Recording flowering state

[Tom Humphrey]

At the moment the documentation form has a field for 'flower state'. Were possible this has been used to record the most mature tissue present in the specimen (i.e. where both buds and flowers are present, then the flower state is recorded as 'flowers').

The intention of the 'flower state' field was that we could gather rudimentary phenological data from the specimens. This has proved to be quite fraught in practice, in part becuase of the ambiguity in recording the data consistently; the vagueness of many dates (i.e. month only) and the lack of repeat collections from the same site over many years

For many specimens it's hard to tell what should be recorded and the field is often left blank.

I would be interested to know if anyone is currently interested in the flower state data collected and if so how then how best this should be recorded - e.g. perhaps to record the presence/absence of each floral stage.

If the data currently collected is not useful then it would be best to drop the field from the form for the majority of specimens. (retaining the existing records but not prompting users to record flower state in the future)

I've set this post up as a vote - but that's mostly just an attempt to get responses - the outcome of the vote won't be binding.

Please let me know what you think.

[kkopp]

Now, after having processed A LOT more pages, I think my view of this matter has changed somewhat. My interest is mainly geographical. I am not really a plant person (despite my father being a farmer) so I have found that I have real doubts when it comes to guessing/determining whether a specimen is budding, flowering, or in fruit. Even using the taxon to search images and drawings on the web I am often not certain, especially about fruiting. My conclusion is that without some training I am quite hopeless at providing accurate information of this type. I don't mind at all doing it, of course, but I fear for the usefulness of the records I complete with this field....k