Everything you ever wanted to know about submitting flower reports
(and more)
The general purpose of the flower report is to assist people in choosing a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains. With over 300 miles of trails, it can be daunting to choose a hike if you are unfamiliar with the area. Even folks who are familiar with the SMM may want to know which trails are doing well, or perhaps are on the lookout for a specific favorite flower. Your flower reports will help people choose a trail, and perhaps even motivate them to get out and enjoy nature. With this as background, some suggestions:
The area of interest for this newsletter is the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills.
Most people find the common names of flowers more helpful than the scientific names.
The report description includes three essential pieces of information. It is very helpful to me to have each of these listed on a separate line so I can simply cut and paste them into your report. Neglecting to send these three elements constitute one of the biggest drains on my time as I then have to try to figure out where you went hiking so I can finish your incomplete report.
Date of your hike.
The full name(s) of the trails that your report covers.
The Park Unit(s) that contains the trail(s).
In addition, it never hurts to include a sentence or two about where the trailhead is and how to get there.
While the list of flowers is important, a simple grocery list of sixty plants is probably not helpful. If there are many flower species in bloom mention that, maybe even give a species count (I always do), but more importantly, highlight the flowers and plants that make the trail/site worth visiting. Most people are interested in both the quantity and uniqueness of the flowers seen. We all have our favorites, be sure to mention yours.
Similarly, a brief overview of the physical aspects of the hike can greatly help people decide if they want to take your hike. Tell them if it is on hill-tops or through open fields or along shady creeks. Maybe something about the state of the trail as well: narrow, or steep, or muddy, etc. In short, the things you yourself would want to know if you have never been there before. It can also be very helpful to mention something that has recently changed. For example, a washed-out section of the trail, or changes to the trail-head parking lot.
Photos are welcome but they can vastly increase my workload as editor. Please assist me with this by doing some prep work before submitting them:
First and foremost, your photos should add to your report for your hike, and landscape shots are probably best for that. It is unlikely you will need more than a few photos for this purpose. If you see an unusual plant, a photo of that might be appropriate as well. To help you appreciate the importance of the landscape shots, it is unlikely I will post any of your flower pictures unless you have also provided at least one nice overview shot of the landscape.
Rename the filename of the picture something descriptive -- one or two words is plenty. Do not include characters forbidden in a web address in the picture filename, such as spaces or slashes (traditionally the underscore character "_" is used to separate words when spaces are not allowed.)
A suggested format: "YourInitials_DateOfHike_ShortDescription.jpg" (e.g., "TV_0227_overlook_trail.jpg" or "TV_0113_creek_crossing.jpg" or "TV_0227_Checkerspot_Butterfly.jpg, and please note the use of lower-case letters for the file extension (the few letters following the period at the end of the filename -- this is the only allowed period.) I am well aware that many operating systems hide the extension of filesnames, so if you don't see one don't worry about it.
Not everyone is surfing the Internet via a high-speed connection so compressing your photos is important. The file size should not be much greater than about 200KB (that is, 0.2MB.) For reference, this is more than ten time smaller than the picture file produced by the average smart phone. Another way to understand this number is that the resolution should not be greater than about 700 pixels on the longest edge.
If your photo needs to be rotated, please do that before submitting. Many smart phones and some web browsers fool you into thinking that this is not necessary, but you cannot be certain your audience will be viewing your picture with the same hardware and software that you yourself use. It is becoming increasingly less important to do this, but it does demonstrate your willingness to assist people who many not know how to otherwise deal with a rotated picture.
I understand that these requests can seem both burdensome and fairly technical. I certainly don't want them to discourage people from sending in photos. However, they must be done before a picture can be published here. If I have to do all of these preparation steps myself, I will probably limit you to one photo to save my time, and to be honest, if it is over-exposed, or out of focus, or just a quick "snap-shot" of a common flower, I probably won't bother (while the average smart phone is fine for taking landscape shots, I suspect most people would be surprised how appallingly bad they are at taking close-up pictures of flowers.)
Most of all, let it come through that you enjoyed your hike (or hated it if that is the case.) This is a community service we are performing. Sharing this way makes you part of that most special community of people that cares.
Contact Information:
Santa Monica Mountains NRA
401 West Hillcrest Drive
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
805-370-2301
www.nps.gov/samo
If you would like to contribute a wildflower
report you can e-mail the editor at:
gmail account SMMWildFlowers
