Hey again, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose Farm
and recently
I've been geeking out by going through a bunch of plant ID apps for my Android phone and seeing which ones do really well
Identifying plants and which ones don't do so well at all. I thought I'd share those results with you today
It's not exactly the right time of year to go shooting flowers in bloom in the field in my climate
So I had some his images saved on my phone that I used as test subjects on these different apps
the plants that I had in these images
I want to see how close it came for genis and species so I had rudbeckia subtomentosa
Eryngium giganteum
Asclepias incarnata and cornus kousa and I wanted to see how well the apps came up with those
Genera and species and scored them accordingly
The first day apps I'm going to talk about here is the only one that I will not recommend
So I'll get this one out of the way right away
It's a map that was called Plant Lens and it had a relatively low reading on the Android store
But it was right at the top of the sponsored list. So I thought I'd give it a try had the reading of 3.5. I
Downloaded it and I have to say first of all that it hits you up right away with all sorts of screens trying to get
You to sign up for a subscription its subscription is relatively expensive
It comes out to about one hundred and forty-four dollars a year after some maneuvering and gymnastics
I was able to get through to a screen where I could try out the plant ID and
The results were awful
It only got one out of four of the different pictures
Correct and kept on hitting me with ads and splash screens trying to get me to sign up for the app
So this one is in the category of truly awful and I wouldn't recommend it
So I'll move right on to my next one. The next one I tried was another one that's done by the subscription model
It's called picture this and this the subscription on this one is only about $30 a year
So big difference in the price is there it also offers a fairly hassle-free
7-day free trial so I signed up for that right away and have a look at how it did on the plants and
remarkably better
it was up to an 88% which means it thought all of the Genus right and
Just one of the species it didn't get correct in my trial of these four test plants that I had
I will also say that with that subscription
It looks like it has some other neat features
that either allow you to connect with the community or share your
Share your images or learn more about plants as you're going along
So I thought it was probably a fairly good value proposition. And again only about thirty dollars a year the third one
I tried really surprised me
it was called Plant Net and it was scored really well in the App Store up 4.5 in terms of its overall approval rating and
So I wanted to see what this was about and actually it was outstanding. This one is completely free
Doesn't run ads so it's a compute. It's community supported project of education and research
so it's a public enterprise and and what I found when I tested it on the different plants is it was extremely
accurate now one thing I will say about
Plant net is that it was a little confusing in terms of its screens
if you go on to the app, it's gonna ask you first of all to choose a
Flora group that you're asking for I chose world flora because it was the largest and it gave me really really good results
But there's also ones where you can choose the floor of South America the floor of Canada
useful plants and so on and I think that your results may vary depending on which database you signup for the
Second thing it does is as you choose the picture if you close up on for instance Cornish kousa was one of my subjects
You may say fruit instead of flowers
so it asks you to specify between flowers bark fruit or other features and
And that I assume will help it to ID correctly
The picture wasn't too much of a hassle, but it's something different than the other apps
So I thought it points it out here overall and had really really good accurate results
And I have a lot of fun afterwards going out to the field and trying some winter plant ID with it
So I'll tell you about that in a minute. The fourth one. I tried was called leaf snap
No, leaf snap is different in that. It is ad-supported
So every time you do a plant ID, it's going to ask you to watch an ad for 30 seconds or a skippable ad
Which is no big deal
I guess if it has good results that seems like a fair proposition to me as compared to the subscription model
I guess maybe not as nice as plant net which was free, but
Also fairly good
One thing I did note about it, though
And it had good results and good readings is that it seemed to follow the plant net IDs
Almost exactly
It asks the same questions whether to go for flower or bark or fruit and then it gives the same answers it
almost seemed like it was just using the database of plant net and then
Inserting ads to make some money off of it
I don't know if this is true or not
But I can't recommend it from the point of view of its
giving me the exact same results as a free public supported or community supported piece of software and
It makes me watch pads in the mean time
so I would probably go back to plant net as my
Recommendation because the results were just as good and you don't have to watch the ads
After testing the apps on those four initial images I had saved on my phone
I thought I'd go out and have some fun
trying them on winter landscape plants and see how they did and I have to say the one that stood out was
Planting that I mean once I picked the world flora category
It had no problem
getting
close to a hundred percent ID on everything that I showed it once I keyed in either it was the fruit or the flower or
the bark one that I chose to look at was one called Acer griseum - the paper bark maple and
That one has coppery
coloured bark as well as a
Distinctive peeling bark and once I told it it was the barcode is looking at plant net had no problem identifying
It it also had a great time picking out anything that was flowering this time of year my hellebores. It had no trouble with
The mahonia that was in the landscape. It had no problem with sweet box. It did straightaway
So it it did a great job. It was a lot of fun
So I'm feeling I'm gonna keep this on my phone because it's free because it's ads not no ads to watch anything else
There's no downside this app at all. So I'm gonna keep it on my phone
I would say the other ones were all worthwhile for
The time that I tried them with the exception of that plant lens
Which was just garbage and I wouldn't even keep it on my phone for one day. Alright, that's it for the plant ID apps
I hope you enjoyed and if you have any questions for me or even plant ID questions
Let me know in the comments below the video and thank you for watching