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Abstract

Species knowledge is essential for protecting biodiversity. People are more willing to protect plants and animals that they personally experienced before. The identification of plants by conventional keys is very complex, time consuming, and due to the use of specific terms frustrating for non-experts. This creates a hard to overcome hurdle for novices interested in acquiring species knowledge. Modern communication techniques are a continuous companion in today’s life and provide an opportunity to simplify conventional identification methods. The goal of our “Flora Incognita” project is developing a method for semi-automatic plant identification via mobile devices. The process will lead a user through an interactive series of identification steps. Part of these steps will utilise image recognition techniques to identify plant traits. An accompanying web-based platform will allow ambitious interested users to contribute in our project.