What kind of Christmas quiz for this year?. To start off with:
What do you think the top 10 most commonly recorded ispot plant species in UK, it was a bit of a surprise to me so wondering if I have calculated correctly. Also top 10 most ‘agreed with’ plants some of which are the same and others different.
It’s easy to predict that frequency of upload will not correlate perfectly with frequency of occurrence, but not see easy to predict which factors will have the greatest influence. Having tried filtering the observations map for a few taxa there seems to be a bias towards shrubs and trees, Crataegus monogyna (hawthorn) seems to be at the top. It would take a little while, but if I took the top 50 taxa from my records and tried them all I would probably find the top 10 most commonly recorded taxa on iSpot.
[Crataegus monogyna is well down my list, as I treat hawthorn hedges as cultivated, and therefore not recordable.]
Crataegus monogyna is indeed in the top 10 but not at the top.
One item I have not asked for is the highest number of agreements per species, that title goes to Eranthis hyemalis but this is not in the top 10 of most frequent species nor top 10 for total agreements. However it goes give a slight hint as to some other species that are in the lists I am asking about given its flowering time when less other things to look at on ispot.
I’d guess that Yarrow will be fairly high in the list.
After trying a few more names Geranium robertianum is ahead, and Heracleum sphondylium edges out hawthorn. Herb Robert is common enough, but it’s only # 20 (by tetrads) in my records; hogweed is # 6.
Yarrow is in top 10 in terms of number of agreements but is only 15th most commonly recorded
are both in top 10 most frequent species. Geranium at number 3, Heracleum at 7 and Crataegus at 6.
These are the ones that I’ve found with 300 or more observations, with their positions in my records noted. The divergence from abundance is greater than I expected, and by Mike’s figures there are still some more, rarer, plants punching above their weight.
637 Dactylorhiza fuchsii (# 414)
575 Silene dioica (# 51)
541 Geranium robertianum (# 20)
497 Heracleum sphondylium (# 6)
492 Ranunculus ficaria (# 61)
491 Crataegus monogyna (# 29)
443 Hedera helix (# 8)
432 Veronica chamaedrys (# 105)
424 Taraxacum (overcounting) (# 3)
423 Senecio jacobaea (# 15)
386 Achillea millefolium (# 28)
367 Anthriscus sylvestris (# 7)
360 Rubus fruticosus agg. (# 2)
355 Centaurea nigra (# 32)
354 Fraxinus excelsion (# 13)
350 Geum urbanum (# 26)
347 Plantago lanceolate (# 10)
344 Cirsium vulgare (# 12)
338 Digitalis purpurea (# 36)
327 Stachys sylvatica (# 38)
324 Dactylorhiza praetermissa (# 460)
323 Fagus sylvatica (# 115)
323 Anemone nemorosa (# 230)
319 Quercus robur (# 25)
318 Cirsium arvense (# 18)
318 Primula vulgaris (# 287)
308 Alliaria petiolata (# 23)
317 Urtica dioica (# 1)
317 Corylus avellana (# 49)
310 Primula veris (# 324)
304 Tussilago farfara (# 52)
300 Sambucus nigra (# 14)
The order I had was this:
Dactylorhiza fuchsii
Silene dioica
Geranium robertianum
Cardamine pratensis
Ranunculus ficaria
Crataegus monogyna
Heracleum sphondylium
Lotus corniculatus
Veronica chamaedrys
Senecio jacobaea
so it is interesting that there are differences, I was working from a download of the database rather than ispot live and I suspect there mayhave been a few stages to the processing where species names could be confused. The numbers of observations noted were very similar to what you had although not exactly the same.
Might be worth trying to get to the bottom of why there are differences in the two lists as my list has 45 species with more than 300 occurrences.
Just had a glance and on ispot live there are Cardamine and Lotus in the top 10, perhaps you did not try the search on those species
I didn’t try Cardamine pratensis and Lotus corniculatus; that resolves the top 10, other than the position of Heracleum sphondylium. (Your 45 species with more than 300 occurrences presumably includes species I didn’t try.)
I filtered the map view using species name (taxonomy) and “with likely ID”. This would produce some errors - observations in which the species was mentioned, but weren’t of that species - perhaps confusion of hog weed with angelica or cow parsley was involved.
Filtering on Taraxacum produces an overcount, as it includes observations of Taraxacum palustre, and other named species from Tim Rich, but summing Taraxacum agg. and Taraxacum officinale agg. is an undercount because it omits identifications to the genus Taraxacum.