On the occasion of Risvegli. La festa dei fiori, visitors can test the free app Flora Incognita for the first time, thanks to a new collaboration with the Botanical Garden.

The Flora Incognita project was developed by scientists at the Technische Universität Ilmenau and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, as part of a research initiative focused on the conservation of plant life. Thanks to the vast number of catalogued species and the recent integration of AI, the app is a one-of-a-kind tool that can also be used for educational purposes in schools, universities, and conservation initiatives.

By taking photos of different parts of a plant with your smartphone, the app guides users through a simple and intuitive process to identify the plant and provide detailed information about its features, distribution, and conservation status for over 30,000 species in its database. An information sheet, which updates automatically based on the user’s location, not only provides ecological, protection, and distribution data for each species, but also allows access to national floristic websites for further exploration.

While visiting the Botanical Garden of Padua, visitors can photograph and identify preserved plants, gather data on species, and save them on the app, all while accessing a brief history of the Garden’s foundation and its crucial role in the conservation and protection of biodiversity.

Photo by Flora Incognita