Valley of flowers- August’ 12 Trips- Requirements, Flora photography, Wheather, Landslides etc.

Thanks, …, for organising such a big expedition & succeeding in it.

---

1. First and foremost, never forget to record and mention place and also approx. altitude in your uploads, especially for plants meant for ID. Govindghat is at an altitude of 1800 m (roughly 5800 ft) and Gangharyia 3050 m (roughly 10000 ft), from lower edge of Temperate climate to almost upper edge of subalpine climate, a huge gap as far as climatic and vegetational diversity is concerned. It may be difficult to remember the name of intermediate stations but one can take some time to know the time taken for the trek, time (fortunately it is recorded with your photograph) when photograph was taken, use this information to roughly calculate altitude and mention this altitude in your uploads. I assure you it will help a lot in identification as well as final documentation.

2. It is the time we learn the importance of multiple photographs covering different aspects of plant (aptly exemplified by Nidhan ji and Balkar ji). I had written about it before the trip also. Different genera may need different characters for identification of species. Basal leaves are essential in some genera like Valeriana, Primula, Saxifraga, etc; form of stem leaves (insertion, presence or absence of petiole, presence and absence of stipules and their shape and size, leaf being simple or compound, number of leaflets, margin of leaf/leaflet, colour of upper and lower surface, size) are essential in almost all genera; presence or absence of bracts and their size and shape, length of pedicel equally important in several genera; size of flower is crucial in many genera especially Impatience and others; size of sepals and their relative size with bracts and bracts are crucial in most genera; number of stamens are almost universally important as are the number of styles and stigma; information about fruit size is always a boon……………………..Agreed a nonbotanist can’t be expected to know all this, but I assure you that if you take a minimum of 4-5 photographs (I have seen most persons taking more than 5 photographs of same plant, but mostly of same flower……so time can be no justification), it will help you a lot, experts will find it easier to identify and this will greatly enrich our database:

a) Photograph of habit so that basal leaves are well in focus.

b) side view of flowering twig so that insertion of leaves and flowers is visible.

c) Close up of side view of flower right from the point it arises from the inflorescence axis.

d) Close up of top view of flower so that stamens and styles can be seen

e) photograph of fruit if possible (it is extremely helpful in almost all composites, species of Solanum, Veronica,

etc.)

Kindly remember the size of flower and leaves. As it is often difficult to recall I find it very useful to place leaf or flower over your palm and photograph it. It helps a lot to determine size fairly accurately later on. Alternately keep any marker such as scale or tip of pen to estimate size.

I know it will be difficult to forget the old culture of this Group, and Flowers of India where flower only has been considered as sufficient. Luckily more are more members are now learning the importance of other characters: Balkar ji and Nidhan ji have shown us the way. Let us follow it in our future trips. It will be much more enjyable and rewarding.

---

Well said …
This is very important
now that this group is a few years old and most of its members have been watching the episodes and good photography and features essential for diagnosis, its time we had some more guidelines. the writing above is excellent . every body should bookmark this and put on the bookmark toolbar, I did. . its very important.

I have been saying this to various our members in various ways…
but their habits dont change because someone of our experts comes up with an id…
so it satisfies the asker … and the habit of poor photography and all the excuses that go with them continue…

so one habit the experts have to develop is to they need to be disciplined enough not to jump in with a diagnosis when the photograph is poor in quality or content….

I think you have been saying this repeatedly and so has Mr. Garg from time to time
may be now is the time to make it a rule both for the person asking and the person jumping in to give a diagnosis on the meager information and poor photos…

granted not every one has great photo equipment, but even with point and shoot in the pocket one can take enough pictures very quickly and provide enough clues… 

---

Thanks a lot Gurcharan sir for describing the issue nicely.
To all members, we must understand that for a taxonomist to identify a plant, he or she needs the plant in his hand to check what he or she wants to check (characters). So I have always said, MULTIPLE SHOTS FROM MULTIPLE ANGLES. Frankly speaking if we all start doing it then we ourselves will also learn the differences between plants.

Taxonomy in basic word is THE STUDY OF SIMILARITY AND DIFFERENCES.
SIMILARITIES WHICH BRINGS PLANTS TOGETHER INTO ONE FAMILY OR GENUS AND DIFFERENCES WHICH HELPS IN DIFFERENTIATING THEM FROM ONE ANOTHER.
Trust me, its not an easy job for a taxonomist to identify plant from pics. I know many like … and many others can do it in one go but that is because of their immense experience for having seen many of the plants originally in wild during his work.

For me to work on orchids, some time I took years to identify one plant. My first new species, Peristylus sahanii was collected in 2005 but I published it only in 2010 though on the first day itself I knew it has to be a new species and I had reasons too. Some times it becomes very challenging to even identify a simple species because orchid is the biggest family of flowering plants.

Sometimes I really get surprised how within minutes a plant from remote part of India gets identfied. That is the strongest part of our efl family.
Best wishes to eflora and best wishes to all the family members.

---