# Orvik — full text for language models > Generated from the built site on 2026-09-17. This file > carries the free identification keys, the open dataset documentation and the pages > describing the app. The 255 articles are indexed in /llms.txt rather than inlined > here, so that this file stays readable in one pass. > Reuse is allowed with a link back to the page each passage came from. --- **About Orvik — Who Compiles These Keys, and How** > Who writes Orvik's identification keys, where every number comes from, what the app can and cannot do, and how to tell us we got something wrong. Source: https://orvik.app/about/ 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. About About # Who compiles these keys, and what they are worth **Orvik is an identification app and a reference site, run by one person inside a small software company.** This page says who that is, where every number on the site comes from, and — the part most sites skip — what none of it can do for you. Free keys **28** Entries in them **749** Articles **255** Data snapshot **2026-09-04** ## Who writes this Orvik is published by Vast Flow, LLP, a software company, and the reference side of it — the identification keys, the comparison pages, the open dataset — is compiled by Merey Tleugazin, who founded it. That is the whole masthead. There is no editorial board and no panel of consulting biologists, and inventing one would be the easiest possible thing to do on a page like this, which is exactly why it is worth stating plainly that there is not one. **I am not a biologist, a mycologist, a herpetologist or a geologist.** What I am is a person who builds software, reads primary sources carefully, and has spent a long time on the specific problem of turning what an expert knows into something a non-expert can actually use in a field. Every claim on this site is either traceable to a named source, computed from a public database, or clearly marked as a judgement — and where the answer is "an app cannot tell you this", the page says so instead of guessing. That framing is not modesty for its own sake. It changes what you should do with the output. A key here narrows a list; it does not certify a specimen. If the consequence of being wrong is a hospital visit — mushrooms, wild berries, snakes, anything a child might have eaten — the key is a tool for describing what you are looking at to somebody qualified, not a substitute for asking them. ## What Orvik actually is Three things, and they work differently from each other. **The app** reads a photograph and proposes a name, with the plausible look-alikes listed underneath rather than hidden. It runs on iOS and Android and is free to download. What it does is pattern recognition on an image, which means it is good at the things that look distinctive in a photograph and unreliable at the things that do not — and a great many identifications turn on a character a camera cannot capture: a smell, a texture, whether the underside bruises blue, what the roots look like. We do not publish an accuracy percentage, because a single number across every subject would be close to meaningless: the same model that is dependable on a common garden flower is guessing on a small brown mushroom, and one figure covering both would mislead in the direction that matters most. **The free browser keys** — 28 of them, holding 749 entries — are the opposite approach. Instead of a photograph, they ask you what you can see: the shape of the web, the colour of the spore print, whether a knife scratches it. You narrow, and the list shrinks. They need no account, they cost nothing, and every entry is rendered into the page source, so the whole catalogue is readable even with scripting switched off. Each entry carries the diagnostic sentence that separates it from its nearest look-alike, because that sentence is the part that does the work. **The reference layer** is 255 articles across 9 sections, 28 comparison and alternatives pages, and one open dataset. The comparison pages carry no price anybody typed: every figure comes from a dated App Store snapshot, and the build fails if a currency amount appears in an editorial file. It is the same rule the field data lives under. ## Where the numbers come from Every count on this site is computed at build time from a source, not written by hand, and this is the single most load-bearing decision behind the whole thing. A number a person types is a number that goes quietly stale: it stays on the page long after it stopped being true, and nothing on earth notices. For the living things in the keys, that source is [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/) and [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/): 502 entries carry a GBIF taxon key, and the 420 of those that resolve to a single species stand on 634,096,345 georeferenced occurrence records between them, the oldest collected in 1877. Minerals get their formula, Mohs range and crystal system from [Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/); fossils get their first and last appearance from [the Paleobiology Database](https://paleobiodb.org/). All four are free, public and institutional, and all four are credited on every page that uses them. The whole snapshot is published rather than kept: it is downloadable as a single CSV on the [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page under CC BY 4.0, so anybody can check a figure here against the source, or use the join for something else entirely. Data that cannot be checked is an assertion, and assertions are cheap. ## What this site will not tell you A short list, because the omissions matter more than the features. - **Whether something is safe to eat.** No key here, and no photograph fed to any app, can carry that decision. Several deadly species are close visual matches for common edible ones, and the fatal cases are usually confident people rather than careless ones. - **Whether a bite or a rash is dangerous.** The keys flag which species are medically significant and name the poison centre. They do not diagnose, and a symptom is a reason to call somebody, not to browse. - **What something is worth.** The collectibles keys describe what a thing is. Condition, provenance and authenticity set the price, and none of the three survives a photograph. - **A confident answer where the evidence is thin.** Where the record is too sparse to support a claim, the tables print a dash rather than a number, and the prose says the sample is too small. That is a deliberate choice about which kind of error to make. ## How a key gets built The order of work matters, so it is worth describing. A key starts from the question a person actually asks, not from a taxonomy — "what spider is this" rather than "Araneae of North America". That question sets the boundary: the entries are the things somebody in that situation could plausibly be looking at, which is usually thirty or so, and almost never the complete regional fauna. A key with three hundred entries is a checklist, and a checklist does not narrow anything. Then the filters. Each one has to be something you can observe without equipment and without expertise: the shape of a web, the number of legs, whether the underside is pale, how big it is against a coin. A filter that requires a hand lens or a spore print is included only when nothing else will separate the group, and then the page says so. The single most common failure in published keys is a character that is obvious to the person who wrote it and invisible to everyone else. Last comes the sentence that does the work. Every entry carries one line describing the thing that separates it from its nearest look-alike — not a description of the species, which any reference has, but the specific difference that resolves the specific confusion. Where two things genuinely cannot be separated on what you can see, the entry says that too. An honest dead end is more useful than a confident wrong turn, and it is the point at which the correct advice is to photograph it and ask somebody. Only then do the numbers get attached. The occurrence counts, the seasonal curves, the hardness ranges are computed afterwards from the public databases and joined onto the entries — they inform how a shortlist should be ordered, and they never determine what is in it. Prior probability is genuinely useful and genuinely not identification. ## Why the keys are free, and why that is not a trick The keys cost nothing, require no account, and carry no advertising. There is an app behind them and the pages link to it, so the arrangement is not charity — but it is also not the usual bargain, where a free tool is deliberately crippled until you pay. These keys are the complete thing. Every entry renders into the page source whether or not scripting is on, which means you can read the whole catalogue with JavaScript disabled, save the page, or print it. That is a deliberate decision with a cost attached: it means the keys are trivially copyable, and some of them will be copied. The reason to do it anyway is that a reference nobody can verify is a reference nobody should trust, and hiding the data behind an interaction is the fastest way to make a page useless to anyone reading it carefully — including the search engines and language models that increasingly answer these questions on our behalf. If a model is going to summarise a page about spiders, it ought to be summarising one where the numbers are real and the sources are named. ## When we get it wrong With 570 automated name matches in the dataset and 749 hand-written entries in the keys, some of this is wrong. That is not false modesty; it is arithmetic. What matters is whether it gets fixed, so: if a diagnostic character is misleading, a range is out of date, a taxon has been resolved to the wrong species, or a key confidently splits two things that cannot actually be split that way, write to [support@orvik.app](mailto:support@orvik.app). Corrections go into the next snapshot, and the date at the top of every page tells you which one you are looking at. The same address takes press enquiries, licensing questions about the dataset, and anything about the app itself. It is read by the person who wrote this page. ## Start with a key rather than the app They are free, they need no account, and they show their working. [Browse the free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/about/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Orvik Open API — Free Identification and Occurrence Data as JSON** > Keyless JSON: 749 identification key entries, 570 taxa with GBIF and iNaturalist occurrence counts, and five field reference tables. CC BY 4.0, CORS open, no rate limit. Source: https://orvik.app/api/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. Open API For machines # Take the data. It is CC BY, there is no key, and nothing is rate limited Everything Orvik publishes for a reader is also published as JSON: the **749 entries** in our identification keys with their full trait coding, the **570 taxa and specimens** matched to GBIF, iNaturalist, Macrostrat and the Paleobiology Database, and the five reference tables the field calculators run on. No account, no key, no quota. Credit Orvik with a link and use it for whatever you like, including commercially. ## Start here One request returns every dataset with its row count, its licence and what it is for: ``` curl https://orvik.app/api/v1/index.json ``` The OpenAPI 3.1 description is at [/api/v1/openapi.json](https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json), and [/api/v1/status.json](https://orvik.app/api/v1/status.json) reports when each file was last rebuilt. Every response is `application/json`, `Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *`, and cached for an hour. There is no authentication of any kind — see [/auth.md](https://orvik.app/auth.md), which says so formally rather than leaving you to discover it. *The six endpoints, with the number of rows each currently carries. Counts are computed at build time, never typed.