CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt

How to create your own species list using iNaturalist

Added 2025-02-14 21:16:40 +0000 UTC

This will probably only interest some of you but this is a very helpful tool for creating a list of plants you have observed, or that someone else observed, In a given boundary locations such as county state or country. You can then sort the information according to species and family or whatever other data is applicable.

For me this is helpful because I can create checklists for different counties in my region or list of species that I have seen all over the world, sorted by family.

Go to inaturalist.org, then fill in the fields under "explore" or "my observations" according to what taxon level and locality you wish to create a species list for.

Then, Under "Filter" select "download" in the lower right corner.

You are then taken to a page where you can select or deselect different information fields. I usually just select "scientific name" & "family".

You then download an extractable csv file, which you can open in google sheets, libre office, or excel

Then, in google docs (what I use) :

Create new column

=A1&" "&B1

then sort by column A (species)
then sort by column B (family).
This will alphabetize the species and group them according to their family.

then highlight and copy the new column that the code above created.

then "paste special" and select "values only" in column A

Then delete the rest of the columns

Then select the column with plant names and select "data" then "Data cleanup" then remove duplicates

You can then copy and paste into a word document and create a checklist