Wondering How That Plant Identifies?
Plant ID Apps
For those of us who are not (yet) trained horticulturalists or botanists, identifying the plants we see around us can be perplexing. I’m learning as fast as I can, but I’m still constantly wondering what I’m looking at.
When I’m out and about, I’m often curious about whether some lovely specimen is native or not. There’s the acquisitive “ooh, can I plant me some of those?” or the snarky “wow, these folks have gone all out with the exotics, haven’t they?” In my own yard, the stakes are somewhat higher. I’ve planted a lot of new native species recently, but I don’t always recognize them when they’re babies. I’d hate to yank them out because I’ve mistaken them for weeds. As a corollary, some fun and desirable natives have “volunteered” in my yard, including white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), white heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) and, my favorite, an American persimmon tree seedling (Diospyros virginiana). I have no idea where they came from, but now that I know what they are, I’d like to give these go-getters a chance to put down literal and figurative roots. It has also been critically important to identify invasive species so I can prioritize their removal.
In the days of yore, we might have relied on a dendrology system of dichotomous keys, such as this one by Virginia Tech, to classify the flora around us. This approach requires some mental exertion, though, so I’m happy to report there’s now a lazy way to do it: apps!
In case you’d like to give plant ID apps a try, I’ve compiled information here on a handful of the most frequently downloaded. Full disclosure: I have limited experience with these, so much of this data comes from secondary sources. (Note that I have no connection whatsoever to any of these platforms, except as an actual or potential user.)
iNaturalist
Free
As far as I can tell, this is the one the serious folks use. At its core it relies on crowd-sourcing: someone uploads a pic of a plant and members hash out classifications until there’s consensus (or perhaps until the dissenters have moved on to other debates?). I think there’s also some AI sorcery involved. It’s a nonprofit initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic. A recent New York Times article sang iNaturalist’s praises as the rare platform promoting online civility. Given its bona fides, community structure and price tag, I’ve tried to use and like this app, I really have. But I’ve found it kind of cumbersome and slow – perhaps because I don’t quite know how it's supposed to work? – and it gets only so-so ratings for accuracy. If any of you have mastered iNaturalist and would be willing to give me a brief tutorial, I’d welcome it! But meanwhile, when I’m mucking around the garden and on the verge of pulling up that weedy-looking sprout, I don’t have the patience for a botanical debate.
PictureThis
$30/year
First the bad news. PictureThis costs $$ and its parent company is Chinese. I kinda hate to think about how all that geo-located data is being used. On the upside, it’s fast and user-friendly. You just snap a pic and within seconds it spits out an ID, along with some descriptive info, FAQs, a care guide and even an indication of the plant’s native range. Plus it gets consistently high marks for reliability. A Rutgers study assessed it as 97.3 percent accurate to genus and 83.9 percent to species when assessing leaves. (For comparison, iNaturalist’s numbers in the same study were 92.3 and 69.6 percent, respectively.) I use PictureThis multiple times a week. A hat tip to my friend Lee, who first introduced me to it!
Pl@ntNet
Free
This is a citizen science project, originating in France, that uses machine learning to identify plants. (More sorcery!) In my experience, it’s more intuitive to use than iNaturalist, but less so than PictureThis. That said, Wirecutter named Pl@ntNet its “top pick” of plant identification tools, noting “If you need an immediate, accurate way to ID plants, without having to navigate confusing ads, this is the app for you.” A Michigan State performance comparison of eight apps ranked Pl@ntNet second (with PictureThis in first place and iNaturalist in fifth). The same report observed that the Plant Story and LeafSnap apps – neither of which are reviewed here – performed similarly to Pl@ntNet, for whatever that’s worth.
Google Lens
Free with Google Workspace
To use Lens, you need to have Google Photos activated on your phone. Most Android devices apparently come with Google Photos already integrated. iPhone users – please correct me if I’m wrong on this – can download Photos from the Apple Store. You take a pic of your plant, select the pic within Photos, and then click the “lens” icon. You’ll get a bunch of AI-generated suggestions – some useless, some potentially accurate – about what that plant might be. I’ve used it to identify pictures after the fact. As in, when I managed to take a picture but didn’t have the presence of mind to deploy one of the other apps in the moment. Consider it a backup rather than your main squeeze.
I happened to be in Central America as I was writing this, so I did a highly unscientific test of these four apps with the exotic-looking plant above, which was completely unknown to me.
iNaturalist gave me no response, at least as far as I could find. (Again, am I doing it right?)
PictureThis spit out: “Lavender scallops, a species of kalanchoe, botanical name: Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi.”
Pl@ntNet gave me: “Plant not found in this project. May be: Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi Raym.-Hamet & Perr.. Try this project: Western Europe.” So it seems to have landed on the same ID as PictureThis, but with more static.
Google Lens offered up reams of guesses, including – among many others – Dicentra formosa (Pacific Bleeding Heart), Kalanchoe laxiflora and Kalanchoe fedschenkoi.
Bottom line: PictureThis gave the most crisp answer, but Pl@ntNet wasn't far behind. Google Lens was helpful only in the context of the other data I already had. iNaturalist appeared to take a pass…?
If you want to know more about the contents of your ecosystem, you’ve got options in the form of apps. None is perfect, but the best ones help to narrow the field from infinity to something more manageable.
Do you use a plant ID app? If so, which one(s) and what’s your feedback? Please share in the comments.
So, whatcha gonna do with all the time you save using an app?
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Resources
Ellen Airhart, “The Best Plant Identification App,” NYT Wirecutter, September 30, 2022.
Amy Harmon, “Can Humans Find Common Ground? Sure. Just Start with Sea Slugs.” New York Times, December 11, 2022.
Erin Hill, “Plant Identification? There’s an App for That – Actually Several!” Michigan State Extension, April 1, 2022.
Dave Johnson, “The 7 Best Plant Identifier Apps for iPhone and Android,” Business Insider, July 28, 2022.
Jenna Otter, et. al., “Swipe Right: a Comparison of Accuracy of Plant Identification Apps for Toxic Plants,” NIH National Library of Medicine, August 13, 2020.
Ryan Pankau, “How Accurate Are Photo-Based Plant Identification Apps?” Illinois Extension, January 21, 2022.
Ryan J. Schmidt, et. al., “An Analysis of the Accuracy of Photo-Based Plant Identification Apps on 55 Tree Species,” Arboriculture & Urban Forestry Online, January 2022.
Glad Lynn helped you with iNaturalist, as it rarely lets me down. I’ll add that even if your initial post doesn’t yield a good result, go back and check later, as the real value is when both scientists and hobbyist weigh in on your observations. I also use it as a citizen scientist myself as part of a bee research project called Shutterbee. For that it’s been amazing.
As an experiment I took a screenshot of the pink flower and submitted it to iNaturalist, which identified it as Kalanchoe fedtschenkoi. I'm not sure why you're having problems. I've found iNaturalist to be good at flower id and okay with leaf id.