Easy Plant Group IDs Guide
One of the useful things you can do on iNaturalist, either in addition to making species IDs or instead of making species IDs if you lack the expertise to do that, is making broad IDs so that people who know more about the taxa can find them! The more specific the ID, the better, even if it's not super specific. For that reason, I want to explain some easy plant groups to identify so you can do this with plants more effectively.
First of all, here are some easy to ID really large groups of plants. These are good options for if you mostly have no idea what something is but want to be more specific than marking it "Plantae."
Polypodiopsida - Ferns. Identifiable by having spore-bearing fronds. If you see a fern that is listed as unknown or as a less specific plant group, ID it as this!
Pinales - Conifers. If it is a woody, cone-bearing plant with leaves that are needles or scales, you can ID it as this.
Angiospermae - Flowering plants. If it's got a flower on it but that's about all you can tell as far as identifying features go, ID it as this.
Magnoliopsida - Dicots. Identifiable by having leaves with reticulate (branched) veins. For species with conspicuous flowers, the number of petals will usually not be a multiple of 3.
Liliopsida - Monocots. Identifiable by having leaves with parallel veins or only a single midvein. They may have secondary interconnecting cross-veinlets, but the main venation will be parallel. For species with conspicuous flowers, the petals will usually be in multiples of 3.
Second of all, here are some families with particularly easy identifying features.
Asteraceae - dicot family that often has flowers in heads. These will look like a single flower but are actually a lot of flowers stuck together. The most recognizable types of flower heads in the family are ligulate (many ray petals throughout the flower, like a dandelion or marigold) and radiate (ray petals on the outside, disc flowers with inconspicuous petals on the inside, like a sunflower or daisy). Not all members of Asteraceae are so easy to identify as this, but if you see a flower that's structured like a dandelion or sunflower, it's definitely Asteraceae.
Orchidaceae - monocot family with bilaterally symmetrical flowers. The flowers will usually have a "lip" that looks really different from the other petals. All of the reproductive parts of an orchid (stamens and stigma) are fused into a single column.
Cactaceae - cactus family. These usually have succulent stems with spines instead of normal leaves. They're dicots but that isn't immediately obvious looking at them a lot of the time.
I may add more to this list later when I get around to it.
If you know of any groups that are very easy to ID, post them in the comments! This goes even if they aren't plants. I'd love to be more helpful IDing other taxa than I currently am.
