We planted some spinach last year, they grew, we harvested them and died since they were out of season. But as we speak I checked the garden and these grew in place of them, Bird’s Nest Fern is what they’re called apparently and I’m wondering if they’re edible or not since they were planted from the spinach seeds we sown last year. Thanks in advance for the help!
Still looks like spinach, albeit angry about spacing lol
Agreed with this and the other comment about bolting.
It’s also likely bolting as a last ditch effort to reproduce before it dies. The plant will use its last bit of energy to reproduce when it’s this stressed, maybe you could save some seeds?
I looked up birds nest ferns and it confirmed for me that your plant is indeed very stressed, very cramped and dying spinach. Birds nest ferns don’t have the same veining, and the leaves are waxy/shiny. Google misidentifies plants often.
If you want to eat your spinach, try a leaf before harvesting and if it’s not super bitter I say go for it! The leaves are small and likely mild and tender.
Next time you plant: if you’re using the same pot, plant only (2) spinach seeds about 4-5” apart, as spinach can grow quite large (~6” wide, even bigger if allowed).
It’s my understanding that using seeds that are from a stress are more likely to have issues in the future themselves.
That makes perfect sense, thank you for the tip! Definitely didn’t think of that :)
Not all plants are equal, but that’s what I learned about cannabis genetics.
I wonder if it’s bolting, spinach’s doesn’t like heat, and pots heat the soil up lots. Also the spacing, they are fighting each other.
Well, whatever it is, there’s always a chance to start again 😅
since there’s a lot of talk about plant ID apps: Please for the love of god don’t use anything other than iNaturalist/Seek (basically the same thing), these apps are developed together with actual biologists and configured to be very very conservative about the ID they give you, so it doesn’t give false positives.
A lot of the time it will just say something vague like “family Amaranthaceae”, rather than forcing a more specific and incorrect answer, which is SUPER important!iNaturalist also includes the ability to post your observation to their database, so other people can look at it and suggest their own identifications, which you can actually somewhat trust.
NEVER eat something just because your phone told you it was safe, that is how you die painfully.
The seed variety you originally planted may have been a hybrid and these are volunteers. The f2 generation won’t be the same as f1 if it was a hybrid.
I’ve got a birds nest fern, and although it looks a little similar, these are quite different. The birds nest fern as like long, individual leaves that sprout in a circle pattern with other leaves. I see on the bottom of your picture, there’s one long stem that a bunch of leaves are coming off of. In my bird’s nest, the baby leaves as they come out, came from the center of this circle, and unfurled.
I’ll take a picture later if I remember!
Almost looks like a rats nest of dandelion, but it’s hard to tell from these pictures. Try using the PlantNET app and see what it comes up with.
Not dandelion. Wrong leaves.
Gemini thinks it’s peony…
Note: Gemini is usually very good at identifying plants but some plants are notoriously difficult for anyone to pin down except horticulturalists (e.g. experts). For example, Pothos vs. Heartleaf Philodendron or more dangerous, Queen Anne’s Lace vs Poison Hemlock. AI also has trouble identifying grasses (in general) because many can look the same from a picture. Even close up! Yet a human (in person) would be like, “these two grasses are nothing alike!”
It’s all about pattern matching. If two leaves from two different plants have the same appearance and growth pattern, AI can easily get it wrong. In general, though, it usually does a really good job.
PictureThis! is the best AI plant ID I’ve found (not paying how much they want for it though). iNaturalist’s AI is pretty good too (and real experts will also help ID stuff). I haven’t tried Gemini. I tried ChatGPT and it sucked. Google Lense also sucks.
I have found PictureThis to be surprisingly accurate, even for just the tiniest shoots or a tree off in the distance. And it’s perfectly usable for free once you close the subscription screen. (But I don’t use it for anything I plan on eating.)
I have no idea what powers their identification. It must be some kind of machine learning because I can’t imagine any other kind of image recognition data set being big and labeled enough.
Edit: it doesn’t say on the app page but their social media accounts are all named PictureThisAI so I guess it is AI
Yeah, it’s likely a more “traditional” image classification model (convnet or vision-transformer, not generative AI).
People are ridiculous for downvoting this comment. It is useful information on the topic. Ai output should never be believed by itself, but it can be a helpful tool as long a human verifies it
Posting without verifying deserves downvotes. It’s useless at best, and harmful at worst when it’s wrong. Thus, downvotes.
Also, since it is verifiably wrong, extra downvotes.
verifiably wrong, extra downvotes.
I don’t see a single comment that says for sure what it is, let alone verifies it.
You’re whining because this is AI, not because of the reasons you stated, it’s hella obvious.
So what about the person guessing?
Atleast they showed their homework. And even went so far as to provide information and context, saying it may not be right.
Fuck ai, but atleast be consistent instead of a hypocrite.
What about them? They’re equally unhelpful.
Posting without verifying deserves downvotes.
So go downvote and bitch at them as well, you massive trolling hypocrite lmfao. If one deserves to be downvoted and called out, why not the other? You’re picking your battles, thats trolling and definition of a hypocrite.
People easily notice these things you know, it’s quite obvious that you only want to bitch because this was ai, instead of the basis of the problem like you claimed. You ONLY spoke up and downvoted because of the AI, not that it’s wrong and unverified. Because if you did, you would have also dealt with the other comment as well.
Troll.
it can indeed be useful as long as a human verifies it, which is why we should be leaving these apps to rot and only use iNaturalist which lets you post the photos to get a second opinion (and at the same time contribute to science).
All these other plant ID apps are the equivalent of talking tom, they’re just entertainment.
The anti-AI sentiment on Lemmy is quite extreme. To these people, all AI is bad. Even when it’s useful. Even when it’s saving lives. Even if AI was the world’s only hope of solving global warming, they’d still unplug it without skipping a beat.
Because none of that matters to them. It’s a religion. A beleif that’s not founded in reason. They hate it. The very concept of it.
If all AI was powered via solar panels in a desert with no water cooling necessary, they’d still hate it.
If all AI was perfect at what it did and never made mistakes they’d still hate it.
If all AI was open source and free, running locally on everyone’s PCs and phones, they’d still hate it.
I don’t get it. There’s literally no place for intelligent machines in their world.
