3 Simple Ways to Identify a Plant or Flower in Your Garden

There’re probably thousands and thousands of different plants and flowers that exist in the world. Most of the time it happens that there’s a plant or flower in your garden you don’t have any idea about, and to find any further information about it you’ve to know its name.

Well to find out the name, you don’t need to show it to a horticulturist. Of course, you can bring someone who has immense knowledge about various plants and flowers but there’re some easy ways to find out the name of the flower or plant yourself with a picture of it.

1. Google Lens

You may or may not know Google Lens but using Google Lens to find the name of a flower or plant in your garden is the quickest way of all. You all know Google, and how it works like you have to type something and lots of related search results appear in front of you. But if you don’t know the name of the flower or plant, what’re you going to type in Google, right?

In Google Lens, you don’t have to type anything. You just need to click a photo of the plant in Google Lens or select from the gallery if you’ve already captured one and Google Lens will show you the name of that plant within a second.

One thing to remember is that it’s not always right, but most of the time Google Lens will find out the correct name of the flower or plant.

2. Get an App

Downloading an app to identify the name of a plant or flower instead of just using Google Lens may see a little extra work because, in both, Google Lens and plant finder apps you’ve to click or upload the image of the plant you want to find, and they both will scan and match it with similar plants in their databases to show you the most relevant results. But there’re some additional features inside an app that may be useful for you so, downloading an app could be worth it.

There are dozens and dozens of app on the Play Store for finding the name of a flower or plant. You can choose anyone as all of them can identify a plant from its photo but may prefer one app over another because they’ve different additional features.

When you search for a plant in some apps, they will also show you other information along with its name such as scientific name, origin, and how to care for it. Also, you can save your favorite plant, see what plants you’ve searched for in the past, and also ask in the community inside the app to help you identify the plant if the app is not able to do it.

3. Ask inside a Facebook Group or Forum

How about asking people who know more plants and flowers than you do. If you aren’t able to identify a plant through Google Lens or any app that you’ve installed, there are some places on the web where you can go and post a picture of the plant you want to find the name of, and some people from the community where you’ve posted the photo will tell you the name.

I came to know about this when I was scrolling my Facebook and saw this post that someone posted inside a Facebook group that I was also a part of.

This plant is called “Sea Holly” which I can know from the answers which this post has got in replies. Maybe this is not the quickest way to find out the name of a plant but it’s the most accurate I would say because the picture of the plant or flower is getting seen by many people, and you would get the same answer from most of them.

There’re many groups on Facebook on gardening where if you just post a photo asking “Anyone knows the name of this?” you will definitely get to know the answer in replies. In fact, I’ve found groups on Facebook the other day called “What is the name of this plant?” and “Name that Plant”. I’m not joking, literally, these are the entire groups filled with thousands of members just the find out the name of flowers and plants.

Even if you’re a part of any gardening forum, you can do the same thing over there to find out the name of any plant.

Is there any way to find the name of a plant or flower without a photo?

You could possibly find the name of the plant by searching on Google for some other details of the plant, for example, “plant with red flowers and long leaves”, look for the images, and then see if there’re any images of the plant which you want to identify. You may see the name of that plant below the image as I found it here. It’s called Pentas, and this is the exact same plant in my garden.

There’s also an online plant identifier where you can enter the description about the plant but you’ve to enter a lot of information and most of the time it won’t find anything. So not the best way.

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