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I used Anki to learn to recognize the top 300 plant species (and top mushroom species) in my area by sight. Totally changed my perception of nature.

yorwba 3y ago
How did you find out what the top species in your area are? Did you start by taking pictures of random plants and then researching what they could be, or did you use something like a guidebook? And what did your Anki cards look like?
- clbrmbr 3y ago
  I used iNaturalist website to list 500 most observed plant species in Eastern USA and Canada, and used a script to scrape the species names (scientific and common) and the URL of the title photo. I used another script to download the images and build the anki deck. My decks have just the photo on the front, then scientific name + common name + notes on back. I’ve made many notes in my decks, mostly about the etymology of the scientific names to help remember them. I’ve also added extra photos to the front to show other parts of the plant needed to distinguish from look-alikes, with notes on these features. My reference is usually The Flora of Virginia and/or Sam Thayer’s recent field guide (which is a major new contribution through all his field observations). I have not shared because the photos are mostly ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, but I’ve been considering redoing the photos using CC0/CC-BY (and asking some authors for permission but this is hard as iNat is pseudonymous).
  - jcul 3y ago
    What did you use for creating the deck? I've done something similar in the past, scraping images + info and then used genanki I think to make the deck. Works fine for my basic cards at least. Though I'd prefer to be able to use normal bash tools to manipulate markdown cards. I think there are solutions to generate anki decks from markdown or anki alternatives that use markdown cards directly, but using genanki ended up being sufficient and giving me enough flexibility, considering I wouldn't be editing the deck much after.
    - clbrmbr 3y ago
      Honestly, I think what worked best for me was CSV import. The downside of course is that I cannot easily edit or add to the deck in this way. I should emphasize that in the process of going through the deck I was able to improve quality significantly. I changed many of the photos and added helpful notes so the script was really just a means to get the initial deck. A lot of the creation process occurred as I was reviewing and editing.
dfee 3y ago
Wow. This is a very cool idea. I occasionally get discouraged that I don’t know what trees are around me - because it reflects a disconnect from nature. This may be a great trick!

yorwba 3y ago

How did you find out what the top species in your area are? Did you start by taking pictures of random plants and then researching what they could be, or did you use something like a guidebook? And what did your Anki cards look like?

clbrmbr 3y ago
I used iNaturalist website to list 500 most observed plant species in Eastern USA and Canada, and used a script to scrape the species names (scientific and common) and the URL of the title photo. I used another script to download the images and build the anki deck. My decks have just the photo on the front, then scientific name + common name + notes on back. I’ve made many notes in my decks, mostly about the etymology of the scientific names to help remember them. I’ve also added extra photos to the front to show other parts of the plant needed to distinguish from look-alikes, with notes on these features. My reference is usually The Flora of Virginia and/or Sam Thayer’s recent field guide (which is a major new contribution through all his field observations). I have not shared because the photos are mostly ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, but I’ve been considering redoing the photos using CC0/CC-BY (and asking some authors for permission but this is hard as iNat is pseudonymous).
- jcul 3y ago
  What did you use for creating the deck? I've done something similar in the past, scraping images + info and then used genanki I think to make the deck. Works fine for my basic cards at least. Though I'd prefer to be able to use normal bash tools to manipulate markdown cards. I think there are solutions to generate anki decks from markdown or anki alternatives that use markdown cards directly, but using genanki ended up being sufficient and giving me enough flexibility, considering I wouldn't be editing the deck much after.
  - clbrmbr 3y ago
    Honestly, I think what worked best for me was CSV import. The downside of course is that I cannot easily edit or add to the deck in this way. I should emphasize that in the process of going through the deck I was able to improve quality significantly. I changed many of the photos and added helpful notes so the script was really just a means to get the initial deck. A lot of the creation process occurred as I was reviewing and editing.

dfee 3y ago

Wow. This is a very cool idea. I occasionally get discouraged that I don’t know what trees are around me - because it reflects a disconnect from nature. This may be a great trick!