About & instructions

What is Prairie?

Prairie turns every walk through your yard into an act of quiet restoration. Point your phone at a leaf, a bloom, or a stubborn weed, and in seconds you'll know its name, whether it belongs in your state, which butterflies, bees, and birds depend on it, and — if it's an invader — the native beauties you can plant in its place.

Why it matters

North America has lost more than a third of its native plant habitat, and with it, three billion birds since 1970. But every yard is a patch of the wild waiting to come back. Prairie makes it easy to see what's already thriving, which invaders are quietly crowding it out, and which keystone species — the oaks, milkweeds, and goldenrods that feed hundreds of caterpillars and pollinators — you can add next. Share your finds with neighbors, HOAs, and garden clubs to turn a single yard into a corridor.

How to use

  1. Sign in with Google. Your scans save to your account.
  2. Open Settings and choose your home state (defaults to Illinois). If you change state later, Prairie will offer to migrate existing scans so the native / keystone / endangered fields update too.
  3. Tap Identify. Snap a photo with your camera, or upload up to 12 photos at once from your phone. Picked more than 12? Prairie holds the rest and shows a Continue with next 12 button when the batch finishes — you can queue an entire garden without losing anything.
  4. Applying a bulk tag? Type it in the Tag all in this batch box above the queue (e.g. "back yard"). Prairie will tag every plant in the batch when it finishes, and remembers the tag across Continue with next 12 so a large upload stays consistent.
  5. Review the result: native status, sun preference, keystone species, common pests + chemical-free remedies, and conservation status — all specific to your state. A Companion plants panel suggests 2-3 species that pair well with what you found (native ones are marked with a state-native badge), and every Learn more link opens through a safety-first dialog so you always know where you're going before you leave the app.
  6. Keep a mini care journal on any saved plant — jot down watering days, first bloom, pest sightings, or anything you want to remember. Each note is dated (defaults to today), can be prefixed with a gardening emoji (🌸 bloom, 💧 water, 🐛 pest, and more), and signed-in users can attach a 15-second voice memo. Everything lives on the plant's Result page.
  7. If the AI got it wrong, tap Wrong plant? Try again — it re-runs with the previous guess excluded.
  8. If a plant is non-native or a weed, tap Find native alternatives for state-appropriate swaps.
  9. Your scans live in Plants Identified. Search, filter, sort, and share from there.

Organize your gallery

  • Add short tags (e.g. "back yard", "front garden") to any plant. On the gallery, tap Select → tick multiple plants → Tag to apply the same tag to all of them at once.
  • Once you have tags, a Tag row appears above the grid. Tap a tag to narrow the view; tap several to combine them (a plant must have all selected tags). The URL keeps the filter so refresh and shared links preserve the view.
  • Missed tagging some plants? Settings → Find untagged plants opens the gallery filtered to only untagged entries so you can catch up.
  • Mark plants as reviewed to clear the "Needs ID" flag when you've handled a batch of drafts.
  • Use Duplicates review to merge or delete plants where you snapped the same photo twice. For separate photos of the same species, go to Settings → Find same-species duplicates — tap Merge to fold them into one entry, or Keep separate if they're really different plants.
  • Add care-journal notes on any plant to build a mini timeline of what happened when (moved to shade, first bloom, aphids appeared, divided in fall). Notes are private to your account.
  • Long-press any card to delete it quickly. Long-press to open Select mode on some devices.

Share with friends & HOAs

  • In Plants Identified, tap Share all (or Select → Share) to package plants behind a read-only link. Pick brief or full detail and pick an expiry (7 / 30 days / never).
  • You can copy the link, send it via your email app, or share a PDF from your phone's share sheet.
  • Manage or revoke active links in Settings → Shared lists at any time.

On desktop

  • The layout expands to use the full window — the plant grid grows up to 5 columns on wide screens.
  • Click any card to open a side-by-side detail pane without leaving the gallery.
  • Use ← / → to browse plants in the detail pane, and Esc to close it.
  • The top-nav (Identify / Plants Identified) replaces the mobile bottom-nav automatically.

Tips for better identifications

  • Fill the frame with one leaf, flower, or fruit — not the whole bed.
  • Shoot in daylight with even light; avoid blurry close-ups.
  • Capture distinctive features (leaf shape, vein pattern, bloom).
  • For hard IDs, try Identify multiple — combine 2–4 photos of the same plant (leaves + flowers + habit) in one submission for a more confident answer.
  • If the AI returns "Unknown," try another angle, or add a tag so you can find it later.

Credits

Identifications are powered by Google's Gemini 3 Flash multimodal model and cross-referenced against state natural-resources data. Plant info is informational only — please consult local extension offices before management decisions, and never eat a plant identified only by an app.

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