Plant apps and requests for id

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Often people come here with requests to identify a plant.

Everyone I think now knows about plant apps. Is it reasonable to think that what they are asking is “what do the gardeners of mumsnet think this is?” and not “please can you look this up on a plant app for me?”

A recent thread has been swamped with the wrong id, and if the poster merely goes by popular vote, they are going to go away with the wrong answer.

I‘m not sure everyone does know about plant apps and sometimes (or so it seems to me) the OP is simply asking “what is this lovely plant I saw in the park/in my grandma’s garden?” etc. But I agree the plant identification threads are full of answers that are not just slightly off but ridiculously, spectacularly wrong. The problem, I suspect, is that the plant apps match for colour and general shape but can’t deal with scale or geographical distribution and so their identifications need to be sense-checked instead of blindly followed.

<<stomps off in composty huff>>

Earlier today we had a plant app identifying a snapdragon seedling as a Trillium.

Yes, exactly! And another suggestion was a wildflower endemic to New England - very, very unlikely to have come out of a seed packet in (although I’m making an assumption here) the U.K.

I must admit my first attempt will be a plant app but even with my little knowledge I can see they are often wildly inaccurate (especially the Siri one on Apple photos). I come here for true verification or if the plant app is obviously wrong or vague. Or for more detail - yes I know it’s a rose or a fruit tree thanks but can anyone tell me which one.
I think they do have their uses but if I’m asking on a forum it will will be because I need more accurate information from some one with expertise like @MereDintofPandiculation

I can understand why people use ID apps but I think they take the joy and learning out of it, and like you say, they're frequently wrong (I certainly wouldn't rely on them).

I've spent years learning the different types of plants (both horticultural and wild) and that knowledge means I can recognise families and genera, even species (although not always). If I just point a phone at it, where's the learning? Mind you, I'm the kind of person who spends their weekends poking around in bogs and ravines looking at interesting plants 😁

Apps have their uses, but I'm very happy with my brain and books. I love an ID request and am always happy when friends send me photos of plants to ID.

I love the queries too but get frustrated at some of the photos especially ones that don't include a clear shot of both leaves and flowers. There was a peony on here the other day and from the flower alone some of the guesses as to what it was included cistus & cosmos. I've had some bizarre answers on plant apps too so it's great to get a reality check on here.

That photo did actually include the leaves, just not showing the join between leaves and the stems with the flowers on. But too many people don’t even look at the leaves when making an identification. @40friedfish Did you see the thread where an app “identified” a tray of snapdragon seedlings as a Trillium?

@MereDintofPandiculation I did see the thread on the snapdragon seedlings and was so impressed that anyone could identify them from 4 leaves. I love these threads, entertaining and informative. I'm a middling level gardener, but there's always so much more to learn from people keen to share their knowledge.

That was me (humble brag). It was luck that I’ve grown snapdragons from seed and so know what the seedlings look like, but this does (I think) reinforce MereDint’s argument about using knowledge, not a misplaced hunch or an unreliable identification from an app.

After you've been growig seeds for several years, and if you take a stingy approach to plant labels, you tend to get good at recognising seedlings.

I usually label the initial pot, to know what I'm looking for. But once I've pricked them out and potted them up individually, I abandon labels. I'm certainly not going to write out a label for every one of say a5 different pots!
Some seedlings re instantly recognisable, like snapdragon.

I did come unstuck this year when a few of my purple sprouting seedlings turned into kohl rabi!