TeddyGreenFingersIdentify the problem. Do not invent the answer.
6 September 2026
A plant you do not recognise. A leaf that looks off. An insect on the brassicas. A mushroom by the compost. Those are four different jobs. Treating them as one “point the camera” trick is how garden apps get people hurt.
Four modes, one photograph
TeddyGreenFingers identification is four modes on purpose: plant, sick plant, insect, mushroom. You take one photo. A specialist service returns an answer with confidence scores. The photo is sent for analysis and is not stored by us. The town you chose is sent as rounded coordinates so the suggestion can be local; the phone’s GPS is never read.
Identification is capped, per person and across the app, because it runs on a paid service. Waiting an hour clears a personal cap. That is cheaper than pretending the well is infinite.
The mushroom line
Never eat any mushroom based on an app identification. Mistakes are potentially fatal.
That sentence is in the app, on the mushroom mode, before the shutter. It is also in the terms. Identification is for curiosity and garden management. It is not a foraging tool and it is not a safety check. An identifier that pretends it cannot be wrong is the dangerous one.
What to do after a name
A name is a starting point. Open the matching page in the library — 253 plants, 48 pests, 94 diseases, 29 organic remedies — and read the sourced notes. Then write what you saw in the journal so next season you are not guessing whether it was mildew or the year before.
If the machine is wrong, treat that as normal. See support for the honest version of that sentence.