Are you passionate about gardening? Have you ever taken a walk in the countryside and wondered what the name of that pretty flower is? What if we told you that you can identify trees from photos with your phone? All this is possible thanks to these apps to identify plants, flowers and trees.
Life just got easier with mobile apps and there are even apps to identify plants. They can be very useful if you are one of those who walk the street picking seedlings of plants and flowers, herbs and other species of plants and need to find out their names.
Identifying plants by leaves is possible if you have knowledge. However, when you have no idea, knowing what plant you have in front of you becomes an almost impossible mission. Beyond geranium, roses, pine or thyme… the rest can represent a challenge. Today we bring you the best vegetable and flora identifiers for Android and iOS. Essential!
Best Apps to Identify Plants
1. iNaturalist
iNaturalist is one of the most popular apps in the category and helps you identify plants and animals around you. It is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. It is available for iOS (iPhone) and Android and also at the link inaturalist.org. It allows for discovering species, recording observations and sharing with the Community, in addition to following scientists.
- Free
- Has a community
The same group has a similar application, Seek. The interface is more beautiful and the app helps to raise your knowledge about nature, earning badges for seeing different types of birds, amphibians, plants and fungi, and participating in observation challenges.
2. PictureThis – Plant identifier
Picture This allows you to upload a photo or search by name (in different languages). Unfortunately, it is not available for free. It is possible to download for iOS (iPhone) and Android and there is a web version at picturethisai.com.
When taking a photo with the app’s camera or uploading an image, it is possible to obtain instant and accurate identification results with the help of artificial intelligence technology. There are more than 10,000 species in the botanical database with an accuracy rate of 95% according to tests by the founders.
3. PlantSnap
If you love travelling and also plants, an application that cannot be missing from your list of travel apps is PlantSnap. In its database, it has flowers, trees, cacti and succulents stored, even mushrooms! from all parts of the world. You can save all the images you have identified in the same app. This way, you can travel to all those wonderful places again!
Keep in mind that to offer you greater precision, the photo you take must be of good quality. Otherwise, it may give you the name of another similar species and there will be confusion.
PlantSnap has two versions: premium and free, both for iOS (iPhone) and Android or at plantsnap.com. You can also identify trees, vegetables and other plants by taking a photo and comparing the photos with the application’s database. It offers a record of more than 585,000 plants including flowers, trees, succulents, mushrooms, cacti, leaves and more, combined with a machine learning algorithm capable of recognizing 2,000 new plant species per month.
4. PlantNet: the Shazam for plants
PlantNet App is our favourite. We have tested several applications to recognize plants and this is the best: the most complete and the easiest to use. You just have to take a photo of a plant and it will automatically tell you what plant it is. Also, it will indicate other similar plants and flowers.
It is not suitable for ornamental flowers, but it is for those that you find in the countryside, something fabulous for nature lovers. When taking the photo, focus on a specific part, up close, as the details make the difference. Likewise, it allows you to identify trees by photos of their leaves.
PlantNet ( plantnet.org ) has a version for iOS (iPhone), another for Android and also a web version at identify.plantnet.org. It is free and was developed by a consortium involving scientists from CIRAD, INRA, INRIA, IRD and the Tela Botanica network. It is an aid system for the automatic identification of plants from photos compared to images from a botanical database. The results allow us to find the botanical name and the number of species that grow over time. The same group has Smart’Flore ( floristic.org ), a specific application for this type of demand.
5. Flowerchecker
The FlowerChecker app uses real botanists to identify unknown plants.
You simply take a picture of an unknown plant (or moss, lichen, and even fungi) and send it to a team of experts, who will identify it for you.
The identification is not computer-based, real people are behind it. Perhaps, therefore, making it the most accurate of the apps. The app is available for download on PlayStore and App Store.
6. Plantifier
Plantifier is a free community-based plant image recognition app. It allows you to upload a photo of an unknown plant. The users of the MyGarden.org community behind this free tool will try to recognise the plant photo as soon as possible and give you an answer to your question. Available on the App Store and for Android.
Also, try out the web-based version via http://www.plantifier.com.
7. Leafsnap
With a single photo, this app to identify plants gives you the result you are looking for. It also shows you other images of the same flower or bush, which it has saved in its database and information about similar species. It works quite well with most species of flowers and trees but is especially useful when it comes to cacti and succulents.
If you are travelling and find yourself in a place with a lot of cacti or want to create a small succulent garden at home, LeafSnap can help you. Being a free application, it has a lot of advertising —sometimes excessively so. If you want to use this app without having to see ads, opt for the Premium version. It seems a little expensive to us since the monthly subscription is €4.19.
