How reliable are the species names on these meadow photos? – Curated Meadow Photos

Where a plant's identification was documented at source, the botanical name appears on the image page and in the file metadata. Where it was not documented, the field is empty.

That emptiness is deliberate and it is the most important thing on this page.

Why we do not guess

An invented Latin binomial looks authoritative and propagates. Your caption becomes somebody else's source, and a wrong name in a field guide is considerably worse than no name at all.

Meadow flora is exactly where guessing goes wrong. Many grassland species are separated by characters that are not visible in a photograph: leaf sheath hairs, ligule shape, seed structure. A confident identification from a picture of a flower head alone is frequently a coin toss between two species, and sometimes between two genera.

So the rule here is simple. Documented, or blank.

Three kinds of name

The botanical name is the Latin binomial, genus capitalised, both parts italicised: *Leucanthemum vulgare*. Governed by a formal code, unambiguous worldwide.

The cultivar name follows in single quotes, not italicised, and marks a selected variety rather than a wild species.

The common name is regional, unregulated and often shared between unrelated plants. Ox-eye daisy, moon daisy and dog daisy are the same species; several unrelated plants are called cowslip somewhere.

Both botanical and common names are recorded where documented, because people search with both.

If you need certainty

For publication where the identification carries weight, ask before you print. Send the asset id and say what you need it for. We will tell you what the record actually says, and where it is uncertain we will say that instead of reassuring you.

That is a slower answer than a database lookup and it is an honest one.

Corrections

If you know a name here is wrong, tell us. Botanical corrections are acted on quickly and they are genuinely valuable, because a catalogue error ends up in other people's captions and then in their readers' notebooks.

Include the asset id and, if you can, the character that decides it. "This is not that species" is useful; "this is not that species because the ligule is blunt" is what lets us fix it properly.

Where the names come from

Documented at source means the photographer recorded it in the field, or the site was surveyed and the record is attached to the location, or a specialist has confirmed it since.

It does not mean an automatic identification from an app. Those are useful in the field and are not a citable source, and nothing enters this catalogue on that basis alone.

If a name here has been confirmed by a specialist rather than only recorded, the image page says so.