FlorID – A nationwide identification service for plants from photos and habitat information

Citizen science has become key to biodiversity monitoring but critically depends on accurate quality control that is scalable and tailored to the focal region. We developed FlorID, a free-to-use identification service for all native and many non-native plants of Switzerland. FlorID can identify >3000 species, using vision transformers trained on 1.5M photos, and ecological predictions from multilayer perceptrons, trained on 6.7M occurrence observations and 20 high-resolution environmental variables. Embedded in a free-to-use application programming interface, FlorID can be accessed directly, via webservice, and via FlorApp smartphone application. If multiple images and spatiotemporal location are available, FlorID correctly identifies 93% of field observations and has a top-5 accuracy of 99%. Ecological predictions boost identification success especially for native species with distinct distributions. By evaluating information on appearance and fine-grained ecology, FlorID is a blueprint for similar solutions targeting different taxa or regions, and a basis for developments like automated community inventories. • Citizen science observations are becoming a key component of biodiversity monitoring, but they need quality control. • We developed FlorID, an identification tool for >3000 plant species, including rareones, based on images and local habitat. • FlorID correctly identifies 93% of observations, and for 99% it includes the observed species in the top-5 suggestions. • FlorID is accessible through a free-to-use application programming interface: directly or via webservice or smartphone app.