by Peggy Robin
This column is a sequel to the sequel. In my Still Life with Robin column last Saturday (April 26), I devoted half the column to a sequel to the column I posted on April 5th, showing photos of spring flowers in the neighborhood. My sequel consisted mainly of photos of some later-blooming spring flowers. I posted many of them in a photo album accessible on the Cleveland park Listserv at SPRING FLOWERS, but I included photos of two of them in the column itself. I couldn't identify those two flowers and so put up their pictures -- here and here -- and asked Listserv members for help
Wow, you came through! Over the next two days, list members used their flower knowledge to ID the flowers. For the yellow flowers, there was clear consensus: They're begonias -- either Reiger's begonias or double begonias, but whatever....begonias.
For the white flower, at first I thought there was consensus. Half a dozen posters told me that was a white camellia. There was one vote for primrose, though. Then, on Monday, April 28, the notorious PP of DC (that's the "Phantom Planter of DC," a/k/a Henry Docter) weighed in with a the voice of authority (just kidding -- I am pretty sure he would like us all to Question Authority): He said that flower is not a white camellia, it's a white gardenia.
I was prepared to accept that verdict (as stated in my editor's note appended to Henry's message). But someone else wrote in and advised me to turn to The Google -- specifically, the Google Lens App, which uses Artificial Intelligence to identify things just from a photo. So that's what I did.
Here's the result:
Now who do I trust? Henry Docter, a performance artist, flower planter, lawyer, and free spirit? Or AI - a product developed by a nefarious bunch of billionaire tech bros, all of whom seem to be competing for the top prize in the Dr. Evil Lookalike contest? And none of whom seems to have watched 2001: A Space Odyssey. No, I take that back. Yes, they certainly must have seen it, and maybe multiple times -- but they were rooting for HAL.)
Some other posters have suggested that I go back in the evening to the original bush upon which I found the white flower and smell it to see if it's fragrant. If it smells nice, that means it's a gardenia. If it lacks the telltale floral scent, it's most likely a camellia. But that's not definitive, as there are relatively new varieties of camellia that have been specifically bred for a pleasant smell.
Well, I haven't done that. I have a very poor sense of smell, anyway, and on top of that, I photographed so many flowers around the neighborhood, I don't remember where that white flower was found.
So I just ask myself (using my own NI (natural intelligence): "Is Google's AI better than a real life, experienced human gardener?" I tend to think the human brain will always be superior in any sort of creative endeavor, but when it comes to performing a mechnical function, such as comparing vast numbers of images of plants against a photo to ,atch it to a particular species, I'm gonna go with the machine.
On the other hand, AI is still in its infancy, and infants, as we all know, are prone to mess up. Anyone who's ever had Google Maps show their car in the water as they're driving over a bridge can tell you that.
Yesterday, while walking home from the Flower Mart, I stopped multiple times to take photos of flowers, mostly along Newark Street and Highland Place. The photos are all in the SPRING FLOWERS photo album. I labeled the pansies and azaleas based on my admittedly limited knowledge of flowers, but used AI for the ones I didn't know. If you spot any mistakes, please reply-all to me (peggyrobin@gmail.com) and to clevelandpark@groups.io to tell us what you think AI got wrong.
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Still Life with Robin is posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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