The world of gardening has leapt into the 21st century with the creation of LeafSnap, a new mobile phone app, the first of its kind, that can identify a tree’s species by looking at a photograph of the leaf.
Using facial recognition technology to analyze the leaf’s contour, LeafSnap selects a match from its index of species. If it’s not entirely sure it will bring up a list of possibles which you can then browse to determine which tree’s leaf you’re holding. To make this easy, LeafSnap has a botanic dossier on all of its trees, including information about the tree’s habitat, growth, and other specifics (e.g. are the fruits poisonous or sweet?), as well as a collection of photographs that show the tree’s seeds, bark, flowers, and fruits. The tree’s entire life cycle is captured in a pocket-sized album, at very high resolution and the photographs can be magnified to examine it more closely.
The app also invites contributions from users who, having identified a leaf, can tag their tree and this data is then added to a collective map of the different species. While the guide is initially limited to species in the United States, plans are underway to expand its range.