FloraQuest app puts a botanist in your pocket

Alan Weakley wants to help you identify the hot-pink wildflower that catches your eye on morning dog walks and distinguish between a tulip tree and a sweet gum without having to lug around a guide that could double as a cornerstone.

As director of the UNC Herbarium at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, Weakley has spent years digitizing and synthesizing botanical information to make it more user-friendly. Now, he and a team he leads have introduced a mobile plant-identification app called FloraQuest: Northern Tier. It’s the first of five regional FloraQuest apps in development.

FloraQuest’s database filters and sorts based on the most likely possible species a user is trying to identify.

The word “flora,” in addition to referring to plant life in general, is traditionally used by botanists to describe detailed, comprehensive and (typically) massive books that synthesize findings from thousands of scientific papers into a useful form that enables plant identification and provides basic information about species. FloraQuest users can access the same information in the field from their phone or tablet — even without internet access — and learn about plant habitats, ranges, blooms and more. It’s like walking around with a botanist in your pocket.

Weakley has been working for 35 years to develop a new flora of the southeastern United States. He decided 15 years ago to modernize his approach by putting the flora in a digital database, which is available for free download, a decision in line with Weakley’s belief in making data accessible to a wide audience. That database gave rise to FloraQuest.

“Historically, floras tended to be big fat tomes that were often 1,000 or 1,500 pages long. They were published infrequently and were written with a lot of technical language. They were sort of written by Ph.D. biologists for Ph.D. biologists,” Weakley said. “Part of the philosophy that I have with the overall flora project is to change that paradigm. I think we need tools that can engage a much broader and more diverse public to care about and be interested in the plants around them.”

The goal of the Southeastern Flora Project, Weakley said, is outreach: to make information about plants in the region more accessible. The desire to see a diversity of users, including many without a scientific background, comes from Weakley’s childhood experiences growing up in a rural area.

“My parents knew a lot of plants and animals. I grew up with field guides and learning about birds, snails, beetles, plants and all. And I think that that ought to be available to everyone in 2023 as well,” said Weakley. “The accessibility of the app to a broad diversity of people is really exciting. It’s something that my mom could have used.”

The app is a game changer, said Emily Oglesby, communications and exhibits coordinator for the North Carolina Botanical Garden.

“For me, learning to identify the plants and animals I’m sharing this space and time with is like learning my neighbor’s name. It makes me feel grounded, part of the community of living things that calls this place home,” Oglesby said. “FloraQuest offers me the opportunity to expand my knowledge and skills into more complicated taxonomy. I’ll be using it to identify plants at work, but I’m definitely using it in my free time as well.”

The graphic key has icons that represent various characteristics, such as leaf shape, flower color, size and more, that can be selected based on the plant being identified. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)

The app’s database of photographs and plant characteristics lets users filter through thousands of options to find and identify species. The app’s visual emphasis, most obvious in the graphic key — which works like a decision tree to help you home in on a particular plant — opens a door to users unfamiliar with botany terminology. Plus, the in-app glossary quickly defines technical terms when they do pop up.

“We’re empowering university students and high school students. We’re empowering professionals who work for state or federal conservation agencies or nonprofit organizations. We’re empowering people to have great access to this information, to help them describe what’s around them, find rare species and then work to conserve them,” Weakley said.

Range map of the region covered by the Southeastern Flora Project.

FloraQuest: Northern Tier covers a swath of the eastern U.S. that includes Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., as well as southern portions of Illinois, Indiana, New York and Ohio. The app includes more than 5,800 wildflowers, trees, shrubs, grasses and other vascular plants. While not specific to North Carolina, the Northern Tier app includes 97% of common species in the state and can be used successfully in the Chapel Hill area with results filtered for Virginia.

The next app, scheduled to be released in 2024, will cover the Carolinas and Georgia. After that, the developers plan to release three more FloraQuest apps. Together, the apps will cover five regions and 25 states in the Southeast.

Whether you’re hiking in the mountains or strolling through your backyard, FloraQuest gives you a high-tech connection to the natural world.

FloraQuest: Northern Tier is available for both iOS and Android devices. Learn more about the app.