vTree vs TreeIDSmokies
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
vTree
Identify woody plants across North America with detailed fact sheets, thousands of images, and location-based filtering. Get expert help from "Dr. Dendro" for tricky identifications.
- 969 North American woody plants
- Thousands of color images
- Location-based species filtering
- Search by keyword
- Identify via attribute questions
- Expert identification help
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Virginia Tech Tree Identification brings the award winning Virginia Tech digital dendrology material to your iPhone. It contains fact sheets for 969 woody plants from all over North America with an in-depth description, range map and thousands of color images of leaves, flowers, fruit, twigs, bark and form. Users can narrow the species list for any location in North America using the phone's GPS or any entered address or zip code. Basically the application can become "The Woody Plants of Where You Are Standing." For example, it can become "The Woody Plants of Southwestern Oregon," "The Woody Plants of Central Park," or "The Woody Plants of 37.108 lat., -80.452 long., elevation 2118." Users can further narrow the species list by answering a series of very simple tree attribute questions such as where the plant is growing, leaf shape, leaf arrangement, flower color or fruit type. The species list can also be narrowed by typing a keyword such as oak, Abies, red or palm. For example, if "oak" is typed, only oaks found in the defined area will be listed. A feature also allows you to send any tree related question to "Dr. Dendro," a tree expert in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech. You can send a tree description or pictures of your plant and experts will help with identification. KEY FEATURES •969 woody plants from all over North America. •Over 6,400 color photographs of leaves, flowers, fruit, twig, bark, form, and range map for each species. •In depth description of all plant parts. •Narrows species list based on your location and elevation using the device's GPS or user entered location. •Search for species by a key word, e.g. maple. •Identify species by answering a series of simple questions. A picture is displayed showing what is being asked. •Navigate between species with a push of a button. •Send a tree question to "Dr. Dendro," a tree expert at Virginia Tech. VIRGINIA TECH TREE IDENTIFICATION DIGITAL MATERIAL Visit our web sites at: http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu Woody Plants in North America, 2012, Kendall/Hunt Publishing is a multimedia tutorial on DVD covering 920 woody plants with over 23,000 color photographs of leaves (summer and fall), flowers, fruits, twigs, bark and form for each plant. The software displays multiple images of all plant parts so user can develop a "feel" for normal field variation. A customizable self-quizzing section allows users to evaluate their progress in plant identification. For more features on this software, visit: http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/wpina.htm NOTES The 650 MB database of tree photographs and text is downloaded from our server. We recommend you install Virginia Tech Tree Identification using a fast WIFI connection. A cellular connection will generally be too slow. Text and photography by John R. Seiler, John A. Peterson Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech and Ed Jensen, Forest Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University.
TreeIDSmokies
Identify trees in the Great Smoky Mountains with this app. It leverages the region's diverse elevation, micro-climates, and rainfall to help you learn about the unique flora. No internet access is needed to use this educational tool.
- Tree identification for Smokies region
- Utilizes elevation and micro-climate data
- Information on diverse tree varieties
- Offline functionality
- Educational resource
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Identification of trees in the Smokies is unique due to the wide variety of trees found here. Elevation ranges from 875 to 6,643 feet in the Great Smoky Mountains, providing a diverse growing environment in a geographical region that spans from Georgia to Maine. The mountains also provide unique micro-climates ,with cove hardwood, mesic regions as well as xeric, ridges. The rainfall of the Smokies adds to the unique growing environment, providing 60-80 inches of rainfall/year. The Smokies region is also home to approximately 90 percent of the entire old-growth forests of the eastern United States. A special thanks to Great Smoky Mountains Association (smokiesinformation.org) for permitting us to draw heavily from descriptions and photographs in their book, Trees and Familiar Shrubs of the Smokies, by Steve Kemp and Ken Voorhis. Great Smoky Mountains Association is a nonprofit organization which supports the educational, scientific, and historical programs of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is in the spirit of their mission that we developed and provide this app for free. Enjoy learning to identify trees in the Smokies! Internet access is not required.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: TreeIDSmokies at 100% against vTree's 37%. TreeIDSmokies also leads on rating (5.0 vs 3.3) and monetization model (free vs paid). vTree's advantage is ratings volume (46 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
TreeIDSmokies holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: vTree has 46 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 37% of vTree's written reviews are positive against 100% of TreeIDSmokies's.
vTree ships an update every 11 months, TreeIDSmokies every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 11, 2026 and September 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | vTree | TreeIDSmokies |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.3 (46 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 36.5% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 46 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 11 months | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 | 14.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 10 MB | 27 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | John Peterson | Rodney Pearson |
Customer experience
vTree
TreeIDSmokies
Bugs and requests
vTree
Reported bugs
31 issues- Eternally spinning “loading species” then crashes
- Won’t open, downloads to 123% then freezes
- Stuck “downloading species”
- Crashes when updating location off grid
- Missing photos
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- Crashes when I try to open the app
- Down problem, takes back to app store
- Search locations brings back incomplete results
- Pictures will not display when individual species are selected
- Photos do not load
- The last update caused issues
- App crashes constantly
- User unfriendly
- Using the search function causes the app to crash
- When I hit the "identify trees" button it crashes
- Page disappears into the background when searching
- App crashes when connection is poor
- Crashes any time you use the search function
- Searching repeatedly crashes the app
- App freezes when opening after downloading fact sheets
- GPS function doesn't work
- Manually entered location doesn't stay remembered
- App closes when putting in location
- Glitching when trying to download again
- App is bugging out when I go to put in my location and then it closes
- No true way to narrow the results down
- Urban trees are missing
- Almost none of the pictures work
- Pictures are downloading but very slowly
- One ID was totally wrong, others could not give a possibility
- Encountered a glitch when selecting a particular arrangement of leaves
Requested features
8 requests- Allow offline use by downloading all fact sheets
- Update app for newer iPhone screen sizes
- Editable list of recently identified trees
- Search trees by leaf
- Break down database into regions/states
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- Ability to discard unnecessary data
- Ability to swipe through photos
- ID plants from a photo
TreeIDSmokies
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
vTree
No in-app purchases
TreeIDSmokies
No in-app purchases



