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I'll take a $12 field guide over a plant ID app any day
Everyone in my local native plant group keeps pushing me to download this fancy scanner app that IDs stuff from a photo, but it kept calling my spotted bee balm a weed and got a trillium wrong twice. I spent $12 on a used Peterson field guide at a shop in Ann Arbor and it's gotten me way further, since it actually makes me look at leaf shape and where the flower sits on the stem. The app gives you an answer, the book makes you learn one. Has anyone else had an app just flat out miss something growing right in front of them?
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piper_kim24d ago
Apps are getting better all the time though, and the good ones let you correct a wrong ID so the next person's photo gets a better answer. A used guide from 1998 doesn't update when taxonomy changes, and half the trilliums got renamed since then anyway, so you could be learning names that are out of date. Nobody says you have to pick one forever, use the app to get you in the ballpark and the book to slow down and study the details. The real problem with the apps is lazy use, not the tool itself, and a $12 book teaches you nothing if you just flip to the picture and move on. Also not for nothing, some of us have bad eyes or shaky hands and a camera gets us further than squinting at a key at dusk.
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