I'm self-teaching myself botany and am looking for an app that will allow me to upload my photos, tag them, and make a few notes. As great as iNaturalist is, unfortunately it's not designed for this. I checked out a few "nature journal" apps and Wonderland was as close as I could find, in that it allows me to create a "Portfolio" with folders. But its main goal is also community sharing, which isn't my goal, and it takes a few steps to get to this section.
Before I put a lot of work into my Wonderland portfolio, are there any apps that I'm missing? Ideally I'd love to categorize each plant with the following:
Native / Invasive
Season
Habitat
Notes
What does everyone else use?
by starlightskater
1 Comment
iNaturalist does all of these things you’re looking for.
You can search your own observations by native with some simple URL editing (literally just adding “native=true” to the end of your explore query – there are extensive iNat forum posts about this and other useful URL tips).
You can add notes to your individual observations, as well as collect groups of your observations into journal posts.
Selecting the species on your observations displays graphs with seasonality, showing when each species is in flower, producing fruit, and in senescence.
And you can add tags to specific observations with intricate interactions, such as predation events, dung contents, pollinators visiting a host, parasitism, etc.
There really is no better community science project in existence than iNat – it caters to everyone, from serious scientist to backyard nature enjoyer. You can use it to recall your trips, see where you collected seed, share bird pictures with friends–the list goes on and on. I hope you give it a second chance!