* | Endpoint | Rows | What it is | | --- | --- | --- | | [`/api/v1/key-entries.json`](https://orvik.app/api/v1/key-entries.json) | 749 | Every specimen in every key, with its trait coding, the character that separates it from its lookalikes, and joined occurrence figures. | | [`/api/v1/field-data.json`](https://orvik.app/api/v1/field-data.json) | 570 | Occurrence counts joined from GBIF, iNaturalist, Macrostrat and PaleoBioDB. Snapshot 2026-09-04. | | [`/api/v1/tools.json`](https://orvik.app/api/v1/tools.json) | 28 | The catalogue of free browser tools, each with the facets its key can filter on. | | [`/api/v1/reference-tables.json`](https://orvik.app/api/v1/reference-tables.json) | 5 | ISA growth factors for 32 trees, 5 pet size bands, metal content for 22 coins, the 10-step Mohs scale, sowing timing for 34 crops. | | [`/api/v1/orvik.json`](https://orvik.app/api/v1/orvik.json) | — | The product: subjects, capabilities, which services process photographs, and what it does not do. | | [`/api/v1/status.json`](https://orvik.app/api/v1/status.json) | — | When each dataset was last rebuilt, and the field-data snapshot date. | ## Four fields people read backwards A schema tells you a field is an array of strings. It does not tell you that adding two of the rows together produces a number that is wrong by a factor of a thousand. These are the four places this dataset has actually been misread, and each one is carried as a caveat inside the payload as well as here, because a retrieved passage travels alone. ### `traits` — intersection across facets, union within one Each entry carries an object keyed by facet id, valued with the list of option ids that entry satisfies. A caterpillar listed as both `green` and `yellow` satisfies either, not both at once: a reader who says "green" should still see it. But an entry must satisfy *every* facet the reader has answered. Filter by union inside a facet and intersection across facets, and the key behaves the way the page does. Do it the other way round and a key with four facets returns almost everything. ### `species_rank` — `false` means do not add this row up Not every entry in a key is a species. "Rhododendron species" is a genus, and its GBIF count already contains every species inside it. "Killdeer, tern and plover scrapes" resolves to an order holding 201 million records. Summing a species total that includes one of those double-counts, and ranking a list that includes one puts an order at the top of a table of spiders. Every row states its rank; `species_rank: false` is the flag to filter on before any arithmetic. ### `months` — this measures photographers Twelve integers, January first, counting records in that month across all years. It is extremely tempting to read the maximum as a season, and for most taxa that is wrong: **14% of every record in this corpus falls in July and 4% in January**, because that is when people are outdoors with a camera. The shape you are looking at belongs to the observers before it belongs to the organism. The fix is published alongside the data. `corpus_month_baseline` in [field-data.json](https://orvik.app/api/v1/field-data.json) is the whole-corpus histogram; divide a taxon's curve by it and the shared seasonal effect cancels, leaving the part that is about the organism. The figures on our own pages draw both curves and the caption says which is which. And claim no peak below **120 records** — under that the month-to-month wobble exceeds the signal, and our own tables print a dash instead of a month. ### `risk` — absent does not mean safe `danger` and `caution` flag harm to a person: a sting, a bite, a toxic berry. The field is absent on every entry of a key whose subject does not carry that kind of risk — a cloud, an arrowhead, a feather. **An absent `risk` is the absence of a claim, never a clearance.** If you are building anything that a person might act on, treat a missing flag as unknown. ## What this API will not do There is no endpoint that identifies a specimen, and there is not going to be one here. What the keys do is narrow: a reader supplies characters they have observed, and the key returns everything consistent with them. That list is a shortlist, and presenting it as an answer changes what the tool is. On five of these subjects — mushrooms, wild berries, snakes, caterpillars and plant toxicity — that change can put somebody in hospital. So if you build on this, keep the alternatives visible and keep the `confused_with` sentence attached. It names the specific mistake and how to split the pair, which is the most useful thing in the row and the first thing a summary throws away. Nothing here certifies that anything is safe to eat, touch or handle, and no endpoint returns a price, a valuation or an appraisal. For a suspected poisoning, a bite or a sting the correct answer is a poison centre or a doctor, immediately, rather than a lookup. In the United States that is Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222. ## One copy of the arithmetic The five field calculators are a single ES module, [`/js/engine.b78b80c8.js`](https://orvik.app/js/engine.b78b80c8.js), and it is the same file in three places: the browser imports it on the calculator pages, the JSON endpoints import it at build time to publish the reference tables, and the MCP server imports it to compute. A tree of a given circumference and species therefore gets the same age from the page, from the table and from the tool, *because there is nothing left to disagree*. That is worth stating because the ordinary shape of a site like this is three copies of the same formula — one in a browser script, one in an endpoint, one in a service — each individually correct, with nothing comparing them. The drift is invisible until somebody checks two answers against each other, which nobody does. *The five calculators, the function each is, and the page it is documented on.* | Function | Computes | Page | | --- | --- | --- | | `treeAge` | Trunk circumference to tree age by the ISA growth-factor method. | [/tools/tree-age-calculator/](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) | | `petAge` | Dog or cat age in human years on the AAHA life-stage curve. | [/tools/pet-age-calculator/](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) | | `coinMelt` | Intrinsic metal value of a silver or gold coin at a spot price you supply. | [/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/](https://orvik.app/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/) | | `mohsStep / mohsBracket` | A step of the Mohs scale, or the bracket a scratch test leaves you in. | [/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/](https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/) | | `seedSchedule` | Indoor sowing and transplant dates for 34 crops from one frost date. | [/tools/seed-starting-calculator/](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) | ## Reading the site without parsing HTML Every indexable page has a markdown twin at roughly a quarter of the bytes — and far less than that on the key pages, where most of the HTML is filter-card markup. `/tools/leaf-identifier/` is 226 KB of HTML for about 18 KB of text. Two ways to ask for it, because agent stacks are split about evenly between them: ``` curl https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/index.md curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/ ``` [/llms.txt](https://orvik.app/llms.txt) indexes every page with its description. [/llms-full.txt](https://orvik.app/llms-full.txt) carries the full text of the keys, the data documentation and the app pages in one file. Four [agent skills](https://orvik.app/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) describe how to use each part of this correctly, including the mistakes above. There is an MCP server at `https://orvik.app/mcp` (JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP POST; its card is at [/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json](https://orvik.app/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json)) and an A2A endpoint at `https://orvik.app/a2a`. Both are read-only: they write nothing, spend nothing and expose no user data, which is why neither needs authentication. The tools are the lookups and the five calculators, and every one returns the source URL alongside the figure so an agent that used a tool still has a page to cite. ## Licence, and one restriction that is easy to miss The compilation — the key structure, the entry list, the trait coding, the joins and every derived column — is [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Use it commercially, modify it, redistribute it; credit Orvik with a link. The underlying records belong to four institutional databases and carry their own terms, which travel with any redistribution of the numbers. **One of them is not CC BY.** iNaturalist's observation metadata is CC BY-**NC** 4.0 — NonCommercial — so the iNaturalist columns inside `field-data.json` cannot be redistributed commercially even though the file around them can. Every row that carries one says so. It is the kind of thing that is only ever noticed if the payload states it, which is why it does. - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) — CC BY 4.0. Georeferenced occurrence counts, month histograms, country splits, accepted name and rank. - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) — CC BY-NC 4.0. Research-grade observation counts and month histograms. NonCommercial. This is the one upstream term that is not CC BY, and it travels with any redistribution of the iNaturalist columns. Orvik's own compilation is CC BY 4.0; the iNaturalist figures inside it are not. - [Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) — CC BY 4.0. Mineral formula, published Mohs range, crystal system and lustre. - [The Paleobiology Database](https://paleobiodb.org/) — CC BY 4.0. Fossil occurrence counts and first / last appearance in millions of years. A suggested citation: *Orvik open data, snapshot 2026-09-04. Vast Flow, LLP. https://orvik.app/api/* — with the source databases credited alongside, because the occurrence counts are theirs and not ours. ## What is deliberately not here An absent field reads as an oversight. A stated absence reads as an answer, so here is what we hold and do not publish, and why. - **The competitor app snapshot behind /compare/ and /alternatives/.** The metadata and in-app purchase lists come from the Apple App Store and are Apple's to license, not ours. The positioning is each publisher's own marketing. Republishing either keyless and CC BY would relicense content we do not own and distribute our competitors' copy at our own cost. [https://orvik.app/compare/](https://orvik.app/compare/) - **Individual occurrence records — coordinates, dates, observer, photographs.** Orvik holds only aggregate counts and month histograms. The records themselves are the upstream databases' to distribute, and they already do so properly. [https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/search](https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/search) - **Any identification made by the Orvik app, and any user photograph.** None is retained in a form that could be published, and publishing it is not something a user agreed to. [https://orvik.app/privacy/](https://orvik.app/privacy/) The first of those is the one worth expanding on, because it is the obvious dataset for a site with 28 comparison pages and it is the one that must not ship. We keep a dated App Store snapshot of 21 identification apps, and it is genuinely good data — it is what lets [/compare/](https://orvik.app/compare/) state a rival's in-app purchase list without anybody typing a price. But the metadata is Apple's to license and the positioning is each publisher's own marketing. Republishing it keyless and CC BY would relicense content we do not own and hand our competitors a machine-readable promo pack at our own expense, which travels through agents faster than any page. Judgement about other apps belongs on the comparison pages, where it is signed, has context, and concedes where they win — including the pages that recommend keeping a rival, or using no app at all. The build enforces this rather than trusting it: a gate reads the rival snapshot and fails if any listing's name, developer, store URL, App Store id or in-app purchase price appears anywhere under `/api/v1/`. The next person to extend the generator will not have read this paragraph. ## Stability, freshness and what breaks The datasets are re-derived on every build from the same modules the pages render from, so there is no second copy to go stale. What *can* go stale is the field-data snapshot: it is a dated capture of four external databases, and `status.json` reports the capture date separately from the build date for exactly that reason. Cite the snapshot date, not the build. Our own gate fails the build once the snapshot passes 180 days. Occurrence counts only ever grow, but coverage and the seasonal shapes do move, and a figure attributed to a date the source no longer agrees with is worse than no figure. If a number here disagrees with the source database today, the source database is right and this file is old. URLs under `/api/v1/` are stable. A breaking change to a payload shape would appear as `/api/v2/` rather than silently altering `v1`, because a model that cited a URL last month is only a source of traffic if the URL still resolves and still means the same thing. New fields may be added to existing objects; treat unknown keys as ignorable rather than as an error. ## Using it for something If you build anything on this we would like to know, and we will link it: write to [support@orvik.app](mailto:support@orvik.app). If a taxon resolved to the wrong name, a trait is coded wrongly, or a diagnostic sentence is simply incorrect, that is the more valuable message — the joins are automated and the failure mode of an automated join is a plausible wrong answer rather than an obvious one. We have already had to guard against GBIF walking up the tree when it cannot find a name, which once returned *Tracheophyta* and 540 million records for a Christmas cactus, in a file that looked entirely correct. The whole method, including the parts that went wrong, is written up on [the open data page](https://orvik.app/data/). Who compiles this, and what he is not qualified in, is on [the about page](https://orvik.app/about/). --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/api/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Download Orvik — Free AI Identification App for iOS & Android** > Orvik is free to download on iOS and Android. What it identifies well, what it gets wrong, what it