Just 15-20 years ago, novice florists needed to spend a lot of time to understand what plant fell into their hands and how to care for this miracle of nature. Even with the Internet at hand, it was not always easy to find information. What can we say about books and magazines?
But today, thanks to the development of Internet technologies, identifying a plant and learning how to care for it is not difficult. You just need to understand how to do it correctly. I’m not a big expert on indoor plants, but I’m great at searching for information on the World Wide Web. And using the example of searching for plant names, I want to share my experience.
Ask the experts for the name of the flower
Perhaps this is the most reliable way. Modern technologies allow you to instantly upload a photo of a plant to a forum or community within a social network. And knowledgeable people will always tell you.
Forums
Yes, yes, forums are still alive and well. And most importantly, they are seated mainly by people with extensive experience in floristry and gardening. To ask a question, simply register, write a message in an existing topic (if there is one, it will be on the main screen) or create a new one with a question about the plant and attach a photo. Here is a list of forums with the largest number of active members:
- Your Garden,
- Our Dacha,
- Your garden.
The only drawback here is that due to the outdated mechanics of communication on forums, you will not receive an answer right away. But you might be lucky if an expert is online and immediately reads your message.
Text recognition and speech
The smartphone camera has replaced the pen and notepad: we photograph the necessary information, rather than copy it onto a piece of paper. Alice treats photographs with letters in a special way. Firstly, it can recognize printed text - it converts a picture into characters that can be inserted into a text editor or sent in a letter. If there is a phone number in the photo, Alice will offer to dial it, and if there is a link, open it in the browser. Secondly, she can voice what she has written. This function is useful for those who find it difficult to read small letters: for example, children or people with low vision.
Communities on social networks
The principle here is the same as on the forums. Join the community, upload a photo of your flower and ask members to tell you what it is called. As practice shows, you will have to wait some time to receive an answer.
Popular communities of gardeners and florists on VKontakte
- GARDEN FAIRY - Dacha. Garden;
- Blooming garden. Country house. Garden;
- Cottage Garden Vegetable garden.
Follow the link, write your question in the discussion thread and add a photo of the plant to the post.
Popular communities of gardeners and florists in Odnoklassniki
- World of indoor plants and flowers;
- Community of gardeners and gardeners.
In Odnoklassniki, to ask community members to identify a flower, you will need to create a new entry, for this:
- Join the group.
- Open the menu.
- Write a message asking to identify the plant.
To add a photo, click on the paperclip icon in the body of the message and select “Photo” from the menu that appears.
On what devices can you check your similarity to stars?
The new application can be downloaded on iPhone, iOS and Android. You can download the updated program using special links for these devices.
For iOS, the user needs to go to the AppStore, find the updated Yandex application with Alice in order to download it.
For Android devices, the user should open PlayMarket and do the same operation as for iOS.
The Yandex application with the Alice voice assistant is also available for personal computers with the Windows 7, 8, 10 operating system. However, the functionality of the voice assistant is limited to beta resources.
Online services
This method of searching for the name of a plant by appearance at first glance seems reliable, but in fact it is almost useless for a person without a biological education. The point is that you need to know the correct terminology. Personally, I couldn’t even find the violet as described. But since such sites exist, one must think that someone is using them, and I have no right to ignore them.
Happyflora.ru
To find out the name of a plant on the Happyflora.ru website, you need to fill out a form by checking the boxes next to the appropriate characteristics. And although the site has all the necessary information that will help you make a choice, it will take an unprepared person a lot of time to search.
There are many more similar sites, but this one is different in that here you can identify a plant from a photo. For this:
- Follow this link.
- Upload a photo of a flower using the special form.
- Wait until the administration or one of the active users of the site responds.
In my opinion, such online services are not the easiest way. They respond faster on forums and social networks, but searching through the form without a biological education is unrealistic.
Who is the author of this skill?
The Yandex company launched the Yandex Dialogues program, which allows third-party organizations and ordinary users to register the creation of skills. Any user who is familiar with the python program can participate in the development of skills.
One of the first companies developing skills for Alice Yandex was Papa John's. They created a function for ordering and delivering pizza.
Alice's Facial Resemblance skill was developed by Yandex. The program was officially presented by Matvey Kireev.
Which actors, presenters and singers are found in Alice's comparisons?
