What's that spring wildflower or fish? Here's help identifying them.

Joseph Dits, South Bend Tribune
·1 min read

Are you seeing new flowers that you don't recognize in Elkhart County? Or a mysterious fish that you've reeled in in Indiana waters?

These two programs will help, as reported in this week's Outdoor Adventures column.

Watch for spring wildflowers to emerge in Elkhart County, like this trillium, then join a Wildflower BioBlitz via the iNaturalist app.
Watch for spring wildflowers to emerge in Elkhart County, like this trillium, then join a Wildflower BioBlitz via the iNaturalist app.

Spring Wildflower BioBlitz

Elkhart County Parks has just begun a scavenger hunt through May 31 where, if you find wildflowers anywhere in Elkhart County, you can snap a photo and share it through the iNaturalist app on your phone.

You can identify the plant yourself, make notes about it or, if you’re puzzled about it at all, let others on iNaturalist help to identify it. It’s part learning for you, part seeing what others are finding and part helping as a citizen scientist to document what’s out there.

The app is free to download. Once you have it, you can look up “Wildflower BioBlitz: Elkhart County 2023.” Find full instructions about using the app in a link here in this column online.

What’s that fish?

Need help identifying a fish that you caught? Biologists with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources will help if you email a photo of it with some information like where you caught it, your name and your permission for the DNR to use the photo in educational purposes. Find more details on how this works in a link here in this column online.

Find columnist Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Spring wildflowers and fish identification made easier in Indiana