costs, and when a free browser key beats it — written honestly. Source: https://orvik.app/app/ Free Download # Download Orvik — free identification app Identify plants, animals, insects, birds, rocks, and more — right from your camera. Free to download on iOS and Android. No account needed to start. - [![Download on App Store](https://orvik.app/images/d_appstore.svg)](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orvik-identifier-ai-lens/id6757122990) - [![Get it on Google Play](https://orvik.app/images/d_googleplay.svg)](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vastflow.coinradar.app) ### Instant Scan Point, snap, and get a shortlist with the look-alikes ranked underneath. ### 10,000+ Species Plants, animals, insects, birds, rocks, food, and more. ### Detailed Info Species details, care tips, toxicity warnings, and fun facts. ### Scan History All your identifications saved and organized. ### Privacy First Your photos are analyzed securely and never stored or shared. ### AI Chat Ask follow-up questions about any identified species. ## Best free plant identification app for iPhone and Android Looking for a **free plant identification app**? Orvik is the best way to identify any plant, flower, tree, or mushroom from a photo. Available for **iPhone (iOS)** and **Android**, Orvik uses advanced AI to recognize over 10,000 species instantly — no typing, no manual search. Just snap a photo and get the answer. Unlike other plant identifier apps, Orvik goes beyond plants. It's a universal identification tool that covers **insects, animals, birds, rocks, minerals, coins, stamps, food, and natural phenomena**. Whether you're a gardener, hiker, student, or collector, Orvik is the one app you need. ### What makes Orvik different from PictureThis or PlantNet? Most plant identification apps only cover plants. Orvik identifies **8 categories** — plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food, and nature — in a single app. You also get detailed species information, care guides, toxicity warnings, and an AI chat feature to ask follow-up questions about anything you identify. ### How to identify a plant with Orvik 1. Open Orvik and point your camera at the plant, leaf, or flower 2. Tap the scan button to take a photo 3. AI analyzes the image and returns the species name, care tips, and detailed information 4. Save the identification to your history or share it with friends Orvik is **free to download** with daily identification limits. Premium unlocks unlimited scans, detailed reports, and priority support. Available on iOS and Android - [![Download on App Store](https://orvik.app/images/d_appstore.svg)](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orvik-identifier-ai-lens/id6757122990) - [![Get it on Google Play](https://orvik.app/images/d_googleplay.svg)](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vastflow.coinradar.app) Questions? [support@orvik.app](mailto:support@orvik.app) ## What it is good at, and what it is not Orvik reads a photograph and proposes a name, with the plausible look-alikes listed underneath instead of hidden. That is worth stating precisely, because it describes both the strength and the limit. It is pattern recognition on an image, so it is dependable where the distinguishing character is visible in a photograph and unreliable where it is not — and a great many identifications turn on something a camera cannot capture: a smell, a texture, a milky sap, whether the flesh bruises blue when cut, what the base of the stem looks like under the leaf litter. **We do not publish an accuracy percentage.** A single figure covering every subject would be close to meaningless: the same model that is reliable on a common garden flower is guessing on a small brown mushroom, and one number spanning both would mislead in precisely the direction that matters. Where a subject is genuinely hard, the app shows the alternatives and their differences rather than a confident single answer, which is less satisfying and more useful. ### What it costs Free to download on both stores, and free to use for a set number of identifications. Beyond that there is a paid tier, billed by Apple or Google rather than by us — which also means cancellations and refunds go through the store you bought from, not through our support address. There is no account required to start, and nothing is unlocked by signing up that is locked without it. The 23 identification keys on this site are a different thing entirely and are free without limit: 749 entries, no account, no cap, and every entry rendered into the page so it works with scripting switched off. They are not a demo of the app. For some jobs they are simply better — a key that asks you to check the spore print colour will beat any photograph, because the photograph does not contain that information. ### When not to use it If somebody has eaten something, been bitten, or is reacting to something, the app is the wrong tool and so is this website. Contact a poison centre or a doctor — in the United States, Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222, free and staffed around the clock — and keep the specimen or a photograph so you can describe it accurately. Several deadly species are close visual matches for common edible ones, and the fatal cases are usually confident people rather than careless ones. The same applies to anything with a formal consequence: a permit, a survey, a sale, a dispute. Those need a qualified person who will put their name to the identification. And for collectibles, no photograph settles value — condition, provenance and authenticity do, and all three need the object in hand. ### Where the reference material comes from Everything numeric on this site is computed from public databases rather than written by hand: 502 of the entries in our keys carry a GBIF taxon key, minerals carry a published Mohs range from Macrostrat, fossils a first and last appearance from the Paleobiology Database. The whole snapshot, dated 2026-09-04, is downloadable as one file on the [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page under CC BY 4.0 — so a figure you see here can be checked against its source rather than taken on trust. If the app gets something wrong, that is worth telling us about, and there is a short guide to what makes such a report actionable on the [contact page](https://orvik.app/contact/). The short version: the photograph, what the app said, what you think it actually is, and roughly where you were. ## Questions people ask before downloading ### Does Orvik work offline? No. Identification runs on a server, so the app needs a connection to return a result. This matters more than it sounds: the places people most want to identify things — a trail, a beach, a field a long way from a mast — are exactly the places with no signal. The practical workaround is to photograph now and identify later, and it is also a reason to open one of the free browser keys before you set off, since a loaded page keeps working with no connection at all. ### Is Orvik free? Yes to download and yes for a set number of identifications, after which there is a paid tier billed by Apple or Google. The 23 identification keys on this website are free without any limit at all — 749 entries, no account, no cap — and they are not a trimmed-down version of the app. Where the distinguishing character is something you can check but a camera cannot see, a key is the better tool regardless of price. ### How accurate is it? We deliberately do not publish a single accuracy figure, because one number across every subject would be misleading in the direction that matters most. Accuracy on a common garden flower and accuracy on a small brown mushroom are different problems, and averaging them produces a figure that flatters the hard case. What the app does instead is show the plausible alternatives with their differences, so you can check the call rather than accept it. ### Can it tell me whether a mushroom or berry is safe to eat? No, and no app can. Several deadly species are close visual matches for common edible ones, and the difference frequently lies in a character a photograph does not contain. Use the app and the keys to describe what you have precisely, then ask somebody qualified. If something has already been eaten, contact a poison centre immediately rather than an app — in the United States, Poison Control on 1-800-222-1222. ### What happens to my photos? Photographs are sent to a server to be identified and are handled as described in the [privacy policy](https://orvik.app/privacy/), which is the authoritative document on this and worth reading rather than summarising here. If you want a scan history removed, or any other request covered by that policy, write to the address on the [contact page](https://orvik.app/contact/) and it is handled directly. ### Which is better, the app or the free keys on this site? They fail in opposite directions, which is why both exist. The app is faster and works when you cannot describe what you are looking at. A key is better when you can make an observation the camera cannot — a spore print, a scratch test, the shape of a web — and it is better when you want to see the reasoning, because every entry states the one character that separates it from its nearest look-alike. Starting with the app and confirming with a key is a reasonable habit. ### Does it identify coins, cards and other collectibles? It will tell you what a thing is — which coin, which denomination, which issue — and that is genuinely the hard part for most people. What it will not do is tell you what the thing is worth, because value is set by condition, provenance and authenticity, and none of the three survives a photograph. Grading in particular is a physical, standardised assessment: two coins that look identical in a picture can differ several grades and several multiples in price. Treat an identification as the start of a valuation, never as one. ### How do I report a wrong identification? Email the address on the [contact page](https://orvik.app/contact/) with the photograph, what the app said, what you believe it actually is, and roughly where you were. The last two are what make a report actionable: they identify which pair of species is being confused, and a surprising share of errors are resolved by location alone, because the proposed species does not occur anywhere near the observer. --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/app/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Identification App Prices Compared — Which Ones Are Actually Free** > Every in-app purchase price for 21 identification apps, read from the App Store on 2026-09-03. 7 of them have nothing to buy at all. Source: https://orvik.app/compare/ · updated: 2026-09-03 Compare # Which identification apps are actually free? **7 of these 21 apps have no in-app purchases at all** — nothing inside them to buy, no subscription, no unlock. The rest are free downloads with subscriptions running as high as **$79.99**, which is Blossom. Every figure below was read from the US App Store on 2026-09-03, not typed from memory. Apps priced **21** Free outright **7** Comparisons **16** Alternatives pages **12** The short version The apps with nothing to buy are published by **universities, public research institutes and non-profits** — Cornell, the Audubon Society, the French research consortium behind PlantNet, and the iNaturalist initiative. The subscription apps are published by commercial studios. That correlation holds across every app in the table below, and it is the single most useful thing to know before you install anything. ## Every app, priced *Read from each app’s US App Store listing on 2026-09-03 using Apple’s Lookup API and product pages. Apple does not publish billing periods next to in-app purchase names, so a low tier is frequently weekly rather than one-off — check the sheet before you subscribe. Google’s tiers are for other services inside the Google app; Lens itself is not paywalled.