Knowing the names of the plants I come across on walks at the PGT is fun and useful. Knowing what I’m seeing helps me better understand the life around me.
Up till now, identifying plants meant flipping through photos in field guides. Now there’s an easier option, a smartphone application called Seek. It uses the power of image recognition technology to identify plants and animals.
I tried “Seek” on our walk today for the first time. It correctly identified more than 60 native plants. It’s very easy to use and on my iPhone, it gave me reports in seconds. Very impressive!
It only made a couple mistakes and occasionally it was unable to get to species and would only report “oak” or “rose”.
This app is free. It was created by iNaturalist and is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society.
I’m sure this is an app I’ll keep on my iPhone for all future walks.
Highly recommended!