Original Message: Question by David Magney June 27, 2008

[njensen]

“Carl, Well said! A lot of these "reputable firms" seem to hire inexpensive recent graduates, who have never had a field course in their lives and know essentially nothing about the biota of CA, and send them out to do surveys. The results are as you describe. They sometimes send me jpegs to ID or confirm. What they don't know is often amazing, and what they think they know is worse. If they're struggling to ID Malva parviflora and Ailanthus altissima, they obviously have no clue what they're doing. I recently had those come here as jpegs -- and the Ailanthus was tentatively IDed as Ligustrum lucidum! The half dozen such jpegs were probably the whole bot. survey for this site.”