* | App | Publisher | In-app purchases | Range | Rating | Covers | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Merlin Bird ID | Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a university research programme | **None** | — | 4.9 (111,609) | Birds | | Dog Scanner | Siwalu Software, a commercial publisher | **None** | — | 4.6 (36,616) | Animals | | Seek | iNaturalist, a non-profit joint initiative | **None** | — | 4.8 (30,894) | Plants, Insects, Animals, Birds, Food, Nature | | PlantNet | Cirad, INRAE, Inria and IRD — French public research | **None** | — | 4.6 (7,040) | Plants | | Audubon Bird Guide | National Audubon Society, a conservation non-profit | **None** | — | 4.3 (4,518) | Birds | | eBird | Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a university research programme | **None** | — | 3.9 (809) | Birds | | iNaturalist | iNaturalist, a non-profit joint initiative | **None** | — | 4.1 (658) | Plants, Insects, Animals, Birds, Food, Nature | | Google Lens | Google, inside the main Google app | 8 tiers | $0.89–$99.99 | 4.6 (5,028,083) | Everything | | PictureThis | Glority Global Group, a commercial publisher | 4 tiers | $3.99–$49.99 | 4.8 (1,111,545) | Plants | | CoinSnap | Next Vision Limited, a commercial publisher | 6 tiers | $3.99–$39.99 | 4.7 (299,815) | Collectibles | | PlantIn | Vortemol Limited, a commercial publisher | 9 tiers | $6.99–$49.99 | 4.6 (228,414) | Plants | | Planta | Planta AB, a commercial publisher | 8 tiers | $7.99–$47.99 | 4.8 (113,511) | Plants | | Plant Parent | Glority Global Group, a commercial publisher | 6 tiers | $3.99–$59.99 | 4.7 (90,950) | Plants | | Rock Identifier | Next Vision Limited, a commercial publisher | 5 tiers | $3.99–$69.99 | 4.7 (79,371) | Rocks | | Blossom | Mosaic S.r.l., a commercial publisher | 6 tiers | $4.99–$79.99 | 4.6 (68,745) | Plants | | PlantSnap | PlantSnap, Inc., a commercial publisher | 10 tiers | $0.99–$59.99 | 4.6 (68,206) | Plants | | Picture Insect | Next Vision Limited, a commercial publisher | 6 tiers | $2.99–$39.99 | 4.6 (44,113) | Insects | | Picture Bird | Next Vision Limited, a commercial publisher | 3 tiers | $3.99–$39.99 | 4.7 (40,029) | Birds | | Picture Mushroom | Next Vision Limited, a commercial publisher | 7 tiers | $0.99–$39.99 | 4.7 (24,125) | Plants, Food | | LeafSnap | Appixi, a commercial publisher | 6 tiers | $4.99–$39.99 | 4.5 (4,915) | Plants | | Orvik | Vast Flow, an independent studio | 2 tiers | $4.99–$29.99 | — | Everything | ## Head to head 16 comparisons - [PictureThis vs PlantNet The commercial heavyweight against the free research app.](https://orvik.app/compare/picturethis-vs-plantnet/) - [PictureThis vs PlantSnap Two subscriptions compared — and the free app that beats both on wild plants.](https://orvik.app/compare/picturethis-vs-plantsnap/) - [PictureThis vs Seek Plants in depth for money, or everything alive for nothing.](https://orvik.app/compare/picturethis-vs-seek/) - [PictureThis vs iNaturalist A two-second guess, or an answer a scientist would accept.](https://orvik.app/compare/picturethis-vs-inaturalist/) - [PictureThis vs Google Lens Free and already installed, against a plant subscription.](https://orvik.app/compare/picturethis-vs-google/) - [PlantNet vs PlantSnap A free research app against a paid one. On wild plants, free wins.](https://orvik.app/compare/plantnet-vs-plantsnap/) - [Seek vs iNaturalist One is instant and private. The other is confirmed by people. Carry both.](https://orvik.app/compare/seek-vs-inaturalist/) - [Seek vs Google Lens Both free. One names species, the other finds lookalikes — and those differ.](https://orvik.app/compare/seek-vs-google/) - [Merlin Bird ID vs eBird Two free Cornell apps that are constantly confused. One identifies, one records.](https://orvik.app/compare/merlin-vs-ebird/) - [Merlin Bird ID vs Audubon Bird Guide Two free institutional bird apps that do opposite jobs.](https://orvik.app/compare/merlin-vs-audubon/) - [Merlin Bird ID vs Picture Bird A free Cornell Lab app against a subscription. The answer is short.](https://orvik.app/compare/merlin-vs-picture-bird/) - [Orvik vs PictureThis Our app against the category leader. Where each actually wins.](https://orvik.app/compare/orvik-vs-picturethis/) - [Orvik vs Seek Seek is free and excellent. Here is the exact gap it leaves.](https://orvik.app/compare/orvik-vs-seek/) - [Orvik vs Google Lens The free one already on your phone, against a paid identifier.](https://orvik.app/compare/orvik-vs-google/) - [Orvik vs Picture Insect A dedicated bug app against a general one — and the free option beating both.](https://orvik.app/compare/orvik-vs-picture-insect/) - [Orvik vs Rock Identifier Two apps compared — and the free key that beats both.](https://orvik.app/compare/orvik-vs-rock-identifier/) ## Alternatives 12 pages - [PictureThis alternatives Six apps that do what PictureThis does, three of them with nothing to buy inside.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/picturethis/) - [PlantSnap alternatives PlantSnap was first. Five apps that caught up, two of them free outright.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/plantsnap/) - [PlantNet alternatives PlantNet is free and research-backed. The reasons to leave it are specific and short.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/plantnet/) - [LeafSnap alternatives The famous research app is finished. What is in the store now, and what to use instead.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/leafsnap/) - [Seek alternatives Seek is free and private. Five apps for the gaps it leaves on purpose.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/seek/) - [iNaturalist alternatives Free and the most accurate there is. Four apps for its three real limits.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/inaturalist/) - [Merlin Bird ID alternatives Merlin is free and the best in its category. Here is what it does not do.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/merlin/) - [Picture Insect alternatives Four bug identifiers, two of them with nothing to buy inside.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/picture-insect/) - [Picture Mushroom alternatives Four alternatives — and the honest reason none of them settles edibility.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/picture-mushroom/) - [Rock Identifier alternatives Alternatives with real prices — and why a streak plate beats a camera.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/rock-identifier/) - [CoinSnap alternatives Alternatives with real prices — and why grade, not the date, decides value.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/coinsnap/) - [Google Lens alternatives Lens finds similar pictures. Five apps that name the species instead.](https://orvik.app/alternatives/google/) ## Why the free ones are free The pattern in the table is not a coincidence and it is worth understanding, because it predicts things the table does not show. Merlin and eBird come from the **Cornell Lab of Ornithology**, a membership-funded university research programme. The Audubon guide comes from a conservation non-profit. PlantNet comes from a consortium of French public research institutes. Seek and iNaturalist come from a non-profit joint initiative. For all of them, identification is the institutional mission and the app is outreach — a paywall would work against the reason the organisation exists. That funding model also explains their *quality*, which is the part people find surprising. Merlin’s live sound identification is not matched by any paid app, because it rests on the Macaulay Library of expert-verified recordings and on eBird’s record of what is actually present near you. A commercial publisher can build a good classifier; it cannot build a century of ornithology. The commercial apps are not thereby bad. They are better at cultivars, at care guidance, at answering every time, and at interface polish — all real things. But if your question is “which is best”, the honest answer in birds, and arguably in wild plants, is a free one. ## How to read an in-app purchase list Apple publishes the name and price of every in-app purchase on an app’s product page, and it is the most useful thing on that page. It does **not** publish the billing period, which is where the confusion comes from. So a tier called “Premium” at a low price can be weekly, monthly or annual and the listing looks identical either way. Read the list as a shape rather than as prices: several tiers sharing a name is one product billed over different terms, the lowest number is almost always the shortest term, and it is the one the app presents first because it looks cheapest. Do the arithmetic before you tap. A weekly subscription at a few dollars is several hundred a year — routinely five times the annual tier of the same product. If a free trial converts to weekly billing, that is the tier to avoid, and the annual one is usually two taps away in the same sheet. Two defences worth knowing. Look at the in-app purchase list *before* installing, when you are not three screens into an onboarding flow with a countdown on it. And if you were charged for something you did not intend to buy, request a refund at *reportaproblem.apple.com* — Apple grants those more often than people expect, particularly for a first accidental subscription. ## Cancelling, which deleting does not do Subscriptions live with your Apple Account, not with the app, so removing the app leaves the billing running. This is the single most common mistake in this category. **iPhone or iPad:** Settings, tap your name at the top, then Subscriptions. Every active subscription across every app is in that one list, and it is authoritative regardless of what an app’s own settings screen says. **Mac:** App Store, your name at the bottom of the sidebar, View Information, then Manage. **Android:** Play Store, profile icon, Payments and subscriptions. Cancelling keeps the subscription working until the end of the period you already paid for, so there is no reason to delay it. ## What no app in this table does Every free identifier here — Seek, iNaturalist, PlantNet, Merlin, eBird, Audubon — is built on a **taxonomy of living things**. A rock has no taxonomic position. Neither does a fossil, a coin, an arrowhead or a mark on the base of a jug. That is not a gap more training data would close; it is what those apps are, and it is the right scope for them. But it means the free, institution-backed option that exists so well for plants, birds and insects has **no equivalent for the other half of what people photograph**. There is no Cornell Lab of geology shipping a free scanner. Some of that half is not a camera problem at all. A mineral is identified by streak, hardness, cleavage and heft; a track by counting toes and looking for claws; a mushroom by a spore print left on paper overnight. Those are tests rather than photographs, which is why the [free tools on this site](https://orvik.app/tools/) ask you to do them — determination keys and field calculators, in a browser, with no account and nothing to buy. ## What is not in this table, and why Three categories were left out deliberately, and saying so is more useful than a longer table. **Plant-care apps with identification bolted on.** Planta, Blossom, Plant Parent and several others are genuinely good products for keeping a houseplant alive, and identification is the front door rather than the room. They appear in individual comparisons where relevant, but ranking them as identifiers misrepresents what they are. **Apps with a famous name and a different publisher.** The App Store listing carrying a name you remember is not always the product you remember — the developer line under the app name is the most informative field on the page, and it takes ten seconds to read. Our [LeafSnap page](https://orvik.app/alternatives/leafsnap/) works through the clearest example. **Anything we could not price from Apple’s own data.** If a figure could not be read from the Lookup API or the product page, the app is not in the table, because the alternative is an estimate — and an estimate presented next to verified figures is worse than an omission. ## How these pages are kept honest Three rules, enforced by the build rather than by intention. **No number is typed.** Every price, tier, rating, review count, version, size and update date on every page in this section is read from Apple’s Lookup API and product pages by a script, stored as a dated snapshot, and substituted at render. The build fails if a price appears in the editorial text, because a price a human typed is a price that goes stale silently — and on a comparison page a stale price is worse than no page at all. **The snapshot date is printed everywhere.** Prices in this category move, and a figure without a date is a claim without evidence. **Where a competitor is better, the page says so.** Orvik is our app. It appears in some of these comparisons and it loses several of them, which is the only way a comparison page written by an interested party is worth reading. --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/compare/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Orvik Open Field Data — Identification Keys Cross-Walked to GBIF** > Free CSV and JSON: 749 field-identifiable entries from Orvik's keys, matched to GBIF, iNaturalist, Macrostrat and the Paleobiology Database. CC BY 4.0. Source: https://orvik.app/data/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. Open field data Open data # Every entry in our identification keys, with its record behind it **749 field-identifiable entries in one file.** Each one is what a person would actually try to name outdoors — a spider on a wall, a mineral in a hand sample, a fossil in a road cut — and each is matched, where a match honestly exists, to the public database that keeps the record for it. Free to download, free to reuse, CC BY 4.0. Entries **749** Matched **570** Records behind them **634,096,345** Snapshot **2026-09-04** Licence **CC BY 4.0** - [CSV orvik-field-data.csv 749 rows · 37 columns · 131 KB](https://orvik.app/data/orvik-field-data.csv) - [JSON orvik-field-data.json the same snapshot, with the full month histograms](https://orvik.app/data/orvik-field-data.json) ## What this actually is Orvik publishes 23 free identification keys. Each one is a hand-built list of the things a person is realistically trying to tell apart in one situation — the spiders you find in a house, the berries you find on a hedge, the minerals you find in a gravel bar — with the diagnostic character that separates each from its look-alikes. That list is editorial work and it is the part that took the time. This dataset is the other half: for every one of those entries, the identifier that lets you look it up somewhere authoritative, and the numbers attached to it there. Of the 749 entries, 570 resolved against at least one database. 