What Is the Name of This Plant? How to Find Out

To find the name of a plant, take a sharp photo of its flower, or of a leaf if it is not flowering, and run it through a plant identification app or Google Lens; then check the top suggestion against the plant in front of you. The steps below make that answer more reliable.

The routine:

• Photograph the flower first. In the 2023 test described below, every app identified flowers more accurately than leaves.
• Add a second photo of a different part, such as a leaf, the stem or the whole plant.
• Read the confidence and the alternatives, not only the top name. Several close scores mean the photo did not settle it.
• Compare two or three visible features, such as leaf edge, how leaves attach to the stem and flower shape, with the suggested species.
• If it still is not clear, send the photos to a person: your county Extension office, a local herbarium or a botanic garden.

Our guide on how to take a plant photo an app can read covers framing, light and focus in detail.

Yes. Google Lens, inside the Google app and Google Photos, will suggest a plant name from a photo at no charge. The Peterborough and Area Master Gardeners describe the steps: on Android, open the Google app or Google Photos and tap the Lens icon; on an iPhone, install the Google app and tap Lens; point the camera at the plant and swipe up for results. They also note that allowing location access narrows results to your region.

Google Lens is a general image search rather than a botanical tool. In the 2023 PLOS ONE study below it named the correct species on the first try for 67.86% of flower photos and 55.00% of leaf photos - behind Pl@ntNet and LeafSnap, but ahead of Seek, Plant Snap and iNaturalist.

There are fully free options.

• Pl@ntNet describes itself as open and free to everyone, as an app and a website. It is run by four French public research organisations, CIRAD, INRAE, INRIA and IRD, and its site listed 84,710 species, more than 1.47 billion images and 77 regional floras when we checked on 2026-09-25. It is a citizen science project: your photos can feed its data.
• Google Lens is free inside the Google app and Google Photos.
• County Extension offices in the United States accept plant photos for identification; the Alabama Cooperative Extension System publishes a photo submission guide for this.

PlantLens, the app this site is for, returns candidate species with a confidence indicator and flags a match as low confidence instead of forcing an answer; it also shows a pet and child safety flag for identified species.

Good, but not good enough to trust blindly. One published test that compares the main apps side by side is by Campbell, Peacock and Bacon, published in PLOS ONE in 2023. They photographed 38 species of wild herbaceous flowering plants in their natural habitats at four sites in Ireland - the Burren Nature Sanctuary, Connemara National Park, the University of Galway campus and the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin - and ran 280 flower photos and 280 leaf photos through six apps.

Correct species on the first attempt:

• Pl@ntNet: 88.21% of flowers, 80.36% of leaves, the best in the test.
• LeafSnap: 83.57% of flowers, 77.14% of leaves.
• Google Lens: 67.86% of flowers, 55.00% of leaves.
• Seek: 52.14% of flowers, 22.86% of leaves.
• Plant Snap: 35.71% of flowers, 17.14% of leaves.
• iNaturalist: 3.57% of flowers and 6.79% of leaves at species level, mainly because it often preferred to give a genus rather than a species.

The authors note that none of the apps reached a highly consistent accuracy of over 90%, that every app varied considerably from species to species, and that app results should not be assumed correct, particularly if the species may be toxic. Two practical lessons follow: photograph the flower when there is one, and treat any single app answer as a strong lead rather than a verdict.

When the answer comes back as a spread of similar candidates, more photos of different parts usually settle it. The Alabama Cooperative Extension System's photo guide for plant identification asks for:

• the whole plant, plus middle-distance and close-up shots;
• close-ups of leaves and flowers, and where relevant the growth habit, root system and seed head;
• an object for scale in the frame, such as a hand, a coin or a ruler;
• autofocus centred on the most important part;
• several photos from different angles.

The same set of photos works for an app and for a person, so take them once and use them twice. Our guide to key features that tell plants apart explains what to look for in each shot.

The same method works for a tree or a bush: photograph a leaf against the sky or a plain background, then the bark, then any flowers, fruit or seeds. Leaves alone are harder for apps, as the 2023 test showed, so fruit and flowers matter more on woody plants.

If the question is about spots, insects or a white coating on a plant you already know, you need a pest or disease answer rather than a species name. Our guide to spotting and treating common plant pests covers that, and the Alabama Extension photo guide also covers pest photos for Extension offices.

An app identification is not a safety check. The authors of the 2023 PLOS ONE study specifically warn against assuming a result is correct when the species may be toxic. Do not eat any wild plant, or let a child or pet chew one, on the strength of a photo ID. Confirm with a qualified person first.

If someone may have swallowed part of a plant, call Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222 in the United States. For a pet, call your veterinarian or ASPCA Animal Poison Control on (888) 426-4435. Our list of house plants the ASPCA rates non-toxic to cats shows how much hangs on getting the species right.

Research and drafting for this page were done with the help of AI, and every figure was then checked line by line against the sources listed at the end of the page. Sources were opened on 2026-09-25. If you find a mistake, tell us and we will correct it.

Two narrower guides cover the cases people ask about most. For plants in pots, house plant identification lists the leaf features that separate eight common houseplants, including the leaf-stalk check NC State gives for telling pothos from heartleaf philodendron. For white-flowered, carrot-like weeds, poison hemlock identification explains the smooth, purple-spotted stem that King County's noxious weed program uses to separate it from Queen Anne's lace; every part of poison hemlock can be fatal if eaten.