Nature Wonders — User Manual

Last updated: August 21, 2026

How to get a good identification, and how to read the one you get.

Read this before you touch anything. Plant recognition from a photograph can be wrong, and a confident-looking match is still a guess. Nature Wonders is never an edibility, touch-safety, medical, veterinary or foraging decision. Never touch, taste, burn, prepare, or give a plant to a person or a pet based on what this app says. If you suspect poisoning or a serious reaction, contact your local emergency services or poison control immediately.

Taking a photograph that identifies well

  • Choose the plant part first — leaf, flower, fruit, or bark. The app coaches the shot differently for each.
  • Fill the frame with the single part. A whole bush at three metres identifies badly.
  • Get the background as plain as you can — a hand behind a leaf works.
  • Even, indirect light. Harsh sun blows out the vein pattern that does most of the work.
  • If the first result looks unlikely, photograph a different part of the same plant and compare.

Reading the result

You get a ranked list, not a single answer. The top match has a confidence figure and the alternatives are shown beneath it. A low confidence with two plausible alternatives means exactly that — it is not a shy way of saying the first one is right. Compare the visual clues listed against the plant in front of you before you accept a match.

The Wonder Card

Open a match to get its Wonder Card. Switch between the kids, families and nature-lover views: the same plant, described for a six-year-old, for a family planning a walk, and for someone who wants habitat, ecology and taxonomy.

Your field journal

  • Save a discovery to keep it, and add your own note — where you were, what the weather was, what you noticed.
  • The journal is on your device only. Back up your phone to keep it.
  • No location is stored with an entry.

Offline

The eight-species learning guide and everything already saved to your journal work with no connection. Live identification needs one, because the recognition runs on the provider's service.

"Live ID needs setup"

That message means the build you are running has no identification credential configured. A store build will not show it; a locally built development copy will until a key is supplied.

If something goes wrong

Email [email protected] or use the contact form, with your device, OS version, and — if it is about a bad match — the plant part you photographed.