I'd app?

Does anyone know if there's an app I could download, that would IDa tree if I took a picture of it? I'm pretty good @ IDing most of the native species in my area. But my weak area is evergreens and the ever expanding array of ornimentals. This would be a great feature for my phone. It's just not convenient to haul a bunch of tree books around all the time.

Thanks for your input. Ron

I think identification by photo would be impossible. It would be possible to write a program that could step you through a list of questions. Something like...

http://www.arborday.org/trees/whattree/WhatTree.cfm?ItemID=E6A

It would be very difficult to build a software application that could ID a tree from a photograph. Way too many variables involved, this would require very sophisticated software that would need much more computing muscle than a smartphone can provide.

More achievable would be a tree field guide app that would allow you to narrow down the possibilties using a key guide: tree family, crown form, leave shape, twig and bud form, bark characterics etc.
-AJ

I kinda figured that such an app would be tough to do. I got the idea a while ago when I heard a guy talking about an app he had on his phone for music. He holds his phone up next to a speaker when a song is playing, and it can id the song. I thought it would be nice if there were such a thing for trees.

2chops wrote:

I kinda figured that such an app would be tough to do. I got the idea a while ago when I heard a guy talking about an app he had on his phone for music. He holds his phone up next to a speaker when a song is playing, and it can id the song. I thought it would be nice if there were such a thing for trees.

It's a great idea. Who knows, someday someone might figure out a way to do it. I guess you'd need to feed at least 3 photos to allow software to do the ID: bark detail, overall tree form and leaf or twig/bud images.

Another challenge is that same species can look very different at different ages, bark texture can be totally different, crown form can be totally different, a serious puzzle for automated ID.

Same species growing in different habitat can have very different form. And same species broadly separated by geography can look very different. I've heard that DNA analysis reveals that northern red oak in Wisconsin is more similar genetically to white oak than it is to northern red oak sampled in North Carolina. Trees are tricky beasts, there's so much we don't know about them.
-AJ