Recognising Weeds And Separating Them From The Plants We Desire Isn’t Always Easy. I’ve Had Decades Doing It & Still Make Numerous Mistakes. Here’s My Secret Weapon for How to ID “Weeds”.
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A lot of it is down to experience and practice. When I grew and farmed commercially I could see the cotyledons and many weeds and immediately recognise them. I no longer grow commercially and am out of practice. And it’s amazing how easy it is to forget what was once second nature.
So here are my secret weapons.
I think they are needed as ripping out vegetables rather than seeds is a mistake we don’t want to make.
The iNaturalist App For Plant ID
iNat is wonderful and excellent for recognising many plants provide you can take good photos of the plant. It has a huge database of plants and users AI to cross reference submitted images and quickly give an answer. It does sometimes give very silly answers but I like it and it at least gets the plant family right most of the time.
Submitted images are then verified by humans. Volunteers with genuine expertise that can sort out any anomalies produced by the system!
ADHB Weed ID Guide
This one is used by commercial growers but is very simple for gardeners to use as well. You can download it and save it to a phone or iPad. I love it.
The Basal Project looks at plants from the perspective of the basal leaves. Don’t worry if you don’t know what a basal leaf is. The website explains all.
What I like about the Basal Project is that it references back to “Stace”, the ultimate descriptive reference in my view.
Here’s a summary of what the Basal Project say on their website.
Welcome to our Plant Leaf Identification Guide!
This guide is designed to help you identify plant leaves based on their shape and size. Simply search for the plant you’re looking for in the search bar above, or use the “Plant Families” tab if you know the family.
We’ve included a wide range of common and scientific names, taken from the New Flora of the British Isles (4th edition). However, please note that this guide is still growing, and we’re always adding new species.
Contribute to Our Guide
If you have a great photo of a plant leaf, we’d love to add it to our collection. Whether it’s a new species, a variation of an existing one, or simply a better photo, your contribution is valuable. Please share your images and we’ll credit you as the contributor.
What’s Not Included
While we strive to be comprehensive, some plant groups are not currently included in our guide. These include microspecies, hybrids, grasses, sedges, rushes, ferns, and certain rare trees and submerged aquatics. We may add these groups in the future.
The ADAS Arable Weed Manager
This is a wonderful online reference source and can be used on your phone whilst you are “on the ground”. The great thing about this one is the it focuses on arable weeds at the cotyledon stage. Don’t worry about the word “arable”, many of the weeds we get in gardens and allotments are arable types. So this one is ideal if you want to recognise plants when only the seed leaves show. It’s an ideal time to recognise them and perhaps hoe them!
One great benefit here iOS that you can click through to see detailed photos.
