I wonder if you’re like me… You travel around looking at beautiful gardens and you encounter plants in new locations that are unfamiliar to you. OR, you don’t recognize plants in your own backyard. That’s me – on both counts. If you’re lucky, you’re with a friend who is also a horticulturist, who can ID your plants. But if not, how do you identify unknown plants?
Perhaps PlantSnap can help! I learned about this plant identification app during a Garden Conservancy trip last year. It’s easy to use, but I found it less than reliable. My traveling garden companions in Dallas last month told me that it’s less than reliable in regions of the country that have a large variety of plant material (such as California). For example, snapping a picture of a flower could yield several different possible matches which isn’t really helpful. So I haven’t been using it. But I dug into the story behind Plantsnap and learned that by using it, we can actually enhance it’s artificial intelligence so it will more accurately identify plants in the future – and I’m all for that.
PlantSnap was founded by Eric Ralls, an tech entrepreneur with a love for the planet. He had an idea to build this app a few years ago when he realized many people have difficulty identifying plants. The user interface he has created makes it engaging and easy to use.
They have big plans: to make their app a useful tool for botanists, teachers and individuals/organizations who wish to understand plants globally. If PlantSnap has its way, it will ultimately be a communication tool between teacher-student, landscape designer-client, and botanists worldwide. They are adding a wealth of information about plants so it will eventually be even more valuable.
PlantSnap needs our help, asking that we enter pictures of plants and properly identify the ones you know so the app can learn to identify different versions and images of the same plant, for better future identification.
PlantSnap is worth checking out. (Click the link to see a Youtube video about it). See how well it does in your area of the country.
