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Tree Identification APPS FOR ARBORISTS APPS FOR ARBORISTS sketchy knowing their Ulmus rubras from their Ulmus americanas—are there any apps that could help them out in the field? The answer is yes,there are a ton of them.Are any of them any good? The answer is not many of them. I've downloaded and tested no less than a dozen and a half tree ID Y apps over the past two years and have been awfully disappointed with most — including free apps,as well as apps for which I paid several dol- lars.Many rely heavily on leaf ID,which relegates them to only be useful in the summer,and others use so much botany jargon that they are pret- ty unusable to the average human. Some are decent for actual identification; others are better for learning more about the tree with info and photos once you know what it is.I haven't found one yet that does all of these things great but the apps reviewed in this article have some merit and are worth checking out. TreeBook Available on: iPhone Cost:FREE If you actually need to identify an unknown tree in the field, nothing beats a dichotomous key.If you've ever used the one from Virginia Tech's Department of Forestry, you know it is a simple-but-accurate key for figuring out the tree in question.The TreeBook iPhone app is pretty much the mobile version of that key.Open it up and it goes right to the "Identify" tab and has you choosing a leaf type to get started.You can also browse trees by common name or family, and the search function also searches all the different common names — making it a fairly good reference. This app lacks the depth of photos found in other guides,and relies solely on leaves to start the key, so it has its limitations.Like many of the tree ID apps I've looked at,it has a definite East Coast bias for the species that are included,but for free it's worth checking out. 20 Arbor Age / May/June 2012 By Br andon Gallagher Watson ou,tree care professional and ardent reader of Arbor Age,are so good at tree identification that you would never need to carry an ID guide along with you, right? Well, sure, you can peg a buckeye from a horsechestnut at 100 meters in the fog at night, but let's say for the sake of example your new hires are a little Audubon Society Tree ID Available on: iPad/iPhone Cost:$4.99 The Audubon Society is known for its high-quality and photo-heavy nature guide books,and this app is pretty much the mobile version of the tree guide. On the plus side, it does have thousands of detailed, high-res photos of the tree, fruit,bark and twigs of most trees,so it can be useful for helping determine which tree you are standing in front of. It has a Boolean-style "Search"function where you give it info on the charac- teristics you see and it tells you what trees fit that description.Additionally, it has a feature where you can add "Sightings" of tree species you have seen. It will add a journal entry and geo-tag the location on a map for you,but do note that this feature requires the GPS,so if you do not have the 3G connection it will only work when connected to WiFi. On the down side,it is a $5 app,but, considering the book runs $15 to $20,it is a fair price.The photo library is a little inconsistent as far as having all the diagnostic photos for every species, especially the more obscure ones where having more images would be most useful,but the photos it does have tend to look gorgeous.If you have the book already, this app doesn't add much more than a pretty mobile interface. But if you ever need to show a tree photo to a client to help them understand something or just prove to them their maple is a Norway and not a sugar as they insist,this can be a handy app. LeafSnap Available on: iPhone/second- and third-generation iPad Cost:FREE You walk up to a tree, pull off a leaf,and have no idea what species it is. Sure, you could use a key that makes you decide whether the underside leaf hairs are tomen- tose or pubescent, but who has time for that? Wouldn't it be easier if you could just take a picture of the leaf with your iPhone or iPad and www.arborage.com