May Showers, May Flowers — Illinois Botanists Big Year Update
Stats
It's May 21st and the ILBBY 2019's got:
990 observers (+635)
13376 research grade observations of plants (+9289)
830 species (+282)
518 identifiers (+282)
We had a big ol' bump in activity from the City Nature Challenge 2019, a long weekend in the Chicago region during which 346 users made 8024 observations of 1048 species of plants, animals, fungi, and other creatures. Despite it SNOWING one of the days I think this was a pretty good showing. :) More stats on the global City Nature Challenge and St. Louis Metro challenge.
New to following the ILBBY project are @juliebags and @observer26. Welcome! New to observing plants in Illinois are @timfelinski0251, @benb @owenkathriner, @rrm4649, @marinegardener, @whvoss, @jbllak, @goldfink, @kimberly236, @bengreenfield1, @kimberlycurtis, and @hannasowden, among others! If you want to stay apprised of Illinois Botanists Big Year updates, you can join the project here.
Since last month's update, four more botanizers have observed over 100 species of plants in Illinois this year. Great efforts by @sedge, @taco2000, @andrewhipp, and @jakeskee! Jared Gorrell (@wildlandblogger) is still in the lead of this friendly competition with 420 species.
The top-observed species swapped from spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) to prairie trillium (Trillium recurvatum) as the former has faded from bloom and the latter's deep red flowers speckle woodland understories. My favorite little umbrellas-of-the-woods, Podophyllum peltatum are second-most observed, and hard-to-not-photograph bluebells (Mertensia virginica) joined the leaderboard in May too.
Plant Pic Picks
Don't forget to favorite observations to highlight good photos or cool finds!
A very nice white trout lily (Erythronium albidum) by @jingyilu in Chicago.
Bright copper iris (Iris fulva) by @grantfessler in Union County
Poster child for urban nature and the City Nature Challenge, this boxelder (Acer negundo) by @dbild in Chicago.
Golden marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) by @mccrea in DeKalb County.
Wee false mermaidweed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) by @kkucera in northern Cook County.
Help Identify
As always, please help your fellow botanists, when yr able, to identify/confirm their observations. There are over 10,000 observations in 2019 alone that qualify for the project, but haven't been IDed or confirmed yet. Try sorting by random to mix it up!New to Illinois on iNat
And keep an eye on these links for any new documentations in 2019. I commented on a few that folks like @lucydugan, @maryjoyce, @sedge, and @wildlandblogger have found!- Non-flowering plants
- Monocots excluding Poales
- Poales (grasses, sedges, rushes, & friends)
- Plants in Asterales (sunflower family and friends)
- Plants in Fabales (pea family and friends)
- Plants in Lamiales (mint family and friends)
- Plants in Rosales (rose family and friends)
- Plants in Brassicales (mustard family and friends)
- Plants in Ranunculales (buttercup family and friends)
- Plants in Caryophyllales (pink family and friends)
- Plants in Boraginales (borage family and friends)
- All other (eu)dicots except the groups above
