Kress said it will allow users to easily learn about the plant diversity in their yards and parks. The collection began in 1848 and is among the world's 10 largest plant collections. National Herbarium at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. It's also the first real chance for citizens to directly access some of the science based on the nearly 5 million specimens kept by the U.S. "I mean that's millions and millions and millions of trees, so that would be really neat." "This is going to be able to populate a database of every tree in the United States," Kress said. The project evolved, though, with the emergence of smartphones to become a new way for citizens to contribute to research. Smithsonian research botanist John Kress, who created the app with engineers from Columbia University and the University of Maryland, said it was originally conceived in 2003 as a high-tech aid for scientists to discover new species in unknown habitats.
It has been downloaded more than 150,000 times in the first month, and its creators expect it to continue to grow as it expands to Android phones.īy this summer, it will include all the trees of the Northeast and eventually will cover all the trees of North America. Leafsnap debuted in May, covering all the trees in New York's Central Park and Washington's Rock Creek Park. Users make the final identification and share their findings with the app's growing database to help map the population of trees one mobile phone at a time.
In seconds, it returns a likely species name, high-resolution photographs and information on the tree's flowers, fruit, seeds and bark.
The free iPhone and iPad app, called Leafsnap, instantly searches a growing library of leaf images amassed by the Smithsonian Institution. Scientists have developed the first mobile app to identify plants by simply photographing a leaf. If you've ever wondered what type of tree was nearby but didn't have a guide book, a new smartphone app allows users with no formal training to satisfy their curiosity and contribute to science at the same time.
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