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Richard Clark

Introducing the Wolfram Plants Reference App

April 16, 2013 —
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My mother always loved gardening, and when I was growing up I enjoyed taking long strolls with her while she told me what all the different flowers were. She knew a lot about plants, but I remember sometimes asking her a question—like what was a plant’s taxonomic structure, or its optimal height compared to its average height—and she didn’t know what to say. Well, that’s why we’ve come up with the Wolfram Plants Reference App, available on iOS and PC. This app is for you, mom!

Wolfram Plants Reference App

Like any Wolfram app, the Wolfram Plants Reference App offers a huge amount of functionality so that you can research or analyze thousands of plants. There’s quite a large number of subject areas, so let’s explore some of them, starting with Physical Information. This allows us to either explore a single plant or compare multiple plants at the same time—we can either select from a list of over 150 common plants or type in the name of any plant we wish to look at.

Wolfram Plants Reference App

Many of the app’s subject areas include additional parameters that you can choose from. For example, let’s select Growth.

Wolfram Plants Reference App

On this screen, we have four choices—Basic Growth Information, Growth Requirements, Growth Location, and Mature Height Comparison. Let’s select Growth Location, itself a source of further options, and then go with Distribution.

Wolfram Plants Reference App

The Wolfram Plants Reference App is useful for more than just basic comparisons, however. There’s a bevy of scientific information as well. You can, for example, juxtapose the morphology and physiology of different plants:

Wolfram Plants Reference App

Or you can compute the taxonomic network for either single or multiple plants:

Wolfram Plants Reference App

Whether you’re a professional horticulturalist, a scientist, a student, or a gardener (like my mom), the Wolfram Plants Reference App—available on iOS—is the ideal source for acquiring and computing knowledge about plants.