Alice's face comparison skill has the widest range of celebrities. Here you can meet Hollywood film actors and pop-rock performers, including Barbra Streisand, Johnny Depp, Charlie Sheen, Jet Li, Jennifer Lopez and many others.
Russian TV presenters, popular singers and, of course, actors have also been added to the entertainment function. For example, among them you can find the presenter of the show on the Russia TV channel Boris Korchevnikov, Pavel Volya, the presenter of the Comedy Club on the TNT channel, Andrei Malakhov and many other popular television journalists.
There are also famous Russian actors - there are photographs of Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Konstantin Khabensky, Alena Khmelnitskaya. Among the famous singers whose similarities the user can compare thanks to Alice’s skill are, for example, Alena Sviridova and Natasha Koroleva.
The database of the “Compare Face” function is unusually extensive, since the widest taste of users was taken into account.
Search by photo in Google or Yandex
If you don’t have time to wait, then you can try your luck on a photo search service. This method may seem the most effective, but it has a drawback that is not obvious to an inexperienced user - you will not be able to understand whether you got the correct result or not.
Our website already has instructions on recognizing faces in photographs, which describes the process of using search engines to search by photo. It works the same way with flowers.
Yandex
According to my personal observations, the image search service in Yandex works better than in Google, so we’ll start with that.
To find the name of a flower from a photo, follow these steps:
- Open the Yandex Images service page.
- Go to the form to upload images.
- Drag the image into the special field and wait for the service to perform a search.
- If the search engine is guaranteed to recognize your plant, it will even provide a description from Wikipedia. By rummaging through the pages provided, you can find out the exact name of the plant in Latin.
To find an image using Google, go to the main page of the search engine and follow the instructions:
- Click on the stylized camera icon to open the image upload form.
- Select the “Upload image” section and click on the “Select file” button.
- In the window that appears, select the location of your photo and double-click on it with the left mouse button.
- Wait while the service performs a search.
At this stage, serious shortcomings of the Google service begin. Most likely, it will not immediately show you the exact answer, and you will have to look through the proposed options from similar ones to find the name of your plant. It is worth considering that not everywhere you will come across exactly the same flower as yours. Perhaps there is a similar one, but of a different variety.
How to recognize a plant from a photograph
Technology now allows us to do a lot using the Internet. Neural networks and artificial intelligence have long simplified human life to the point of impossibility. Once upon a time, in order to determine the name, species and genus of a plant, you would have to go to the library and look for the corresponding encyclopedia. Now this is in your pocket, thanks to the Internet and various resources. To recognize a flower in a photo, you need to upload it to a special application or service.
Smartphone applications
Finding suitable applications was not the easiest task. Some are only paid by subscription, others ask you to install your camera in the root directory of the phone (I strongly do not recommend experimenting with such applications). And the third ones have such a low rating that you don’t even want to try. But a couple of applications were still found.
Plant ID
Plant ID is a paid and non-Russian application. And this is already a serious drawback to be excluded from the list. But one big plus outweighs the disadvantages: the application recognizes plants quite well. Plus, it has three free definitions per day, which is enough for occasional use.
To find out the name of your plant using Plant ID, follow these steps:
- Launch the application and close the payment message (a cross appears in the upper left corner 2-3 seconds after loading).
- Click on the image icon on the bottom panel.
- Click the green “Add new plant” button.
- Select the type of plant being identified.
- Take a photo of the flower so as to capture the plant as much as possible and not catch anything unnecessary.
- Wait until the application performs recognition (may take 2-3 minutes even on modern smartphones).
The most suitable option will always be shown at the top. As far as I know, my flower is Aloe Vera.
PlantSnap - will help you identify the plant
The PlantSnap mobile application is designed to determine plant species and their names. The program has access to a database that stores information about more than 300,000 trees and flowers. At the moment, the application easily identifies about 70,000 different plants. Also, every month the database is replenished by approximately 50,000 plants.
Such a program should be installed for everyone whose life is closely connected with gardening. After uploading a photo, the application analyzes it and finds matches with existing photographs. It also shows how much, in percentage terms, the plant in the photo resembles a certain species.
- Install the PlantSnap application on Android or iPhone and launch it.
- Upload a photo of the type of plant and whose name you want to determine.
- Wait for the results. This usually takes a few seconds.
The program will not just give a short answer, but will provide all the detailed information and classification.
