The Botanical Gesture Lab is built on iNaturalist's database of observations, and for good reason: it is the largest collection of identified, dated, located plant photographs that has ever existed, and much of it is available to artists under clear terms. Used well, it supplies the references a specimen cannot — the plant in habitat, at every season, from a dozen angles, across its whole range. Used carelessly, it produces drawings of photographs rather than drawings of plants. This guide is about using it well.

What iNaturalist Is

iNaturalist is a citizen-science platform where anyone can upload a photograph of an organism with a date and location. Other users suggest and confirm identifications. When an observation has a location, a date, media, and an identification that at least two-thirds of identifiers agree on (with at least two identifiers), it becomes research grade — the standard that the Gesture Lab and most scientific users filter for. Research-grade observations feed into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and are used in published research; they are, for practical purposes, verified.

For a botanical illustrator, that verification is the point. An image search for a species name returns nursery photos, mislabelled garden cultivars, and look-alikes; an iNaturalist search for research-grade observations returns the wild plant, identified by people who know it, with the date and place it was growing.

Searching Well

The Explore page accepts a species (or genus, or family), a place, and a date range, and the filters panel adds more. The ones that matter for illustration:

• Place — set it to your region if you want the local form of a widespread species, or to the plant's native range if you want the wild type rather than a garden escape.
• Month — restricting to a month shows the plant at one stage: flowering, fruiting, or in bud. Searching the same species across months gives the life cycle without waiting a year.
• Quality grade: research — nearly always.
• Annotations — some observations are tagged with life stage (flowering, fruiting) and plant phenology; filtering on these is faster than scanning by month.
• Photo license — the filter that determines what you may draw from. See below.

Within an observation, look at all the photographs, not just the first: many observers include a habit shot, a flower close-up, a leaf, and the underside, which is exactly the set an illustrator wants. Read the comments, where identifiers often point out the diagnostic character they used — which is also the character your plate should show.

Licenses: What You May Draw From

Every photograph on iNaturalist carries a license chosen by its photographer, shown on the observation page. Most are Creative Commons of some kind; some are "all rights reserved." Drawing a close copy of a photograph creates a derivative work, so the license matters:

• CC0 — public domain dedication. Use freely.
• CC BY — use freely with attribution to the photographer.
• CC BY-NC — attribution, non-commercial use only. Fine for study and portfolio; not for a plate you will sell or license without permission.
• CC BY-SA / BY-NC-SA — as above, and derivative works must carry the same license.
• CC BY-ND / BY-NC-ND — no derivatives. You may look, but not draw a copy.
• All rights reserved — reference only; do not reproduce the composition.

The filters let you restrict a search to specific licenses, which is the cleanest approach: filter to CC0 and CC BY, and everything that comes back is usable. Using a photograph as general information — what color the anthers are, how the leaves are held — is not making a derivative work, and any license allows it. Copying the pose, framing, and lighting of one particular photograph is. When in doubt, message the observer; most are delighted to have their observation drawn.

Building a Reference File

Download the photographs you intend to use (the observation page offers the original-size image and its license) and file them by species with the observation URL, photographer, license, date, and location in the file name or a notes file. Six months later you will need the attribution, and the URL is how you find it. A folder per species, with subfolders for stages, becomes the reference library that a single collected specimen can never be — and it grows with every plate. For a species like sagebrush, which changes dramatically between spring growth and autumn flowering, the file will hold a dozen observations before you draw a line.

What a Photograph Cannot Tell You

Photographs flatten, distort, and lie about scale. A close-up with a phone enlarges whatever is nearest the lens; a telephoto shot compresses depth; automatic white balance shifts the greens; and nothing in the frame tells you how big the plant is unless the observer included a hand or a ruler. Specific limits:

• Scale. Almost never recoverable from a photograph alone. Use a flora or a specimen for measurements, and use the photograph for form.
• Color. Approximate at best. Screen color is not paper color, and no two observers' cameras agree. Color notes from a living plant beat any photograph.
• Counts and fine structure. Stamens, ovary position, hairs: usually invisible unless the observer took a macro shot. This is what dissections of a real specimen are for.
• Three-dimensional form. One angle per photograph; the plate needs to understand the whole. Multiple observations from different angles help, but a specimen in the hand helps more.

The reliable method is both: a specimen (or a living plant, or a pressed sheet — see preserving specimens) for measurement, color, and dissection; iNaturalist for habit, habitat, seasonal stages, and the variation across a population that no single plant shows.

Contribute Back

An illustrator who is already photographing specimens with a scale bar, from several angles, with the date and place recorded, is producing exactly what iNaturalist wants. Upload your own observations. They will be identified — sometimes corrected — by people who know the flora, which is free expert review of your identification before you spend twenty hours on a plate of the wrong species. They also join the record, and a well-documented observation of a plant you then illustrate is a small, real contribution to the science your drawing serves. Set your own photos to CC BY so the next illustrator can use them.

In Practice

For a new species: search research-grade observations in your region, across all months, filtered to open licenses. Save a habit shot, a flower, a fruit, and a leaf underside. Note the flowering month, so you know when to collect or visit. Read the identifiers' comments for the diagnostic characters. Then find a living plant or a specimen, measure it, dissect a flower, and make your color notes. The photographs tell you what the plant does across its life; the specimen tells you what it is. The plate needs both, and iNaturalist has made the first half something an illustrator can do in an evening.