientists based in Europe. The debate over the two species seems to be exclusively a North American problem. In Europe the two species are clearly separate. User enkidoo has written an opinion on this with details on how to separate the two species:

I can only answer from a Central European viewpoint (leaving aside the fact that the name Rubus armeniacus has been misapplied to a species not meant by the original author):
In Germany and neighbouring countries R. armeniacus and R. bifrons are unanimously separated and with (imho) good reasons. Though they have some features in common (apart from the fact that they both belong to Series Discolores), like e.g. the straight prickles in the inflorescence and the +- hairy stem (but the manner of hairiness clearly differs) other features are clearly different, e.g. lower lateral leaflets digitate (armeniacus) vs. pedate (bifrons), leaves +- convex (at least most of them most of the time, armeniacus), leaves always flat (bifrons), upper surface matt (armeniacus) +- shiny (bifrons), petal and fruit size also differ (both larger in armeniacus). R. armeniacus (the species currently labelled so) is an introduced species of obscure origins (I haven´t seen any clear evidence that it really stems from the Caucasus, but I also can´t rule out that possibility), whereas R. bifrons is a native of southern temperate and northern mediterranean countries

I am inclined to keep the species separate, and I believe most of the species in North America are in fact R. armeniacus with some limited range of R. bifrons (here is one reference: https://www.cal-ipc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Dispatch_2017SummerFall.pdf and another which supports them as separate species, with R. armeniacus [or possibly a hybrid with other Rubus spp.] being the dominant one in western NA: https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/shrub/rubspp/all.html).

It might be interesting to do a genetic study of the two species and compare them to European populations, to see if the NA populations have truly 'despeciated' as some have suggested. However, I am not a plant taxonomist. I have only gotten interested in this topic because the pest Agrilus cuprescens, the rose stem girdler, uses Rubus as a host. I did a survey a couple years ago and found them in Armenian/Himalayan blackberry and I still haven't been able to figure out exactly which species it was.

I think this debate highlights how important it is to remember that iNaturalist is an international resource. This site is not exclusive to North America. If these species were native here, an argument could be made to supersede POWO with FNA, but that isn't the case.

See these flags for some more background:
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/496149
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/537809
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/385864