Ask your Android phone what that plant is, then check before you act on it

Two sentences from the people who make these apps. PictureThis opens its Google Play listing with over 98% accuracy. Picture Mushroom's terms of use say, in capital letters, that nothing it returns can be used as any basis for eating any mushroom or plant. Neither is a lie. The distance between them is this page. Photo identification is very good at turning no idea into a ranked shortlist of two or three candidates, and cannot take the last step, where a name becomes a decision about your body. So the rule comes first: never eat, brew or put on skin anything because an app named it.

This part is measured. The Victorian Poisons Information Centre and Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria tested three mushroom identification apps on 78 specimens sent to those two bodies in 2020 and 2021, and published in Clinical Toxicology in 2023. Picture Mushroom did best at 49% of specimens, Mushroom Identificator and iNaturalist 35% each; on the poisonous ones alone, 44%, 30% and 40%. The death cap was falsely identified twice by Picture Mushroom and once by iNaturalist. The verdict: not reliable enough to exclude exposure to potentially poisonous mushrooms when used alone.

The apps barely argue. Picture Mushroom's listing promises a mushroom's name, edibility and habitat; the terms of use it links to shout in capitals that no result can be used as any basis for eating any mushroom or plant. The Royal Horticultural Society is shorter: if it is not a food plant, do not eat it.

None of which means fearing a garden: the RHS says serious plant poisoning is very uncommon in the UK, the risk generally low. One caution belongs ahead of the camera work below. Some plants leak sap that burns or blisters skin, so wear gloves.

PlantNet's listing says small details often separate two species of one genus, that flowers, fruits and leaves come first, and that a photograph of the whole plant is often not sufficient to allow a reliable identification. Flora Incognita wants sharp, as close as possible pictures of flower, leaf, bark or fruit. If autofocus keeps hunting at that distance, an app with manual focus control helps, and our camera comparison lists which ones have it.

• Photographs of different organs, not angles on one leaf.
• A ranked shortlist, not a single verdict.
• The same species top across two organs.
• A name plausible for where you stand.
• That name confirmed somewhere other than an app.

Distrust the opposite: one name, one wide shot, a high percentage, no runners up. Three candidates is not failure; on PlantNet's own account that is the right output when small details separate species. For fungi the RHS wants shots from top, sides and underneath, so stem and gills or pores show.

This axis splits the category and the store barely shows it. PlantNet runs as a research project: plantnet.org names CIRAD, INRAE, INRIA and IRD as its trademark owners and publishes open datasets and a counter reading 84,710 species. Flora Incognita's listing names the Technical University of Ilmenau and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena and claims deep learning accuracy well over 90%. Seek's says its recognition comes from observations submitted to iNaturalist.org and partner sites, identified by its community.

PictureThis claims over 400,000 species at over 98% accuracy and names no method, dataset or research body anywhere; its 4.6 star average across more than 780,000 ratings measures how people feel, not how often it is right. Plantix does another job: crop damage detection across 30 major crops. Whoever built it, a fact sheet may arrive in a language you do not read, which is where a translator with a camera mode helps.

• Flora Incognita and PlantNet: no ads label, no in-app purchase line. Flora Incognita's FAQ says completely free of charge and advertising; PlantNet asks for donations.
• Seek by iNaturalist and Google Lens: no ads, no in-app purchases.
• Plantix: Contains ads, in its own header.
• PictureThis: in-app purchases from $1.99 to $49.99 per item.
• Picture Mushroom: from $0.99 to $32.99 per item.

Those are each app's own header row, not the similar apps carousel underneath, which carries other developers' labels. No listing publishes a daily identification limit, so a metered free tier announces itself by stopping you.

Recognition normally runs on a server, the wrong architecture for a wood. One app documents a way to keep collecting when the signal goes: Flora Incognita's FAQ describes an Offline Mode where a phone with no connection still records an observation from three pictures, then identifies it from the observation list once online. No other listing read here claims the same.

Google Lens is the zero effort option, over a billion installs with plant identification among its listed features, though it was last updated on 5 August 2025 and warns that some features need an internet connection. Same reflex as identifying a song playing near you. Going out without signal? Save the map area first.

Every listing carries a Data safety card, and they differ more than the apps. PlantNet declares it may share photos and videos with third parties, matching a description that says openly that your photographs are collected and analysed by scientists. Flora Incognita, Seek and Google Lens each declare no data shared with third parties. Plantix declares sharing location, app activity and device identifiers. PictureThis declares sharing personal info, financial info and three further types.

A permission list here looks alarming and mostly is not. Camera access is the product. Location is the one worth a decision, and switching it off is not free: Flora Incognita's FAQ says sharing location makes identification more accurate and that much of the fact sheet only appears relative to where you are. To see what an app actually used, the Privacy Dashboard logs the last 24 hours; Android's permission controls carry an only while using setting.

This one never asks the app to decide anything. PictureThis advertises a Toxic Plant Warning that flags toxic plants to keep pets, children and family safe. Treat that as a prompt: take the name, then look it up somewhere accountable. The ASPCA publishes toxic and non-toxic lists for dogs, cats and horses and warns they are not all-inclusive. The RHS list, itself not exhaustive, marks foxglove, deadly nightshade, yew, monkshood, lily of the valley and hemlock water dropwort as toxic if eaten.

Both also say what ordinary looks like, which keeps a checklist from becoming panic: the ASPCA notes that eating any plant material may cause vomiting and stomach upset in dogs and cats, and that plants it lists as non-toxic or mildly upsetting are not expected to be life threatening.

If a person has already eaten part of a plant, get advice straight away. In the United States call the Poison Help line on 1-800-222-1222, which America's Poison Centers says gives expert advice 24/7/365 at no cost, and call 911 instead if the person collapses, has a seizure, cannot breathe or cannot be woken. In the United Kingdom the RHS says to seek medical advice immediately at a hospital accident and emergency department, and 999 is the number if the person is unconscious or struggling to breathe. Take a sample of the plant with you, and do not try to make the person sick.

An animal is a different channel. The ASPCA says to contact your vet or its 24 hour animal poison hotline, which in the United States is (888) 426-4435, and to take samples of the plant along. It notes a consultation fee may apply, so the free line above is the human one.

A photograph carries colour, outline and a little texture, and no smell, no feel of a stem, no spore print. So use them for what they are good at: a name for the thing in the hedge, a record of the garden, a term to look up elsewhere. None of that buys permission to swallow. Whether something goes in a pan, a cup or onto skin is settled by a person who knows the species with it in their hand, never by a phone.