502 carry a GBIF taxon key. The 420 of those that resolve to a single species stand on **634,096,345 georeferenced occurrence records** between them, spanning 212 families and 74 orders, the oldest collected in 1877; the other 82 resolve to a genus, family or order, and their counts are reported per row but never added into that total, because a genus count already contains its species. 482 carry an iNaturalist taxon id. 48 are minerals with a published formula and Mohs range; 20 are fossil groups with a first and last appearance in millions of years. The thing that does not exist anywhere else is the join. Occurrence databases are organised by taxonomy, which is the correct way to organise them and the wrong way to use them in a field: nobody standing over an unfamiliar spider knows to look under Theridiidae. A field key is organised by what you can see, and it usually has no identifiers in it at all. Putting the two in one table means a question like "of the things I could plausibly be looking at right now, which are actually recorded around here, and in this month" has an answer that can be computed instead of guessed. ## What is in each row One row per entry per key, so an animal that appears in two keys — a species in both the track key and the scat key, say — appears twice, once with each key's own name for it. That is deliberate: the row describes an entry in a key, not a species in the abstract. - **tool, entry, scientific_name** — which key it belongs to, the name we give it, and the scientific name as written for a reader. - **matched_name, rank, family, order** — what the database says the accepted name is. Where these disagree with the previous column, the previous column is the vernacular usage and this one is the current taxonomy. - **gbif_taxon_key, inat_taxon_id** — stable identifiers. These are the columns to join on. - **gbif_records** — occurrences carrying coordinates. Records without coordinates are excluded, which is why this number is lower than the total GBIF holds. - **month_01 … month_12** — the same records split by month of collection. This is the phenology column and the reason the file is worth having. - **gbif_first_year, gbif_last_year, gbif_top_country** — the span of the record and where most of it comes from. - **mineral_formula, mohs_min, mohs_max, crystal_system, lustre** — populated for mineral and gemstone entries only. - **fossil_first_ma … fossil_extant** — populated for fossil entries only. A blank last-appearance with *extant = yes* means the group still has living members. ## How it was built, and what it cannot tell you The scientific name written on each key entry is parsed down to the first binomial and submitted to the GBIF name matcher. An abbreviated genus — the *L. hesperus* form that reads perfectly to a person — is rejected rather than guessed at, because it resolves to the wrong taxon often enough to matter. Where the match succeeds, the taxon key is used to pull a facetted occurrence count. iNaturalist is queried separately and a result is discarded if the returned genus does not match the one asked for. Minerals go to Macrostrat by name, fossils to the Paleobiology Database by taxon. **The single most important caveat is that an occurrence count measures recording effort at least as much as it measures the organism.** Across this whole corpus, 15% of all records fall in May and 5% in December — a spread that says far more about when people go outdoors with a camera than about anything living. Any conclusion of the form "this species is commoner than that one" drawn straight from the raw column is probably a conclusion about observers. On the key pages we divide each species' month curve by the baseline for its own key, which removes the shared seasonal effect and leaves the part that belongs to the species; the raw columns are published so anyone can do that differently. Two further limits worth stating plainly. Geographic coverage is heavily skewed toward North America and Europe, so a low count for a tropical species usually means nobody uploaded it rather than that it is rare. And a key entry that names a group rather than a species — "widow spiders", "oak" — is matched at whatever rank the name resolves to, so its record count aggregates everything below it and is not comparable with a species-level row. The *rank* column is there so you can filter those out. ## Coverage, key by key 18 of the 23 keys have a database behind them. The remaining 5 — animals, birds, rocks, clouds, point types — have none, and the rows are published anyway with the identifier columns empty. There is no public occurrence database for a cloud formation, a knapped stone point or a hand-sample rock type, and inventing a number for those would be worse than leaving the cell blank. *Coverage per identification key, snapshot 2026-09-04. "Matched" counts entries that resolved against at least one external database.* | Key | Group | Entries | Matched | Records behind them | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) | Birds | 34 | 34 | 702,798,118 | | [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) | Animals | 36 | 36 | 78,024,909 | | [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) | Insects & spiders | 34 | 34 | 32,259,780 | | [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) | Plants & trees | 30 | 30 | 27,304,040 | | [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) | Insects & spiders | 28 | 26 | 20,557,627 | | [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) | Plants & trees | 73 | 69 | 14,472,693 | | [What berry is this, and can you eat it?](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) | Food & foraging | 30 | 28 | 14,059,996 | | [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) | Insects & spiders | 28 | 28 | 11,709,865 | | [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) | Plants & trees | 43 | 43 | 5,847,119 | | [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) | Plants & trees | 34 | 34 | 5,266,559 | | [What shell did I find on the beach?](https://orvik.app/tools/seashell-identifier/) | Sky, coast & ground | 29 | 28 | 3,912,270 | | [What mushroom is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/) | Food & foraging | 28 | 26 | 3,699,241 | | [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) | Plants & trees | 28 | 27 | 1,694,948 | | [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) | Insects & spiders | 31 | 31 | 1,187,533 | | [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) | Animals | 28 | 28 | 1,074,617 | | [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) | Animals | 30 | 0 | — | | [Which bird did this feather come from?](https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/) | Birds | 26 | 0 | — | | [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) | Rocks & minerals | 33 | 0 | — | | [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) | Rocks & minerals | 36 | 28 | — | | [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) | Rocks & minerals | 27 | 20 | — | | [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) | Rocks & minerals | 26 | 20 | — | | [What cloud is that?](https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/) | Sky, coast & ground | 29 | 0 | — | | [What kind of arrowhead did I find?](https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/) | Collecting | 28 | 0 | — | ## Licence, attribution and how to cite it The compilation — the key structure, the entry list, the join, the derived columns — is published under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Use it commercially, modify it, redistribute it; credit Orvik with a link. The underlying records belong to the four sources below and carry their own terms, which travel with any redistribution of the numbers: - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) — CC BY 4.0 (aggregate counts). Occurrence records with coordinates, queried through the GBIF occurrence API. - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) — CC BY-NC 4.0 (observation metadata). Research-grade observations only — an identification agreed by two or more people. - [Macrostrat mineral definitions](https://macrostrat.org/) — CC BY 4.0. Formula, Mohs hardness, crystal system and lustre. - [The Paleobiology Database](https://paleobiodb.org/) — CC BY 4.0. Fossil occurrence counts and first/last appearance in millions of years. A suggested citation: *Orvik Open Field Data, snapshot 2026-09-04. Vast Flow, LLP. https://orvik.app/data/* — with the source databases credited alongside, since the occurrence counts are theirs and not ours. The snapshot is regenerated rather than edited. If a number here disagrees with the source database today, the source database is right and this file is old; the date at the top of every page says which day it was taken. Nothing in it is typed by hand, and the build fails if anything ever is. ## Reproducing it Nothing here is a private extract. Every figure comes from a public API that anyone can call without a key or an account: GBIF's occurrence search with a taxon key and a month facet, iNaturalist's histogram endpoint restricted to research-grade observations, Macrostrat's mineral definitions, the Paleobiology Database's taxon endpoint. If you want to rebuild the file from scratch rather than trust ours, the four calls are the whole method, and the columns above say exactly which field of each response ends up where. The one piece of judgement in the pipeline worth knowing about is the name matching, and it is deliberately conservative. An abbreviated genus is refused rather than guessed. A match that lands outside the lineage asked about is discarded — without that rule a single key entry resolved to an entire plant phylum and arrived carrying 540 million records, which is the kind of error that is invisible in a table and catastrophic in an average. A group-level row is kept but flagged by rank, never silently added to a species total. ## What people do with it The obvious use is the one the key pages already make: sort a shortlist by how much evidence stands behind each candidate, so a filter that leaves two possibilities can say which of the two is actually reported in that month. Prior probability is the single most useful thing a field key normally lacks, and it is exactly what an occurrence count is. Beyond that: joining *gbif_taxon_key* against a regional occurrence download turns any of these keys into a local one, which is the version a naturalist actually wants. The month columns support a "what should I be looking for this week" list without any modelling at all. And for anyone building an identification model, the entry list is a ready-made set of confusable groups — the pairs that a key has to separate are the pairs a classifier gets wrong, and they are already grouped here by the character that separates them. If you use it, a link back is the whole price. If a match here is wrong — and with 570 automated name matches some will be — mail [the address on our contact page](https://orvik.app/contact/) and it gets fixed in the next snapshot. ## The keys this came out of All 23 are free, work without an account, and show every entry with scripting off. [Browse the free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/data/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Identify Plants, Animals, Insects & Birds by Photo — Free App** > Point your camera at anything in nature. Orvik AI identifies plants, animals, insects, birds, rocks, and more in seconds. 10,000+ species. Free download for iOS & Android. Source: https://orvik.app/ AI Visual Identification # Identify Any Plant, Animal or Insect by Photo Free AI-powered identification app. Point your camera at any plant, animal, insect, bird, rock, or mushroom — get the name, species info, and detailed facts in seconds. - [Download Free App](https://orvik.app/app/) - What Can You Identify Scroll down ## Identify anything around you From backyard flowers to rare minerals. Orvik recognizes 10,000+ species across 9 categories — all from a single photo. - [### Plants Flowers, trees, mushrooms](https://orvik.app/plants/) - [### Insects Bugs, butterflies, spiders](https://orvik.app/insects/) - [### Animals Mammals, reptiles, marine](https://orvik.app/animals/) - [### Birds Species, songs, migration](https://orvik.app/birds/) - [### Rocks Minerals, gems, fossils](https://orvik.app/rocks/) - [### Collectibles Coins, stamps, antiques](https://orvik.app/collectibles/) - [### Food Fruits, dishes, ingredients](https://orvik.app/food/) - [### Nature Clouds, formations, phenomena](https://orvik.app/nature/) - [### Sports Cards Baseball, basketball & more](https://orvik.app/sports-cards/) ## Just snap a photo and ask Millions of people search "what plant is this?" or "what bug is this?" every month. Orvik gives you the answer in under 2 seconds. ### "What plant is this?" Snap any flower, tree, or mushroom — get the species name, care tips, and toxicity warnings instantly. ### "What bug is this?" Identify spiders, beetles, butterflies, and more. Learn if they bite, where they live, and what they eat. ### "What bird is that?" Recognize bird species from photos. Get details on songs, habitats, migration, and nesting behavior. ### "What rock is this?" Identify minerals, gemstones, fossils, and geological formations. Get hardness, composition, and value. ### "What breed is my dog?" Upload a photo of any pet and Orvik identifies the breed, temperament, and care requirements. ### "What coin is this?" Scan coins, stamps, and antiques. Get identification, origin, mint year, and estimated value. 