Roaming around hiking trails or even just your neighborhood with the knowledge of a botany expert can now be a reality with plant and flower identification apps on your smartphone. Perfect for gardeners or any nature lover, these identifier apps can identify plants, flowers, trees, and more plus provide growing tips, and more.  Similar to visiting Portsmouth’s best floral shop, Flowers by Leslie, and talking with one of our floral experts, you can have information about your favorite flora right at your fingertips.

Top 4 Plant Identification Apps for Your Smartphone

PlantNet

PlantNet identifies plants or flowers once from photos you’ve submitted or already exist on your smartphone. Identifying a vast range of flowering plants, trees, grasses, ferns, and more, this app uses visual recognition software to analyze photos from your phone and provide matches. This is a free app that “learns” from every new photo uploaded. Plus, all of the images of plants are collected and analyzed by experts so they can expand upon the existing knowledge of plant biodiversity and preservation.

PictureThis

PictureThis uses artificial intelligence to identify plants and flowers. It is well-reviewed for its accuracy and ease of use. Easily snap a photo with your smartphone and within seconds the app determines the type of plant or flower. The creators of this app claim 99% accuracy and over 27 million plants so far identified. PictureThis is a fee-based subscription service but does offer a 7-day free trial.

What’s That Flower?

Instead of relying on photo uploads, this app displays matches based on your answers to a few questions like color, habitat, number of petals, etc. What’s That Flower is a good option for determining what a plant or flower is that you don’t have a photo of, but perhaps just a memory of. This app has more than 600 flowers in its database and is free to use with an optional paid ad-free version.

LeafSnap

LeafSnap is a free mobile app that identifies a tree species from photos of its leaves. It’s well-reviewed and features beautiful, high-resolution images of leaves, fruit, flowers, seeds, bark, and more. Currently, LeafSnap incorporates trees of the Northeastern U.S. and Canada, but will soon include trees of the entire continental U.S.

More Identifier Apps Worth Mentioning

• FlowerChecker – Rather than computer algorithms, a team of botanists review your photo and send back an identification.
• Plantix – Popular with farmers and gardeners, this app IDs plants, plant diseases, and various other plant problems.
• iNaturalist – For the nature enthusiast who wants more than just plants and flowers identified, this app can also ID insects, animals, and butterflies.

With too many to list here, there are free wildflower apps for almost every region of North America. With all these cool apps in our pocket, venturing out into nature has never been so fun and educational.