PlantNet Plant Identification

Pl@ntNet identifies plants from a photograph, which sounds like a small convenience until you are standing in front of something on a walk and genuinely want to know what it is. Photograph a flower, leaf, bark or fruit and the app compares it against a database built from millions of images, returning likely matches ranked by confidence. It handles flowering plants, trees, grasses, conifers, ferns, vines, wild salad plants and cacti, and it identifies many cultivated garden plants too, though wild species are its main purpose. The second half of the project is what makes it unusual. Pl@ntNet is citizen science: the photographs users submit are collected and studied by researchers worldwide to track how plant biodiversity is changing. A walk with the app becomes a small contribution to a genuine scientific record, and the developers actively ask users to help inventory wild species rather than garden ones. Accuracy improves with good photographs, so it is worth learning the habit of shooting a clear, close, well-lit image of a single feature rather than a general view of a bush. Several photos of different parts of the same plant give the best results. It is free, non-commercial and developed by a scientific consortium rather than a company selling something.