Ever wish you knew the name of the plants and flowers you come across on a daily basis or while strolling through a garden? Well, now you can … on your smartphone! There are plenty of plant and flower identification apps which not only give you the name, but also their characteristics, genus, origin, and growing tips, too.

If you can’t stop by your friendly, top-rated florist for Anchorage, Bagoy’s Florist and Home, to ask our floral experts for information on plants and flowers, then just download one of these popular apps.

Highly-Rated Plant Identification Apps

PlantSnap

This free app has over 500,000 species of flowers, plants, succulents, mushrooms, and cacti in its database and over 150 million images. This app offers up quick identification from a photo of a plant, leaf, or part of a plant with the use of artificial intelligence technology. Tutorials help those who are new to the program and offer tips on the best way to take a photo of the plant you’re interested in. If your plant is not already in the database, you can save it, thus adding to the continuous learning feature of this app.

LeafSnap

With beautiful, high-resolution images of leaves, flowers, seeds, petioles, bark, and fruit, LeafSnap identifies tree and plant species from photographs of their leaves. Developed by the Smithsonian Institute and Columbia University, this free mobile app includes trees of the Northeastern U.S. and Canada and will soon include trees of the entire continental US.

PlantNet

A popular, free app, PlantNet utilizes visual recognition software to scan your photo and provide potential matches. After uploading an image, you are asked to choose whether it’s a leaf, stem, flower, or fruit to enhance accuracy. This app aims to give you a better understanding of all the different varieties of plants living in nature around us, such as flowering plants, trees, ferns, vines, grasses, and cacti. All images uploaded are collected and studied by scientists to get a better understanding of plant biodiversity and how to preserve it.

PictureThis

PictureThis is a flower and plant identification app which uses AI to identify a large variety of flora. With a claim of 99% accuracy, the developers consider this app like having a “botanist in your pocket.” PictureThis can also help identify plant diseases and offers a good deal of information on a particular item, how to care and grow plants, controlling pests, and more. It also provides a social network for plant and flower lovers. This app is subscription-based but does offer a free 7-day trial.

Plant ID Apps Honorable Mentions

A few more plant identification apps worth checking out are:

• FlowerChecker
• What’s That Flower?
• Plantix
• SmartPlant
• NatureGate

Don’t forget about the wildflowers!