PlantNet Plant Identification

PlantNet

About this app

Pl@ntNet is an application that allows you to identify plants simply by photographing them with your smartphone. Very useful when you don't have a botanist on hand! Pl@ntNet is also a great citizen science project: all the plants you photograph are collected and analysed by scientists around the world to better understand the evolution of plant biodiversity and to better preserve it.

Pl@ntNet allows you to identify and better understand all kinds of plants living in nature: flowering plants, trees, grasses, conifers, ferns, vines, wild salads or cacti. Pl@ntNet can also identify a large number of cultivated plants (in parks and gardens) but this is not its primary purpose. We especially need Pl@ntNet’s users to inventory the wild plants, those that you can observe in nature of course but also those that grow on the sidewalks of our cities or in the middle of your vegetable garden!

The more visual information you give to Pl@ntNet about the plant you are observing, the more accurate the identification will be. There are indeed many plants that look alike from afar and it is sometimes small details that distinguish two species of the same genus. Flowers, fruits and leaves are the most characteristic organs of a species and it is them that should be photographed first. But any other detail can be useful, such as thorns, buds or hair on the stem. A photograph of the whole plant (or the tree if it is one!) is also very useful information, but it is often not sufficient to allow a reliable identification.

At present Pl@ntNet makes it possible to recognize about 20,000 species. We are still a long way from the 360,000 species living on earth, but Pl@ntNet is getting richer every day thanks to the contributions of the most experienced users among you. Don't be afraid to contribute yourself! Your observation will be reviewed by the community and may one day join the photo gallery illustrating the species in the application.

The new version of Pl@ntNet released in January 2019 includes many improvements and new features:
- The ability to filter recognized species by genus or family.
- The differentiated data revision that gives more weight to users who have demonstrated the most skills (in particular the number of species observed, validated by the community).
- The re-identification of shared observations, whether yours or those of other users of the application.
- The multi-flora identification that allows you to search for the photographed plant in all the flora of the application and not only in the one you have selected. Very useful when you are not sure what flora to look for.
- The selection of your favorite floras to access them more quickly.
- The navigation at different taxonomic levels in image galleries.
- The mapping of your observations.
- Links to many factsheets.

The web version of the application is also available at the following address: https://identify.plantnet.org/

Ratings and reviews

The app is overall good and does what it should (help one identify plants). These are the main technical issues I have with it: 1) very awkward way to add more than one image to the same entry (you have to skip the identification process and go back with the top arrow; very unintuitive and almost hidden); 2) it's not very clear how one can revert or change an identification without deleting the entry, if possible at all. Then perhaps the main problem: people load and assign images wildly.

It does a good job AFTER you figure out how to use it. It's not a complex app, but it's not obvious how to use it. It took me a while and a lot of trial and error attempts. Eventually, I got what I hoped for. Now I wander around gardens with my camera which has become a fun thing to do. Some day I will sound like I know plants and flowers. Super!!!

Brilliant. There is one additional feature I would like to see. Rather than relying 100% on AI, I would like an ID app that ALSO points out the salient features that distinguish this plant. Then it would also be a valuable educational tool. Almost all computer tech so far tends to de-skill, and it would be great to see one that reversed that trend.

What's new

👀 Spot it, log it! Use the new 'observed' filter with an eye icon to keep track of what you've seen. Autofill locality information locally on the device, and explore nearby species directly from the explorer! Enjoy our refreshed UI with landscape mode. 🌸