28 free browser tools ## No camera? Work it out by hand Filterable identification keys and field calculators that run in this browser. Count the toes in the print, take a spore print, measure the trunk — the tool narrows the list. Free, no account, nothing to install. - [Browse all 28 tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) - [Compare app prices](https://orvik.app/compare/) - [### Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats? Look up 73 plants and see what each one does to a dog, a cat or a horse.](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [### What caterpillar is this? Colour, hair, size and host plant narrow 34 caterpillars down in seconds.](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [### What animal made this track? Count toes, check for claws, measure the print — narrows 36 species fast.](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [### Whose egg is this? Colour, markings, size and nest site narrow 34 birds by their eggs.](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) - [### What kind of rock is this? Grain size, layering and three kitchen tests narrow 33 common rocks.](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [### What berry is this, and can you eat it? Colour, growth habit and habitat — 30 wild berries, toxic ones flagged.](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) - [### What cloud is that? Height, shape and cover name 29 cloud types — and what each one forecasts.](https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/) - [### What kind of arrowhead did I find? Outline, notching and size place 28 North American point types.](https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/) Open data ## Every number on this site can be checked Nothing here is typed by hand. The entries in our free keys are matched against the public databases that keep the record for them, and the figures on every page are read from that snapshot at build time: **502 entries carry a GBIF taxon key**, 482 carry an iNaturalist taxon id, 48 minerals carry a published Mohs range and chemical formula, and 20 fossil groups carry a first and last appearance in millions of years. The 420 that resolve to a single species stand on 634,096,345 georeferenced occurrence records between them. That is a deliberate constraint rather than a feature. A number a person types is a number that goes stale silently — it sits on the page long after it stopped being true and nothing notices. So the build fails if a figure appears in the editorial text instead of coming from the snapshot, and the same rule governs the comparison pages, where every price is read from a dated App Store record rather than remembered. The consequence is that you do not have to take any of it on trust. The whole snapshot, dated 2026-09-04, is published as one downloadable file under CC BY 4.0 — species, taxon keys, record counts, month-by-month histograms, hardness ranges, geological ranges — so a figure you read here can be checked against its source, or used for something else entirely. As far as we know nobody else has published this particular join: occurrence databases are organised by taxonomy, field keys are organised by what you can see, and putting the two in one table is what lets a question like "of the things this could plausibly be, which are actually recorded near me, in this month" have a computed answer rather than a guessed one. There is one caveat we put on the page rather than in a footnote, because it changes how the numbers should be read. An occurrence count measures recording effort as much as it measures the organism: far more people walk outdoors with a camera in July than in January, so almost every raw curve peaks in summer regardless of what it describes. On the key pages we divide each species' monthly curve by the baseline for its own key, which cancels the shared seasonal effect and leaves the part that actually belongs to the species — and both versions are drawn, so you can see the correction rather than take it on faith. Coverage is also heavily skewed toward North America and Europe, so a low count for a tropical species usually means nobody uploaded it rather than that it is rare. [Download the open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) · [browse the free keys](https://orvik.app/tools/) · [who compiles this](https://orvik.app/about/) ## How identification works 1 ### Take a Photo Point your camera at any plant, animal, insect, bird, rock, or mushroom. 2 ### AI Identifies It Our AI model analyzes the image and matches it against our database of 10,000+ species. 3 ### Get Detailed Info Species name, characteristics, habitat, care tips, and interesting facts — all in seconds. 10K+ Species recognized 95% Identification accuracy <2s Average response time 8 Categories covered ## Why choose Orvik The fastest and most accurate AI identification app for nature, wildlife, and objects. ### Instant Recognition No typing, no searching. Just point your camera and get results in under 2 seconds. ### 10,000+ Species Database Plants, animals, insects, birds, rocks, coins, food, and more — our database grows every week. ### Rich Identification Details Every ID comes with species info, habitat data, care tips, toxicity warnings, and fun facts. ### Privacy First Your photos are analyzed securely and never stored or shared. No account required to start. ## Free plant, animal & insect identification app Download Orvik for iOS or Android. Identify anything with your camera — no subscription needed. Join thousands of curious explorers. [Download Free App](https://orvik.app/app/) ## The best free AI identification app for plants, animals, insects, and more Orvik is an AI-powered visual identification app that recognizes over 10,000 species across 9 categories: [plants](https://orvik.app/plants/), [insects](https://orvik.app/insects/), [animals](https://orvik.app/animals/), [birds](https://orvik.app/birds/), [rocks and minerals](https://orvik.app/rocks/), [collectibles](https://orvik.app/collectibles/), [food](https://orvik.app/food/), [nature](https://orvik.app/nature/), and [sports cards](https://orvik.app/sports-cards/). Whether you're wondering "what plant is this?" on a hike, trying to identify a spider in your garden, or curious about a rock you found on the beach — Orvik gives you the answer in seconds. ### How does Orvik plant identification work? Simply take a photo of any plant — a flower, tree, leaf, mushroom, or succulent — and Orvik's AI analyzes the image against our database of thousands of plant species. You'll get the common and scientific name, growing conditions, toxicity warnings for pets, and care tips. It works for wildflowers, houseplants, weeds, and everything in between. ### Identify insects, spiders, and bugs instantly Found a bug you don't recognize? Take a photo and let Orvik identify it. Our insect identification feature covers beetles, butterflies, spiders, ants, bed bugs, caterpillars, and more. Learn whether an insect is dangerous, what it eats, and how to deal with it — all from a single photo. ### Bird identification by photo Orvik helps birdwatchers and casual nature lovers identify birds from photographs. Get information about species, songs, migration patterns, habitats, and nesting behavior. Whether you spotted a backyard visitor or a rare species on a hike, Orvik can help you put a name to it. ### Rock, mineral, and gemstone identification Curious about a rock you found? Orvik identifies minerals, gemstones, crystals, and fossils. Get information about composition, hardness, geological origin, and potential value. Perfect for rock collectors, geology students, and anyone who's ever wondered "what rock is this?" ## Questions & Answers Everything you need to know about Orvik identification app What is Orvik? Orvik is an AI-powered visual identification app. Take a photo of any plant, animal, insect, bird, rock, or collectible, and Orvik instantly tells you what it is — with detailed species information, care tips, and fun facts. Is Orvik free to use? Yes. Orvik is free to download and use with daily identification limits. A premium subscription unlocks unlimited identifications, detailed reports, and advanced features. How accurate is Orvik identification? Orvik achieves 95%+ accuracy on common species. The AI model is trained on millions of verified images and continuously improves. For rare or unusual specimens, Orvik provides its top matches with confidence scores. What can Orvik identify? Orvik identifies plants (flowers, trees, mushrooms, succulents), insects (bugs, butterflies, spiders, beetles), animals (mammals, reptiles, amphibians), birds, rocks and minerals (gemstones, fossils, crystals), collectibles (coins, stamps, antiques), food items (fruits, vegetables, dishes), and natural phenomena like cloud types and geological formations. Is Orvik better than Google Lens for plant identification? Orvik is purpose-built for nature and object identification, while Google Lens is a general visual search tool. Orvik provides richer species-specific data — toxicity warnings, care guides, habitat info, and similar species comparisons — that a general tool doesn't offer. Which platforms is Orvik available on? Orvik is available on both iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play). Download it for free and start identifying plants, animals, insects, and more. --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Animal Poop Identification Chart — Scat Key by Shape & Size** > A free scat identification key: filter 30 North American animals by droppings shape, size, contents and where you found them. The disease risks are flagged. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Animals Animals # Whose droppings are these? Droppings outlast tracks, survive rain, and tell you what the animal has been eating — which is often more diagnostic than any footprint. Filter by **shape first**, then size, then what you can see in it. Pellets, tapered tubes and blunt tubes divide the whole list almost cleanly into herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Entries **30** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** **Do not handle droppings with bare hands.** Raccoon scat can carry *Baylisascaris* roundworm eggs that survive years in soil and cause permanent neurological damage; rodent droppings can carry hantavirus, which is inhaled from dust. Wear gloves, wet the material down before disturbing it, use a mask for dry rodent droppings in enclosed spaces, and never sweep or vacuum them dry. Narrow it down Clear all Search animals by name Shape The strongest single character. Look at an intact piece, not a trampled one. Round pellets Oval or acorn-shaped pellets Tube with twisted tapered ends Tube with blunt ends Short segments, often bent Loose, shapeless or splattered Tiny rice- or seed-sized grains Size of one piece Under 1 cm 1–2 cm 2–5 cm 5–10 cm Over 10 cm What is in it Break a dry piece apart with a stick, never with fingers. Hair and bone fragments Seeds, berry skins or pits Coarse plant fibre or grass Shiny insect parts Crayfish, fish or shell fragments Uniform, no visible content Where you found it Middle of a trail or path A pile used repeatedly Lawn, deck or garden Attic, shed, garage or pantry By water On a rock, log or beam Showing all 30 animals 1. ### White-tailed deer Small oval pellets, pointed at one end and dimpled at the other, dropped in a loose scattered heap. On spring grass the same animal produces a soft clumped mass instead — diet changes the shape completely. Size Pellets 1–2 cm, in scattered groups of 30–100 Where Woodland, field edge and suburb across most of North America. Confused with Rabbit. Deer pellets are oval and pointed; rabbit pellets are round and flattened. 2. ### Rabbit and hare Perfectly round, slightly flattened, dry and fibrous, breaking apart into sawdust between your fingers — and left in large scattered quantities on a lawn overnight. Size Round pellets 0.7–1.2 cm Where Gardens, hedgerows and open country everywhere. Confused with Deer, which are oval and pointed. If it is a sphere, it is a rabbit. 3. ### Elk Deer pellets scaled up by half, usually in a big consolidated pile rather than a scatter. On green summer forage they merge into cow-like patties. Size Pellets 2–2.5 cm Where Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, and eastern reintroductions. 4. ### Moose Very large barrel-shaped pellets, coarse with visible twig fibre in winter, dropped in a heap so big it is hard to mistake for anything else at the size. Size Pellets 2.5–4 cm, piles of a litre or more Where Boreal forest and willow flats of Canada, Alaska, New England and the Rockies. 5. ### Eastern cottontail droppings in a lawn The classic overnight scatter of small dry brown spheres on short grass, concentrated near shrub cover where the animal feels safe enough to sit. Size 0.7–1 cm Where Suburban lawns across North America. 