Dear members
I have repeatedly been requesting to include the name of place in both
subject line and in body text. This is essential for a country like India
where you may be photographing a plant at sea level or 6000 m asl. The
distribution of plants is intricately linked with climatic and attitudinal
zonation, and as such it is a great help for both identification and
confirmation of identification. For plants meant for ID a few important
things are to be kept in mind and written as information.
1. Place, date (at least month) are essential. I think approximate altitude
is very useful for diverse climatic conditions in India.
2. Habit and Habitat. cultivated/roadsides/wetplaces/dry slopes/forest,
etc. Habit yes slightly difficult but with some effort it can be done. One
can easily
write whether plant is soft (herbaceous) or woody. Woody plants with
trunk are trees and those without trunk are shrubs. Climbers
(vines) can be known by every one. We have only to stress it to the
members.
3. Plant height, length of basal and middle leaves, diameter of flower
and size of fruit. These are essential because this can't be judged from
photograph,
but is very essential for identification. Additionally members can
always focus some scale indicator in the photograph itself to help
identification.
4. I think we have to develop the habit of including minimum 3-4
photographs in uploads and not just flower for proper representation and
identification. As I have been writing repeatedly if members take
following photographs, the job of identification would be much easier:
a) photograph showing a twig with leaves and flowers/fruits; b) close
up of flower side view; c) close up of flower top view; and if
possible d) photograph of fruit.
5. With above minimum information and these 3 to 4 photographs, I think
identification should be more convenient.
Many members often cite the time constraint in not taking and uploading
sufficient photographs. I assure you it is only a question of realizing the
importance and developing the habit of taking multiple photographs. No one
can perhaps know more than when we went on Chakrata trip. We managed more
than 6000 photographs each within a span of 4 days, fighting tight
schedule, rains, bad roads and all. With tight schedule we would often
pluck one twig (for plants common in the area so as not to disturb the
ecosystem) and take turns to photograph in the car. One has only to see the
display of photographs by Balkar ji to realize the importance of multiple
photographs.
LET US ALL CONTRIBUTE TO ENRICH OUR DATABASE AND MAKE THE JOB OF OUR
EXPERTS EASIER BY PROVIDING ESSENTIAL INFORMATION AND UPLOADING MULTIPLE
PHOTOGRAPHS AS SUGGESTED ABOVE.
--
Dr. Gurcharan Singh
Retired Associate Professor
SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007
Res: 932 Anand Kunj, Vikas Puri, New Delhi-110018.
Phone: 011-25518297 Mob: 9810359089
http://people.du.ac.in/~singhg45/
