Though we may not always realize it, we live in a time of technological marvels. Most of carry a device in our pocket that can instantly connect us to all the world’s knowledge and information—many of you are reading this on such a device right now! Gardening is a celebration of plants, people, and nature, but as gardeners we can also benefit from the digital tools all around us. Plant identification apps can help us learn more about the plants around us both in our garden and elsewhere. So let’s dig in and learn a bit more about how using plant identification apps can make us better, safer gardeners!
Plant ID Apps and Safety
Let’s start with a quick safety note. Plant ID apps are great and effective but not foolproof. If you’re attempting to ID an edible plant for consumption, confirm the identification with a human expert first. Misidentifying a plant is a common mistake—we’ve all done it with or without an app. Generally such misidentifications aren’t particularly dangerous, but we should be extra cautious with any plant we intend to consume.
Now, let’s continue . . .
How Do Plant ID Apps Work?
Some plant ID apps function like a traditional plant identification key—the user inputs information about the location, appearance, and features of the plant and the app guides them towards the most likely correct answer. These can be effective but they require a little savvy and plant knowledge on the part of the user. Other apps make use of photo identification and AI features in order to identify plants via images taken by the user. These are fast, useful, and user-friendly, making them a more popular choice for many people.
Which kind of app is best for you will depend on your particular needs, but there’s nothing that says you can’t use more than one app to get the ID you want. By running a key-type app alongside a photo ID app, you may find that you learn more about plants, their features, and the nomenclature used for them.
So Which Plant ID App is Best?
The gardening and plant-lover communities owe a great deal of thanks to Dr. Erin Hill, a researcher and professor at Michigan State University. In addition to her work on weed and invasive plant control, she’s also taken it upon herself to evaluate plant ID apps for efficacy and accuracy. Dr. Hill and her students started this work back in 2018, focusing on photo ID-type apps since 2023. So, if any of them happen to be reading this: thank you Dr. Hill and company!
Here are the results of Dr. Hill’s most recent evaluations of plant ID app assessments, ranked for accuracy. We do suggest reading her more detailed findings here if you have time. You’ll learn a bit more about how the apps were evaluated and the details of the results. Now, without further ado, here are the rankings:
1) PictureThis
2) PlantStory
3) PlantNet
4) PlantIn
5) iNaturalist
6) Google Lens
So which of these apps is best for YOU? Again we encourage you to read the detailed evaluation and make up your own mind. The reality is that for casual use just about any of these options will do fine. What we suggest is using one or more plant identification apps in conjunction with a traditional plant ID guidebooks and perhaps some help from your local extension office, garden club, or plant expert. We also want to remind you that successfully identifying plants is a learning process—it takes time to understand the various structures and features plants have, how to spot them, and how to use that information to identify a plant. In short: plant ID apps are learning tools, and as gardeners we’re always learning and exploring. So download an app or two, check out a guidebook from the library, and get out there and explore the world of plants!
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