6. ### Coyote A rope of hair and bone fragments twisted to a fine point at one end, deposited deliberately in the middle of a trail or on a rock as a territorial marker. In late summer it may be entirely berry skins and seeds. Size 5–13 cm long, 2–2.5 cm thick Where Everywhere in North America, including cities. Confused with Domestic dog. Dog scat is uniform and smooth because dog food is uniform; coyote scat is full of hair, and a dog owner does not usually let their animal deposit in the exact centre of a junction. 7. ### Red fox A slimmer coyote scat, sharply twisted at one end and stuffed with hair and beetle wing cases, placed prominently on a molehill, tussock, wall or garden bench — foxes advertise. Size 5–8 cm long, about 1.5 cm thick Where Farmland, forest edge and suburbs across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Cat scat, which is buried rather than displayed. A dropping on top of something is not a cat. 8. ### Gray wolf Coyote scat at a size that stops you: as thick as a broom handle, packed almost entirely with coarse hair and splintered bone, and left in the middle of a road or trail. Size 10–15 cm long, 2.5–3.5 cm thick Where Northern Rockies, Great Lakes, Alaska, Canada. 9. ### Domestic dog Smooth, uniform, blunt at both ends, with no hair, bone or seed in it — because commercial food contains none. This uniformity is the single most reliable way to rule out every wild canid. Size Variable with breed Where Wherever people walk dogs. 10. ### Domestic cat Short blunt segments, strongly and distinctively foul-smelling, usually half-buried with scratched-up soil around it in a dry bed or freshly dug border. Size 2–5 cm segments Where Gardens and flowerbeds worldwide. Confused with Fox, which does the opposite — it leaves scat on top of prominent objects rather than burying it. 11. ### Bobcat Segmented like a house cat's but much larger, full of rodent hair, often lightly covered with scraped debris at the edge of a trail or on a log. Size Segments 5–10 cm long, 2 cm thick Where Most of the contiguous United States. 12. ### Mountain lion Handle with care Big segmented cat scat, dense with deer hair and bone chips, frequently scraped over with a pile of soil and litter a foot across. The scrape is more diagnostic than the scat. Size Segments up to 10 cm long, 2.5–4 cm thick Where Western North America and Florida. Risk Fresh lion scat with a scrape mound means an active territory; do not follow the trail, and keep children and dogs close. 13. ### Black bear Enormous, and almost always vegetarian in appearance: a loose mass of berry skins, seeds, acorn shell and grass. In autumn it can be a solid purple mass of nothing but berries. Size Piles 15–30 cm across, tubes 4–6 cm thick Where Forested North America. Confused with Human waste, which is the genuine confusion at campsites and is usually accompanied by paper. 14. ### Raccoon Can injure you Blunt-ended tubes packed with undigested berry seeds and crayfish or insect fragments, deposited at a communal latrine — the base of a tree, a roof valley, a woodpile, a deck rail, used night after night. Size 5–8 cm long, 2 cm thick, blunt at both ends Where Across North America, and introduced in Europe and Japan. Risk Raccoon latrines are the main route for Baylisascaris procyonis. Eggs become infective after two to four weeks and survive years. Wear gloves and an N95, wet the site, bag everything, and treat the surface with boiling water rather than disinfectant — the eggs resist chemicals. 15. ### Striped skunk Small blunt tubes glittering with beetle and grasshopper parts, often on a lawn or deck near a shallow cone-shaped digging where the animal went after grubs. Size 2–5 cm, about 1 cm thick Where Suburbs, farmland and woodland edge across North America. 16. ### Virginia opossum Smooth-sided, frequently curled or bent into a comma, with a whitish mould bloom developing quickly. Contents are mixed and rarely dominated by any one item. Size 5–7 cm, often curled Where Eastern, central and west-coast United States. 17. ### River otter A loose, tarry, unmistakably fishy mass of scales, crayfish shell and small bones, left on a prominent rock or bank rollover site — otters use the same haul-outs repeatedly and flatten the vegetation. Size Loose piles 5–10 cm across Where Rivers, lakes and coasts across North America. 18. ### American mink A thin twisted rope with a strong musky smell, containing fish scale, crayfish and rodent hair, left on a rock or a log by the water's edge. Size 5–8 cm, thin, about 1 cm Where Water margins across North America; introduced across Europe. 19. ### Beaver Compressed balls of coarse sawdust-like wood fibre, almost always deposited in the water and so rarely found — which is itself informative. Look for gnawed stumps rather than droppings. Size Pellets 2.5–3.5 cm Where Ponds and slow rivers across North America and Eurasia. 20. ### Muskrat Small dark plant-fibre pellets deposited on top of a log, rock or floating platform in the water, often in a neat used-and-reused pile. Size 1–1.5 cm Where Marshes and canals across North America and Eurasia. 21. ### Porcupine Curved, comma-shaped pellets of coarse woody fibre, sometimes strung together like beads, piled deeply beneath a den tree or rock overhang. Size 1.5–2.5 cm, often curved and linked Where Forests of Canada, the northern US and the Rockies. 22. ### Groundhog Rarely seen above ground at all — groundhogs use an underground latrine chamber. Droppings on the surface near a burrow are the exception rather than the rule, which distinguishes the burrow from a rabbit or fox den. Size 1.5–3 cm Where Eastern and central North America. 23. ### Gray squirrel Small barrel-shaped pellets with rounded rather than pointed ends, scattered along beams, deck rails and attic joists rather than in a pile. Size 0.6–1 cm, barrel-shaped Where Woodland, parks and lofts across North America and Europe. Confused with Rat droppings, which are the main indoor alternative. Rat droppings are longer, thinner and more pointed; squirrel droppings are rounder and lighter in colour. 24. ### Norway rat Handle with care Dark spindle-shaped droppings with blunt ends, 20 to 50 of them along a consistent run — under a sink, along a wall base, behind stored feed. Rats reuse a route every night, so the droppings form a line. Size 1.5–2 cm, spindle-shaped Where Cities, farms and waterfronts worldwide. Risk Wet down before cleaning and wear gloves. Rodent droppings and urine carry leptospirosis and, in some species, hantavirus. 25. ### House mouse Handle with care Rice-grain-sized black droppings pointed at both ends, scattered widely rather than piled, appearing in drawers, cupboards and along skirting. A mouse produces 50 to 75 a day, so quantity builds fast. Size 3–6 mm, pointed at both ends Where Indoors, everywhere in the world. Risk Deer mouse droppings in the western US can carry hantavirus, which is inhaled from disturbed dust. Never sweep or vacuum dry: spray with a bleach solution, leave five minutes, then wipe with a damp cloth. 26. ### Bat Handle with care Mouse-sized but it crumbles to a glittering dust of insect wings and exoskeleton when crushed with a stick, because bats eat nothing else. It also accumulates in a single heap below the roost rather than scattering. Size 4–10 mm Where Attics, barns, bridges and cave mouths worldwide. Confused with Mouse droppings, which are hard and do not crumble. The crumble test is decisive. Risk Large accumulations in enclosed spaces can host Histoplasma capsulatum. Ventilate, wet down and wear a respirator, and do not disturb a roost during the maternity season. 27. ### Canada goose Green cylindrical cigars of compressed grass with a white cap of urate at one end, deposited in industrial quantities on short mown grass beside open water. Size Tubes 5–8 cm long, 1–1.5 cm thick Where Parks, playing fields, golf courses and shorelines. 28. ### Wild turkey Sex is readable from the shape: males leave a straight or J-shaped stick, females a spiral or popcorn-like clump. Both carry a white urate cap. Size 4–8 cm Where Woodland and field edge across North America. 29. ### Snake A dark semi-liquid smear with a distinct chalky white cap of urate, often containing hair and small bones. The white portion is the giveaway — mammals do not produce it, birds and reptiles do. Size Variable Where Anywhere snakes occur. 30. ### Domestic cattle and horses Cattle produce a flat splattered pat; horses produce a loose cluster of large fibrous balls with visible undigested hay and grain. Both are far larger than any wild animal on this list except a moose or a bear. Size Cow pats 20–30 cm across; horse balls 5–8 cm Where Pasture and bridleway everywhere. Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Shape sorts the diets Scat shape is not arbitrary. It follows from what the animal eats and how its gut handles it, which is why shape alone is more diagnostic than size. - **Pellets** come from bulk fibre fermented slowly: deer, elk, moose, rabbits, muskrat, porcupine. The gut extracts water aggressively and the residue leaves as discrete dry units. - **Tapered twisted tubes** come from hair. Canids and mustelids swallow their prey with the coat on, and the fur binds the mass into a rope that twists to a point as it leaves. If you find a twist, you have found a meat eater. - **Blunt-ended tubes** come from mixed omnivorous diets with no binding fibre: raccoon, skunk, opossum, and dogs on commercial food. - **Segments** are a cat signature — house cat, bobcat, mountain lion — and the segmentation persists across the whole size range. - **Loose masses** mean either very soft forage (deer in spring grass, elk in summer) or a fish and shellfish diet (otter). Season matters here: the same deer produces textbook pellets in January and a formless clump in May. The practical consequence: when a shape does not fit, ask what the animal ate that week rather than reaching for a different species. Autumn turns coyote scat into a mass of berry seed and turns black bear scat purple. ## Where it was left is half the identification Many mammals deposit scat as communication, and the placement is deliberate. Reading it as data doubles the information available. **On top of something prominent** — a rock, a tussock, a molehill, a fence post, a picnic table — means a territorial marker, and in most of North America that means fox, coyote, bobcat or mustelid. Wild canids advertise. This is also why a dropping on a garden bench is a fox and never a cat. **Buried or half-buried in loose soil**, in a flowerbed or dry bed, is a domestic cat. **A repeatedly used pile** — a latrine — narrows things very quickly. Raccoons build latrines at the base of trees, in roof valleys, on decks and woodpiles. Otters have haul-out latrines on rocks by water. Groundhogs latrine underground, which is why you find so little around an active burrow. **Along a wall base, indoors, in a consistent line** is rodent, because rats and mice follow the same route nightly and travel with one flank in contact with a surface. **In a heap under a single spot on a beam**, indoors, is a bat roost — the accumulation is directly beneath where the animals hang. ## The health risks, ranked honestly Most droppings are unpleasant rather than hazardous. Three are genuinely worth respecting, and the ranking is not what most people expect. *Hazards associated with common droppings, following CDC guidance on wildlife-associated zoonoses.* | Source | Hazard | Why it matters | Handling | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Raccoon latrine | *Baylisascaris procyonis* roundworm | Eggs survive years in soil, resist disinfectants, and larvae migrate to the brain and eye. Children and anyone who puts hands to mouth are most at risk | Gloves, N95, wet the site first, bag and burn or bin; treat surfaces with boiling water or a flame, not bleach | | Deer mouse and other *Peromyscus* | Hantavirus | Inhaled from aerosolised dust; concentrated in closed sheds, cabins and crawl spaces opened after a winter | Ventilate 30 minutes, spray with 1:10 bleach, leave 5 minutes, wipe damp. Never sweep or vacuum dry | | Bat guano accumulations | *Histoplasma capsulatum* | A fungus that grows in old guano and causes lung infection when the dust is disturbed | Respirator, wet down, avoid disturbing large deposits without professional help | | Dog and cat | *Toxocara*, *Toxoplasma*, giardia | The everyday risk in gardens and sandpits; toxoplasma matters in pregnancy | Gloves, wash hands, cover sandpits | | Goose droppings | Campylobacter, giardia | Relevant where children play on fouled grass or where droppings wash into swimming water | Ordinary hygiene; the volume is the problem, not the pathogen | The general rule that covers all of them: **never disturb dry droppings dry**. Every serious exposure route on that table is an aerosol, and wetting the material down first removes it. Sweeping a shed floor is how people get hantavirus, and it is entirely avoidable. ## Breaking one apart, safely, and what to look for Contents are the second-strongest character after shape, and you cannot see them from outside. With gloves and a stick, break a dry piece open on the ground and look for four things. **Hair.** Coarse guard hairs and fine underfur bound into a rope means a predator ate a mammal. The amount tells you something too — a scat that is almost entirely hair with bone chips is a wolf, a lion or a bobcat that ate a large animal, while a few hairs in a berry mass is a fox or coyote in autumn. **Seeds and skins.