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Whether you are an avid hiker, casual nature walker or just plain curious, you have likely come across plants in the wild that you want to know the identity of. There are a few reasons why you might be interested in plant identifier apps. For example, you could come to find that it is poisonous and wish to avoid it. Also, you could come to find that the plant is edible, so you could collect yourself a mid-adventure snack. No matter what the reason, it can be difficult to identify plants without any prior experience or knowledge of the field. That’s where technology can come into play. 
Apps make our lives significantly easier. From having a mini calculator in your pocket, to translating different languages in real time, phone apps can make some of life’s hardest tasks simple. Plant identifier apps are very good at assisting those who aren’t experts on plants. To the untrained eye, the wilderness may just be filled with trees, leaves and bushes. But with a plant identifier app, anyone is able to differentiate the different species and types of plants that reside on the Earth. Also check out this blog from Soltech to better understand what plants can survive where in the United States. This can likely help you determine the type of plant you are looking at. What are the best apps? Here are our top five apps to identify plants with. 
Apps make our lives significantly easier. From having a mini calculator in your pocket, to translating different languages in real time, phone apps can make some of life’s hardest tasks simple. Plant identifier apps are very good at assisting those who aren’t experts on plants. To the untrained eye, the wilderness may just be filled with trees, leaves and bushes. But with a plant identifier app, anyone is able to differentiate the different species and types of plants that reside on the Earth. Also check out this blog from Soltech to better understand what plants can survive where in the United States. This can likely help you determine the type of plant you are looking at. What are the best apps? Here are our top five apps to identify plants with. 1. iNaturalist
iNaturalist is both a website and an app that provides a large database of pictures and information. Sourced via iNaturalistGuides · iNaturalist
iNaturalist is a website with iOS and Android apps that allow you to identify the plants and wildlife around you. It is a collaboration between the California Academy of Science and the National Geographic Society. This app works by the users uploading a picture of a certain plant or flower. All of these submissions help build the database that the AI picks from when it needs to match your upload. The app then takes your image and searches through the iNaturalist database to identify the specific name of the plant in the picture. It’s free to use which makes it very appealing to any customer. The database established by the user base has more than 25.6 million observations so it is clearly a widely used application.2. Plant Snap
PlantSnap is another useful plant identifier app with an extensive database
PlantSnap is another app available on Android and iOS that can identify well over 625,000 plants, trees, and fungus. Due to its extensive database, the app quickly identifies the organism in the picture uploaded and gives you a highly detailed description of it. Not only will you know the name of the plant, but you’ll also be able to impress your friends with an extensive list of facts about it! On top of all this, PlantSnap will plant trees when users share their photos, making this an eco-friendly app as well as an informative one! This app is freemium, meaning the base version is free with a premium version that is paid for. The free version requires a registered account and limits the number of photos you can upload per day while the paid version allows unlimited posts, no advertisements and free support. Whether you use the free or premium version of this app, it is a great way to identify plants.3. Google Lens
Google Lens is an all around great app and has a great plant identification mode as well
When you think of plant identifier apps, you probably don’t think of google lens. Google Lens is an app on Androids that usually comes preinstalled in their phones. It isn’t primarily a plant identifying app but that is one of the functions. When you take a picture of a plant or flower on this app, it searches the database and gives you a list of possible species that could be in your picture. You can rest assured that this database is vast as it comes directly from Google itself, so it is likely to be the best source of information.4. Plant Net
Plantnet is a multifaceted app that does a great job at identifying plant species
Plantnet is a free app that is based on user input to form its gigantic database. There are over a million images grouped into three different sections. The first is geographical, where plants from all over the globe are found. The second is thematic, where users would post their cultivated and ornamental plants from their own homes and offices. The last is more specific to local regions such as towns or forests. The only downside to this app is that, since it is crowdsourced, you can only identify plants that have already been uploaded.5. Leaf Snap
LeafSnap lays claim to a database that hold 90% of all species of plants
LeafSnap is another user-friendly app that identifies around 90% of all known species of plants and trees. This is another freemium app, where the free version has ads while the premium version removes them. The good thing about this app is that you don’t need a full picture of the plant or flower to get results. The AI can identify something as small as a branch, so you don’t have to be a professional photographer to have this app work for you. Once you upload a picture, a list of possible results will come up and all that’s left is for you to match the photos to figure out the species name.
