Originally published at: Get help identifying that mystery plant you bought at the hardware store | Boing Boing
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I prefer iNaturalist for that kind of thing (Android/Apple app, web page). It’s more of a 3 step process. It uses AI to give you 5 probable candidates immediately (don’t need to wait, which is nice if you are trying to wild forage). 95% of the time, the suggestions have contained the animal/plant/mushroom I’ve photographed (seems to do a little bit better with plants & animals than mushrooms). You select which species/genus you believe it to be. Then, especially the mushrooms, I get 1-3ish masters/phd student often chiming in to confirm. It also keeps a log of location/species/date of where you found those things. You can tell it to use a gross location, if you want to keep your morel patch secret for instance. To date, I have 37 observations. It’s always nice to be walking down a trail and find a cool looking bird/flower/mushroom and instantly know what it is.
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I’ve found that an app called plantnet, both for Android and iPhone, works very well for identifying plants. You take a picture and it shows you what it could be. They even have a web page that you can upload your photo to for identifying.
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If you still can’t find an answer, you can always ask a neighbour.
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I second plantnet as very useful.
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PlantNet is great, but I’ve also found that Google Lens (on newer Androids) can do remarkably well at identifying things.
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When tags are very general, as quoted in the story, or missing, they ain’t helpful.
Really good gardening catalogues are well illustrated, and provide info such as hardiness zones (and include a good climate zone map), am’t of Sun/shade and water required, as well as height, planting depth, length of bloom time (if any), soil quality and acidity needs, sometimes even plants’ geographical origins, etc. Whenever mom was asked how she’d become a walking gardening encyclopedia, she said that catalogues taught her most of what she knew. Her books were used for more intensive researches, and to look for more varieties than were shown in her catalogues.
She always recommended studying Bluestone’s catalogues for flowers, shrubs, etc. Shumway’s sells many historic and heirloom varieties of fruits and veg, which are often better than modern ones.
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