Identify any plant. Find every record of it in the world's herbaria.

Set up photo identification

Photo identification uses Pl@ntNet — a research-grade neural network for plant ID used by botanists worldwide. You need a free API key (about 2 minutes to set up). The free tier allows up to 500 identifications per day.

1. Open my.plantnet.org and click "Sign up"
2. Verify your email and log in
3. Go to your account → "API key"
4. Copy that key and paste it below

Your key is stored only in this browser, never sent anywhere except directly to Pl@ntNet. You can change or remove it anytime.

Optional: share annotations with the community

If you want to contribute your "False positive / Confirmed / Needs review" annotations to the public community record, paste a GitHub Personal Access Token with public_repo scope. Reads are always public — you only need a token to post annotations. The token stays in your browser; it's never sent anywhere except directly to GitHub.

Recommended scope: public_repo only. The community archive lives at TheoryofShadows/specimen-finder-annotations.

My garden

Your saved species. Stored only in this browser. Click any entry to re-run the search.

About Specimen Finder

Plants matter to ecology, medicine, conservation, and food systems. Their records — physical specimens pressed and stored in herbaria, sometimes for centuries — are the foundation of botanical knowledge. But the records aren't perfect. Specimens get mislabeled, misidentified, or filed under outdated names. Important records sit in collections with no one able to flag what needs attention.

Specimen Finder is a small tool aimed at that gap. Given a species, it queries the global aggregated record (GBIF, which pulls from 1,800+ herbaria), and applies statistical checks to flag records that look unusual — far from the typical range, very early or very late dates, missing coordinates, data quality issues. Each flag includes its reasoning and a direct link to the source record so you can verify, dispute, or follow up.

The tool doesn't replace expert judgment. It surfaces candidates for it. Researchers can export results, cite specimens, and prioritize their attention. Curious people can see how the global botanical record actually works.

No data is stored on a server. No accounts. No tracking. Your Pl@ntNet API key, if you use one, lives only in your browser.

Multiple matches

Several plants are known by that name. Pick the one you meant: