What's that flower?

A hobby project with a long horizon: a comprehensive plant encyclopedia, starting from a shipping flower-identification app.

The live product is What's that flower? (sk.ab.herbs).

• Google Play — 1M+ installs
• App Store
• whatsthatflower.com

This repository is the Flutter client. Plant data lives in Firebase. The three live projects open together as ~/whatsthatflower:

open ~/whatsthatflower/whatsthatflower.code-workspace

Current snapshot (2026-03-26)

The catalog is flower-first (color, habitat, petal shape, TDWG region). That is a strong identifier, not yet an encyclopedia of all plants.

How the app works

1. The user answers a short filter: flower color, habitat, petal type, then world region.
2. Each answer is looked up in precomputed Realtime Database indexes (counts_4_v2, lists_4_v2).
3. The resulting plant list opens; a tap loads the species page (photos, description, taxonomy, observations).
4. Paid add-ons unlock name/taxonomy search, photo ID (Plant.id), offline photos, custom filter order, and field observations.

More detail: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md and docs/DATA_MODEL.md.

Repository layout

lib/
  main.dart                 app start, IAP, FCM, locale
  filter/                   color / habitat / petal / distribution
  detail/                   plant page (gallery, info, taxonomy, edit)
  search/                   name, taxonomy, photo
  observations/             private + public field notes
  purchase/                 IAP + photo-storage subscriptions
  signin/                   email, Google, Apple, phone
  settings/                 language, region, offline, filter order
  entity/                   Plant, Observation, translations
  l10n/                     UI strings (intl_utils)
android/                    applicationId sk.ab.herbs
ios/                        bundle id sk.ab.herbs, fastlane metadata
data/                       localized country names
res/images/                 filter icons and placeholders
docs/                       project documentation

Run locally

cd ~/StudioProjects/abherbs_flutter
flutter pub get
flutter run

Secrets are gitignored and expected on this machine:

• lib/keys.dart — Translate, Maps, Plant.id, AdMob unit IDs
• lib/firebase_options.dart — FlutterFire options
• android/app/google-services.json, android/keystore.properties
• ios/Runner/GoogleService-Info.plist, ios/fastlane/

Documentation

• Vision — encyclopedia goal vs what ships today
• Architecture — client, monetization, APIs
• Data model — Firebase + Storage
• Ecosystem — Python tools and website
• Access — Play Store, App Store, Firebase (current decisions)
• AGENTS.md — notes for future coding sessions

Support

• Product: support@whatsthatflower.com
• Privacy / terms: hosted under storage.googleapis.com/abherbs-resources/misc/