8. iPflanzen
Rather than using photographs to recognise plants/flowers, iPflanzen requires you to enter criteria such as leaf shape or fruit colour in order to figure out the mystery. In conjunction with their other apps – iGarten and iForest – extremely detailed and interesting information can easily be found.
Together these three applications are an ideal tool for identifying, selecting, and learning about a wide range of plants.
Approximately 1500 plants are available for identification. You can download it from App Store.
9. ArbolApp
If we told you that this Android app to recognize free plants and trees is based on the CSIC and its real Botanical Garden, what would you say? Amazing! It is a complete app when it comes to identifying wild trees from Andorra, Portugal and Spain – both from the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, although at the moment it does not include those from Ceuta or Melilla.
- It works completely offline, without the need for the internet.
- It has up to 144 species of wild and native trees described in 122 files.
- In each file, you find very detailed information, as well as photographs and a location map.
- Despite being rigorously scientific, it uses very easy-to-understand language.
If field trips are your thing, you have to have this app!
10. GardenAnswers Plant Identifier
Another very good application to identify more than 20,000 plants just by taking a photo. Do you want to know if that plant is harmful to your garden? If it is poisonous? Does it represent a danger to animals or children?
Garden Answers answers all your questions. Take a photo of the flower, fruit or vegetable you want to identify and it will give you a card with all the information you need to know. Easy to use and very fast in recognizing flora. It only takes a few seconds!
11. Flower Checker
Identifying plants from online photos is much easier than you think. Flower Checker is very flower-oriented; However, we love it for its effectiveness and simplicity. Its negative point is that it is paid. For each ID you have to pay $1.
- Identify plants by photo, but also lichens, mosses, fungi and almost anything.
- It is paid because it does not work through a database, images or a community of users. The app developers receive your photo identify the species and send you the response.
If they can’t identify it, they don’t charge you – nothing else would be missing! You can try this app with a free trial ID. Would you try it?
12. Identify plants and trees with Google Lens
Google Lens—as its name indicates—is one of Google’s own applications. If you have an Android, you may already have it installed. Otherwise, you can download it from the Play Store. What is it about? It is an app that uses artificial intelligence to determine exactly what you are showing it.
It can identify texts, and photos, identify painters’ signatures, it can even read QR codes. Thanks to this functionality, it serves as an app to recognize trees, flowers, cacti and whatever you put in front of it! It is very easy to use. You just have to follow these steps:
- Open the app and upload a photo you have saved or point directly at the flower or tree you want to identify.
- Wait for Google Lens to do the rest. That easy.
- Once the app identifies the species, it will give you its name information.
More information on plant and shrub identification
How to identify the name of a plant?
With the apps to identify plants and trees in this post, you will be able to know the name of the species you want to recognize. The way to use them is basically the same. Let’s take PlantNet as an example.
- Download the app and install it on your mobile.
- Open it and choose between taking a photo or uploading it from your gallery.
- In the case of taking a photo, you can repeat it if you don’t like it. But if you agree, click Accept.
- Choose an organ associated with the species in the photo: leaf, flower, fruit, bark, habit or other details. This will help the app better identify the plant.
- Once you choose an option, it will give you a list of possible results.
How can medicinal plants be identified?
In principle, the apps to identify plants in this article can be useful to you. However, you have to be very careful, since we don’t want someone to get poisoned. Databases are usually very extensive, but in many cases they are collaborative, that is, they are fed by the information that ordinary people—like you and me—contribute.
Therefore, you have to know that there may be errors when using applications to recognize plants. In the case of medicinal plants, it is best to use the identifiers only as a guide. Taking this into account and to avoid greater harm, we recommend that you talk to people who are experts in this type of plant.
How to know the name of a tree by its leaf?
An app to identify trees can help you with this. But if you want to learn without technological help, our recommendation is that you dedicate time and have the desire to learn, as well as patience. Just like what happens when you enter the kitchen and want to differentiate cilantro from parsley.
If you want to start at the beginning and learn about the subject, read some basic tree leaf identification guides. Of course, always listen to the information and recommendations that professionals in the field can give you.
What is the best app to identify plants?
As we have already mentioned – and after having used them all –, without a doubt, our favourite is PlantNet. To date, it is the most complete and accurate of all the apps for identifying plants. Whether you want to identify plants in Spain, Europe or the entire world… these identifiers will come in handy on your Sunday excursions to the mountains.
Tell us which one is your favourite or which is the rarest plant you have identified! We are waiting for you in the comments.
