Download Plantnet APK Free on Android

Considered the Shazam of plants, Plantnet is a free application that allows you to identify plants. It helps you know the name of a plant you come across. It is therefore a tool that will help you become a botany ace.

What is Plantnet?

Plantnet was developed by a consortium of French research institutes, including INRA, CIRAD, IRD and Inria in partnership with a network of amateur botanists, namely the Tela Botanica association. This application was designed to allow all gardeners or the curious to put a name on all the plants they cross. The platform therefore corresponds to a digital botanical encyclopedia which acts by recognizing flora and making it possible to identify all kinds of plants.

Available on the AppStore and on Google Play, Plantnet is also available in a web version. To provide the vernacular name and scientific name of the plant, it takes just a few seconds. Launched in February 2013, the tool has since more than 4.5 million downloads. Today it is used by more than 40,000 users per day.

Close-up on how Plantnet works

To identify a plant with Plantnet, you will only have to take a photo of an organ of it. Subsequently, the application will ask you if it is a flower, a leaf, a fruit, the stem or the bark of the plant. The application is operated by project: geographic or thematic. You must therefore choose the project that suits you. For example, for cultivated or ornamental plants, it is “useful plants”. On the other hand, for the wild plates of France, it is “Western Europe. “

The app is responsible for analyzing the photo from a botanical database. The latter lists more than 13,000 species of plants. Plantnet compares the photo you took with those available on the said database. One or more plants will then be displayed as a result. On each result, you will find a relevance indicator and a photo. Thus, you will be able to refine your knowledge.

To make identification easier, make sure the photo is clear. If you take a picture of a leaf, make sure it is taken in its entirety. The tool can take into account up to 4 parts of the plant to be identified: the leaf, the flower, the stem and the fruit. Thus, the result provided will be more precise. Above all, avoid sending an ambiguous or blurry photo if you really want the application to be operational. Indeed, you will not get a relevant result if the photo has other objects such as a hand or a finger.

All species managed by Plantnet

Plantnet manages thousands of species. The app is able to recognize more than 20,000 species. However, with the regular contribution of stakeholders to the project, this number may gradually increase. In addition, project participants can verify the identifications of other types of plants to avoid errors. The platform will still have to go a long way before being able to identify the entire plant universe, which is now estimated at 360,000 species.

Apart from identifying plants, the application is also able to browse the flora based on a categorization by theme (useful plants, invasive plants, crop weeds), but also by geographical area (Canada, West Indies, Amazonia or even Hawaii or Europe). In addition, Plantnet underwent a notable update in January 2019. This allowed the improvement of already existing tools and the integration of a whole series of new functionalities:

• Multiflora identification: this function allows you to launch the search for the plant taken in photo among all the flora available on the application. The search is not done only in the selected plant category, but at different taxonomic levels in the image galleries among others.
• Filtering of recognized species by family or genus

Understanding the power of this important image bank

The project was launched using annotated images collected by the Tela Botanica association. The Plantnet database was then enriched through a partnership with Encyclopedia Of Life (EOL). This made it possible to add good quality images. It is above all by favoring such partnerships that the application manages to enlarge the areas of the globe that it can cover.

Another important source of power is the contribution by the users themselves. Behind the application is a community which then takes care of evaluating the quality of the images, suggesting or voting on a new plant name. She is also in charge of reporting identification errors. The images are not automatically integrated into the database of the app, it is the users who judge their relevance.

It should be noted that Plantnet will be more precise in its identification as the database is fed with images. Currently, the app has around 660,000 photos.

Using Plantnet is very easy. However, to get the best results, there are a few key points to consider. First of all, you need to download the app on your tablet or smartphone. Then all you have to do is photograph the plant and then indicate whether it is a fruit, a flower or a leaf. This information will allow the tool to tell you which species it is.

To increase your chances of identifying the plant, pay special attention to the photo you send to Plantnet. In fact, the closer and sharper the image, the better your chances of obtaining a precise identification. In the event that the environment is not conducive to taking a correct photo, remember to isolate the plant from other surrounding plants and to properly center the subject in question.

In addition, the camera of your mobile phone must be of good quality. This won’t be much of a concern for you, as most modern phones are fully compatible with this app. However, if you think that you will have difficulty handling your device properly, do not hesitate to bring a blank sheet. You can use it to create an ideal photographic environment, whatever the situation of the plant, without having to pull it out, which would be a real shame.

The main interests of PlantNet

PlantNet has a real societal and scientific interest. Chances are, if you know the plants around you better, you will be better able to protect them. Thanks to the application, this exchange and access to botanical information becomes easier. For the general public, PlantNet can be fun, but it is also willing to meet professional needs.

Indeed, this application can be a real boon for the farmer wishing to know the types of plants that grow on his plot. This type of information can, for example, be useful to him before distributing a herbicide. PlantNet is also a major ally for customs officers faced with a rare plant that can be protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

For the gardener, the application can teach him more about the public or private space that he must embellish and manage. Conversely, botanists can use the app to get an idea of ​​how plants are distributed in space, how they change and so on. Moreover, the contribution of professionals is valued insofar as PlantNet pays more attention to those who demonstrate more skills to identify and validate plants.

The limits of Plantnet

Plantnet lists more than 20,000 species. Despite this, it is possible that a plant is not in the catalog of the application. However, as it is possible for users to contribute to the project by reporting new species, the database can be gradually enriched. An individual can propose images which will then be studied and validated by a team of researchers. However, it will still take a long time before the app can count all the species in the world.

Despite the fact that a categorization by theme (invasive plants, useful plants, etc.) and by country (West Indies, Japan, USA, etc.) has been set up on the application, the information it offers is still elementary. So, you may not be able to identify a plant with Plantnet during your trip abroad and even in the French overseas departments and territories. On the island of Martinique for example, the application lists less than 1,700 plants, which is far from an exhaustive list.

Some similar or complementary applications to Plantnet

Today there are applications similar or complementary to Plantnet. Among the most interesting, we can mention Seek, Plantsnap, LeafSnap or PictureThis. All these platforms are very similar to Plantnet and work on the same principle. On the other hand, Picture Insect (application allowing to identify all kinds of insects), Champignouf (application specializing in mushrooms) and Birdnet (application allowing to recognize birdsong) are all applications that you can use in addition to Plantnet.