(The above PowerPoint collage is a sneak peak of all the nature I saw today, in my daily life)

Perhaps you noticed it has been a while since my last inquiry post. Or maybe nobody has noticed, and I just actively drew attention to how much I have been slacking on my inquiry project. The truth is that the last few weeks have been really hard. So much is up in the air for my practicum (which is across the world in Sweden), we have so much to do in all five of our classes, and I had to complete over 60 report cards for my swim coaching job by tonight. I felt like I had no time for a snorkelling trip or cool hike where I could see pretty plants and upload them to iNaturalist.

Recently we completed a nature literacy lesson for our PE class, and I had to observe Taryn, Jade, Makayla and Charlotte S teach a lesson. They explained to the students how immersing oneself in nature can help people of all ages deal with their stress. I realized that just because I do not have the time to do a grand trip to somewhere super amazing does not mean I cannot experience the benefits of nature right in my backyard. A lot of value lies in being able to identify different aspects of nature that I walk past on a daily basis. So, I decided to spend a day taking pictures of all the nature I observed. The effects of this activity on my mental health were surprising – even the simple act of stopping for a minute on my walk to school to observe a plant I liked felt calming. While I still haven’t figured out my backpacking trip to Norway and I have an essay due in 23 hours, I feel so much lighter after taking just twenty-ish minutes out of my day to look at plants and reflect on them.

I uploaded all my pictures to iNaturalist just now, and tried to identify as many of them by myself as I could. Now I am waiting for experts to either confirm my identifications or suggest something new. As stressful as last week was, it was also a critical point in my iNaturalist journey because my roommates told me to use the computer rather than phone version of the app. Using the webpage rather than the iPhone app is WAY more fun – you can follow friends, see your profile, and get a grid display of all the observations you have seen. I followed my three roommates, so now I will get notifications whenever they post something – a great opportunity for me to improve my plant and wildlife literacy! I also hope to encourage my future students to follow each other on iNaturalist.

Whenever I upload a photo, it asks me to suggest an identification for the species. I really enjoy this part of the process because I need to look long and hard at my photo to compare it to the species they are suggesting. Something I just thought of today is that plants are often most well-known for what they look like when they are flowering – but at this time of year there are not many flowers yet, and I want to be able to identify plants based on their leaves rather than just what they look like over spring and summer. Despite working on species identification for 9 weeks now, I am slightly discouraged to feel like I’m still at the beginning of my plant identification journey. I think that using the webpage version of iNaturalist and having followers that hold me accountable to posting will be good for me.

Here is a screen recording of the iNaturalist website:

  • Identifiers page: shows the people who have suggested potential identifications for my photos. @gracewells and @emlim are the top contributors to my page right now!
  • Species page: shows the different species I have identified
  • Observations page: shows all the observations I have published to iNaturalist. There is some overlap with the species page, meaning that some of the pictures I have published belong to the same species.

Here are the 16 observations that I just uploaded today – so pretty! All these plants were spotted either in Victoria or Vancouver, since I took the ferry home on Friday. Next up is to try documenting a nature day that is only in Victoria!

I was trying really hard to think of a possible identification for a plant with pink flowers that I had seen, and came across this picture on iNaturalist – it was exciting to find a plant with my name in it! It apparently grows around here so I will definitely be looking out for Erica carnea.