Observing and identifying Foamflowers in eastern North America
In the iNaturalist interface, the name Heartleaf Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia) refers to a species of flowering plant narrowly confined to the eastern United States, from Maryland to Georgia. If your observation is outside of this region, it is probably not Tiarella cordifolia. iNaturalist recognizes five species of Foamflowers (Tiarella) in eastern North America, widely ranging from northeastern Canada to the southeastern United States. For more information, see:
Tips for observers and identifiers are included, plus detailed information about the geographical distribution of Tiarella.
Comments
Nicely done. The tables you included are especially helpful. Thanks!
I agree. You did a very nice job with this recent change.
Thanks @tsn and @chuckt2007!
At this point, there are enough observations of each species so that a heat map might be instructive. iNaturalist has two mapping options (that I'm aware of), a taxa map and a compare map. Enjoy!
I like these maps! Thank you.
The maps are great! I can see applications for violet species among others. Thank you.
the maps were created based on inat curators assigning locations to these [sub]species based on one (maybe not peer reviewed?) paper. there isn't actually robust evidence that the ranges are correct, and most of these observations can't be identified based on anything other than location. They all need to be put in a T. cordifolia complex and people can assign them to the [sub]species if and only if there is visual evidence identifying them, such as stolons. if after all of that happens there seems to be a clear range, one could consider adding the complex-level ones to the [sub]species level, but even that is questionable under the framework of iNat. We aren't meant to be identifying subspecies based on range, and these are effectively subspeies that were just elevated to species because that's a trend in taxonomy right now.
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