What plant is this? Free plant identifier by photo

• No account, no card

  Nothing to install, nothing to cancel, no trial that quietly renews.

• Names checked against GBIF

  Anything that does not resolve to a real accepted species is discarded.

• Ranked answers, honest confidence

  Alternatives and a real score, rather than one answer presented as certain.

• Up to 3 photos, read together

  A clear leaf close-up can settle what an ambiguous wide shot cannot.

What plant is this? Take a photo and find out

You do not need to know anything about botany to use this. Point your camera at the plant, add the picture above, and you get a name in seconds. Most people ask what plant is this while standing in front of something they do not recognise, so the tool is built to answer fast.

It works just as well at home. Maybe a houseplant came with no label, or somebody gave you one and never said the name. Add a photo and you get the common name plus the scientific name, which is the one that stays the same in every country.

How this plant identifier works

Your photo goes through five steps, and each one has a reason behind it.

1. 1Hidden data is stripped from your picture, including the GPS spot your phone saved. Your location never travels with the image.
2. 2The photo is shrunk to a size the model reads well. Bigger files do not give better answers.
3. 3The tool checks whether a very similar photo has been identified before. If so, you get that answer instantly.
4. 4If the photo is new, all your pictures go to a vision model together. Reading them as a set beats reading them one by one.
5. 5Every scientific name is checked against a real species database before it reaches you.

Every name is checked against a species database

This step is what makes the plant identification worth trusting. AI models can invent species names that sound completely real. The Latin looks right, the format looks right, and the plant does not exist. You would never spot it just by reading the answer.

So every name goes to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, better known as GBIF. Museums, universities and botanic gardens all feed records into it. If a name does not match a real accepted species, the tool drops it before you ever see it. That is exactly what the name confirmed mark on a result means.

How to identify a plant by picture

Better photos give better answers, and the gap is wider than most people expect. These four habits help the most.

• Shoot in daylight or bright shade. Flash washes out pale flowers and hides the detail in the middle.
• Include a flower, fruit or seed head if the plant has one. These carry far more information than leaves.
• Step back far enough to show how the leaves sit on the stem. Whether they grow in pairs or alternate often decides the answer.
• Keep one plant in the frame. A mixed border confuses every identifier, including this one.

You can add up to three photos of the same plant. The tool reads them together, so a sharp leaf close up can settle a wide shot that was not clear on its own.

A plant identifier for flowers, leaves and trees

Different parts of a plant carry different clues. Because of that, the site has three tools rather than one, and each looks for different things.

The flower identifier

It reads petal count, whether the bloom looks the same all the way round, and how flowers sit along the stem. Reach for it when you want to know what flower is this. Colour is a weak clue, since roses and tulips come in many colours yet stay one species.

The leaf identifier

It reads the shape of the leaf, its edge and the pattern of the veins. This is also the one to use for what kind of tree is this, because a tree leaf holds a lot of information. Lay the leaf flat and fit the whole outline in the frame.

The main plant identifier

It weighs the whole plant at once, so growth habit and leaf arrangement count as much as any single part. Use it when you have the living plant in front of you rather than one piece of it.

Identify houseplants, garden plants and weeds

Common houseplants are the easiest to name, because so many photos of them exist. Monstera deliciosa, pothos, snake plant, ZZ plant and fiddle leaf fig all come back reliably. Garden favourites such as lavender, hosta and jade plant do well too.

Weeds and vegetable seedlings work as well, though they are harder. Many young plants look alike before they flower. In that case the tool may give you the genus and say it cannot go further, which is an honest answer rather than a failure.

If your plant looks unwell rather than unknown, the plant problem checker handles plant disease identification instead. It names the plant first, then works out what is going wrong with it.

What this plant identifier cannot do

No tool gets everything right, so here are the weak spots stated plainly.

• Named garden varieties usually come back as the wild parent species, because the tool names species rather than cultivars.
• Grasses, sedges and rushes are hard for every identifier, and they often need parts a photo cannot show.
• One leaf from a close relative may not be enough. Willows and poplars often need bark or overall shape as well.
• Rare plants do worse than common ones, simply because fewer photos of them exist.

So treat any answer as a starting point. Look up the species you were given, read what it should look like, then check that against your plant. Stopping at the name is the most common mistake people make with any identification tool.

Questions about the plant identifier