Printed
Collins Wild Flower Guide. The most complete guide to the Wildflowers of Britain and Ireland by Davd Streeter and others (Collins, 2nd edition 2016). It covers grasses and sedges as well and has keys to each section, plus up-to-date botanical names. Not a pocket guide, quite a brick, but good for cross-reference.
Colour Identification Guide to the Grasses, Sedges, Rushes and Ferns of the British Isles and North Western Europe by Francis Rose (Viking, 1989)
Harrap’s Wild Flowers by Simon Harrap (Bloomsbury, 2013)
New Flora of the British Isles by Clive Stace (C&M Floristics, 4th edition 2019)
The Wild Flower Key by Francis Rose (Warne 2006)
Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland by M. Blamey, R. Fitter and A. Fitter (Bloomsbury Natural History 2nd edition, 2013)
Websites
British Orchids Vegetative Identification Guide
Google Lens: Go to google.com and there is a camera icon at the right of the search bar. Click on this, and you can drag and drop any image and it will do its best to identify it – so can be used for any flora and fauna, vertebrates and invertebrates etc. (as well as buildings, landscapes – anything, in fact.) Worth a look, but treat identifications with caution!
Apps
Picture This, approximately £30/year:Found useful for Plant ID, especially horticultural specimens. Approximately £30/year. Available in app stores for iOs or Android devices
Comments:
If you don’t do the 7-day trial and click on the x in the upper right hand, it lets you continue as just an identifier but not ‘recording’.
I found it to be very American, unfortunately. And if you are an amateur, like me, it’s hard to judge.
PictureThis App – Online plant encyclopedia and plant identifier (picturethisai.com)
Seek, Free App: Produced by iNaturalist. Used for plant ID by scanning the specimen you want to ID with the Seek App camera.
Comment: I find it very variable. Sometimes spot-on, sometimes miles off (eg American species). Sometimes extraordinarily vague: I pointed it at some kind of scabious and Seek triumphantly told me it was … a dicotyledon!
Available in app stores for iOs or Android devices
For more information; Seek by iNaturalist · iNaturalist
Flora incognita, Free App Useful for plant ID. European focus so does not suggest American species, and fairly accurate. Use camera within app which then suggests the ID. You can save your observations. Available in English.
Available in app stores for iOs or Android devices
Flora Incognita | EN – The Flora Incognita app – Interactive plant species identification