Julie Henne What if someone told you that flower apps could quickly and accurately identify plants with nothing more than a picture that you take with your smartphone?
It might sound crazy, but these kinds of flower apps are available today on practically every smartphone around. Imagine this; you’re enjoying a beautiful day hiking at your local park. You come across an interesting flower but have no way to identify it. Sure, you can send a picture to your friend who has the greenest thumb, but that might prove to be unfruitful. Flower apps can help instantly.
Maybe you’re just wandering around your neighborhood when you see some lovely flowers that you’d love to plant in your own yard. Instead of trying to awkwardly ask the homeowner what kinds of flowers they have, pull up one of your favorite flower apps and get the names right on the spot.
How Do Flower Apps Work?
While flower apps are relatively intuitive to use, there are some things to consider. First, you don’t need a picture of the entire plant. Instead, you’ll get a close-up of the flower or leaf.
Once the app gets the picture, it uses artificial intelligence to make the identification. What’s really cool is that these apps use something called deep learning. That just means the database is constantly learning and being improved. Users of the app also play a role in helping the app improve. If the app happens to get something wrong, you can report the correct flower. The app then learns.
Not All Flower Apps Are Created Equally
There are a variety of flower apps out there that you can download today, but they don’t all work the same way. Some apps, like GreenSnap, are more like social media platforms. You can upload a picture of the plant with the hope that someone else can help identify it for you. That means there could be some user errors depending on the quality of responses you get.
Other apps do more of a photo comparison than actual identification. The app, What’s The Flower, is basically just a database of flower pictures. You compare and decide which plant you’re looking at. GardenAnswers, however, lets you compare your picture to pictures that other users have submitted. If you think the photo matches, you get confirmation of the name of your plant.
PlantSnap seems to be one of the most compressive apps. This app uses the aforementioned deep learning ability to identify plants. Since this app continues to learn and improve, it tends to be the most accurate. You’ll also find great results from apps like Google Plant Identifier and Microsoft Bing.
More Than Just Flowers
If you think that flower apps are amazing, you’ll love where this technology is going. Google and Bing are working on apps that can identify flowers along with things like products and books. Google Lens can even recognize places.
Even if you’re not an anthophile (someone who loves flowers), flower apps are a fun way to interact with nature in a new way. If nothing else, you can impress your friends with your seemingly endless knowledge of plants and flowers. Log on to your favorite app store and start downloading flower apps today.
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