This. I am honestly not terribly familiar with flora, I know certain flowers, I can tell a palm tree from a deciduous tree from a tree with needles, but if I'm writing something set in a specific place, featuring a POV that knows and notices those details, I will include them to the degree that they add to the setting or plot of the story. As a reader, I appreciate when writers do the same, because I think that kind of verisimilitude in setting helps set apart excellent stories.
That said, I do think we have to keep in mind as betas that the details we would think important to include in a story are not necessarily things our writers will view as important. Thus, I might mention something I think it would be good to specify (food, usually, if there's a meal mentioned, sometimes cultural observances), but if the writer wants to focus on other aspects of the story, I make myself--sometimes with great difficulty--drop it, and turn my attention to the writer's concerns. And to the things that most fans are there for, which is character and relationship exploration. Even the bulk of gen I've betaed has been focused on relationship dynamics, just other kinds of relationships than ship fic.
no subject
That said, I do think we have to keep in mind as betas that the details we would think important to include in a story are not necessarily things our writers will view as important. Thus, I might mention something I think it would be good to specify (food, usually, if there's a meal mentioned, sometimes cultural observances), but if the writer wants to focus on other aspects of the story, I make myself--sometimes with great difficulty--drop it, and turn my attention to the writer's concerns. And to the things that most fans are there for, which is character and relationship exploration. Even the bulk of gen I've betaed has been focused on relationship dynamics, just other kinds of relationships than ship fic.