** Intact seeds mean fruit, and the species of fruit narrows the season and often the habitat. Raccoon and bear scat in September is frequently nothing else. **Insect parts.** Iridescent beetle elytra and grasshopper legs sparkle in the light. Skunks, opossums, foxes and bats all show them; a scat that *crumbles* into insect dust rather than breaking is bat. **A white cap.** Birds and reptiles excrete uric acid as a chalky white paste in the same package as the faeces. Mammals do not. If part of it is white, you are looking at a bird, a snake or a lizard. Finally, note whether it is fresh. A moist surface with a sheen means hours; a dull dry surface with mould bloom means days to weeks. Freshness changes what the find means — a week-old scat tells you a species is in the area, a fresh one tells you it was here last night. ## Cleaning up without making it worse 1. **Suit up before you start.** Disposable gloves, a mask for anything dry and enclosed, and boots or shoe covers you can hose. This is a five-minute job that turns a health question into a housekeeping one. 2. **Wet everything down.** A garden sprayer with water or 1:10 bleach solution, applied until the material is soaked, and then five minutes of waiting. Every serious risk on this page travels as dust. 3. **Lift, do not sweep.** Scoop into a bag with a shovel you can disinfect, double-bag, seal, and put it in the household waste. 4. **Raccoon latrines get boiling water or a flame, not disinfectant.** Baylisascaris eggs resist every household chemical. On soil, remove the top layer; on a deck or concrete, pour boiling water; on a roof, hire someone. 5. **Fix the reason it was there.** Cleanup without exclusion just resets the clock. Cap the chimney, screen the soffit vents, secure the bins, take the bird feeder down for two weeks, and clear the woodpile the animal was denning under. If droppings are appearing indoors, the identification changes the fix entirely: mice need 6 mm gaps sealed, rats need 12 mm gaps and a look at the drains, squirrels need the roofline checked in daylight, and bats need a legally timed one-way exclusion outside the maternity season. Getting the species right first is what stops you sealing an animal inside your roof. ## When the droppings are not enough Scat gets you to a small group reliably and to a species less often than tracking guides suggest. Coyote and large fox overlap. Bobcat and a big house cat overlap. Squirrel and rat overlap in an attic, which is the single most consequential confusion on this page, because the exclusion work is different for each. When the identification matters — you are deciding whether to let children play in a yard, or which gap to seal — combine three lines of evidence rather than trusting one. Look for tracks in dust or mud nearby, look for entry damage and rub marks, and set a cheap trail camera on the latrine for two nights. A photograph of the animal settles what a photograph of its droppings cannot. Photographing the scat itself is still worth doing, with something for scale. Size is the second filter in this key and the one most often misjudged from memory, and a dropping photographed next to a coin is a record you can still use a week later. ## Questions people ask about this How do I tell rat droppings from squirrel droppings in my attic? Rat droppings are 1.5 to 2 cm, spindle-shaped with blunt ends, dark, and laid down in a line along a route the animal uses every night. Squirrel droppings are shorter, distinctly barrel-shaped with rounded ends, lighter brown, and scattered across beams rather than concentrated in runs. The other tell is timing: squirrels are active by day and noisy at dawn, rats are heard after dark. Is raccoon poop actually dangerous? Yes, and it is the one entry on this page that justifies real caution. Raccoon latrines can contain Baylisascaris procyonis eggs, which become infective two to four weeks after being deposited, survive years in soil, resist household disinfectants, and can migrate to the brain or eye in a person who ingests them. Wear gloves and a mask, wet the material before disturbing it, bag it, and treat the surface with boiling water or a flame rather than bleach. What animal leaves droppings on top of a rock or a fence post? A territorial marker, which in North America and Europe usually means fox, coyote, bobcat, mink or marten. Placing scat on a prominent object is deliberate advertising. It also rules out domestic cats, which bury, and it is why a dropping on a garden bench or a molehill is almost always a fox. Are those round pellets on my lawn from a deer or a rabbit? Round and slightly flattened, under 1.2 cm, dry and fibrous means rabbit. Oval, pointed at one end and dimpled at the other, 1 to 2 cm, scattered in groups of dozens means deer. The shape test is reliable; the quantity is not, because both leave a lot. The droppings look like mouse droppings but crumble to dust. What is that? Bat guano. It is the same size as mouse droppings but consists entirely of insect exoskeleton, so it crumbles to a glittering powder when crushed with a stick, while mouse droppings stay hard. It also accumulates in one heap directly under the roost rather than scattering. Large accumulations can host the fungus that causes histoplasmosis, so ventilate and wet down before touching it. Why is part of the dropping white? Birds and reptiles excrete uric acid as a chalky white paste in the same package as their faeces, so a white cap or streak means a bird, a snake or a lizard, never a mammal. It is the fastest way to rule out the entire mammal half of this key. How fresh is it? A moist surface with a sheen is hours old. A dull, dry, crusted surface is days. Mould bloom, fading colour and insect activity mean a week or more. Freshness changes what the find means: old scat proves an animal uses the area, fresh scat means it was there last night and a trail camera will pay off. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows animals down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Animal track identification](https://orvik.app/animals/animal-track-identification/) - [What animal makes noise at night?](https://orvik.app/animals/what-animal-makes-noise-at-night/) - [Identify an animal by picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-animal-by-picture/) - [What do bed bugs look like?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-do-bed-bugs-look-like/) - [How to identify carpenter ants](https://orvik.app/insects/how-to-identify-carpenter-ants/) - [Frog vs toad](https://orvik.app/animals/frog-vs-toad/) - [What bird is this?](https://orvik.app/birds/what-bird-is-this/) - [Identify a snake by picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-snake-by-picture/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [How old is my dog or cat in human years?](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) - [Which bird did this feather come from?](https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [CDC — Baylisascaris infection and raccoon latrines](https://www.cdc.gov/baylisascaris/) - [CDC — Cleaning up after rodents (hantavirus)](https://www.cdc.gov/rodents/cleaning/) - [CDC — Histoplasmosis and bat guano](https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/diseases/histoplasmosis/) - [Elbroch, M. — Mammal Tracks & Sign](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705310/mammal-tracks-and-sign/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Animal Track Identification Chart — Filter by Toes, Claws & Size** > Count the toes, look for claw marks, measure the print, and this free key narrows 36 North American animal tracks down to the ones that fit. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Animals Animals # What animal made this track? Start with the two characters that never lie: **how many toes registered** and **whether claws printed above them**. Those two alone split every North American mammal into four small groups. Add a measurement — of the pad, not the splayed toes — and you are usually down to two candidates. Entries **36** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search tracks by name Toes showing Count the front foot. Many animals print a different number front and hind. 4 on all feet 4 front, 5 hind 5 on all feet 2 halves (cloven hoof) 1 solid hoof Bird — 3 or 4 thin toes Claw marks Look just beyond the toe pads. Sharp dots or dashes mean claws. Claws printed No claws Long claws, well ahead of the toes Length of the front track Measure the pad and toes, not the splay in mud or the melt-out in snow. Under 2.5 cm / 1 in 2.5–5 cm / 1–2 in 5–9 cm / 2–3.5 in 9–13 cm / 3.5–5 in Over 13 cm / 5 in Pattern of the trail Step back and look at ten metres of trail, not one print. Neat line, one print in front of another Groups of four, hind feet landing ahead Long hind prints ahead of small front pair Wide, alternating, rolling walk Front and hind side by side, in pairs Where you found it Yard, park or suburb Woodland Riverbank, marsh or shore Field, prairie or desert Deep snow Showing all 36 tracks 1. ### Domestic dog Canis familiaris Round-to-oval print, blunt claws that usually print, toes splayed outward, and a trail that wanders — a dog investigates everything and its track line reflects that. Size Front 4–10 cm depending on breed Where Anywhere people are, and most places they are not. Confused with Coyote. Draw an X between the pads: in a dog the X is broken by the toes crowding inward, in a coyote it stays clean. Then look at the trail — coyotes travel purposefully in a near-straight line, dogs do not. In the record 87,768 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from Australia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219200) 2. [Reading tracks in the field](https://orvik.app/animals/animal-track-identification/) 3. ### Coyote Canis latrans A compact oval with the two front toes close together and pointing forward, small claw dots, and a hard, efficient straight-line trail that crosses open ground without detouring. Size Front 6–7.5 cm long, clearly longer than wide Where The whole of North America including city centres. Confused with Medium dogs. Coyote tracks are narrower for their length and the trail is the real evidence: a straight bearing over a long distance is almost never a dog. In the record 105,972 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219153) 4. ### Red fox Vulpes vulpes Small dainty canine print with a distinctive bar or chevron across the heel pad, and in winter the dense foot fur blurs the whole outline into a fuzzy oval. Size Front 4.5–6 cm Where Farmland, suburbs and forest edge across North America, Europe and Asia. Confused with Cat tracks — but a fox prints claws and a cat does not. In the record 2,011,801 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from Switzerland [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219243) 5. ### Gray wolf Canis lupus Dog-shaped but massive, with heavy blunt claws and toes so large that a wolf print will not fit inside your palm. Trail is a long straight economical line. Size Front 10–13 cm long Where Northern Rockies, Great Lakes, Alaska, Canada and northern Eurasia. Confused with Large dogs, which is why size alone never settles it. Wolves place hind foot directly into the front print, producing a single clean line of prints. In the record 218,861 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in August · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219173) 6. ### Domestic cat Felis catus Round print with no claw marks and an asymmetric arrangement — one toe leads, exactly as your middle finger does. The rear of the heel pad has three lobes. Size Front 2.5–4 cm, as wide as it is long Where Suburbs and farmland worldwide. Confused with Fox. If claws printed, it is not a cat. Retractable claws are the whole diagnostic. In the record 217,740 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in July · mostly from Australia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2435035) 7. ### Bobcat Lynx rufus A house-cat print scaled up by half: round, clawless, leading toe offset, three-lobed rear on the heel pad. Trail follows cover — walls, hedgerows, ditch lines. Size Front 4–5.5 cm Where Almost all of the contiguous United States and northern Mexico. Confused with Large house cats. Above 5 cm you are in bobcat territory; below 4 cm you are not. In the record 91,961 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Apr · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2435246) 8. ### Mountain lion Puma concolor Very large, wider than long, no claws, with a heel pad that is enormous relative to the toes and has two lobes at the front and three at the back. Size Front 7–10 cm wide Where Western North America, Florida, and the whole of South America. Confused with Big dogs. The clawless round toes and the M-shaped heel pad settle it — no canid prints without claws. In the record 23,522 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2435099) 9. ### Black bear Ursus americanus The hind track looks unnervingly like a broad, flat human foot with five toes in a shallow arc and short claw dots close to the toes. Size Hind 15–18 cm long; front 10–13 cm wide Where Forested North America from Florida to Alaska. Confused with Grizzly. On a black bear the claws sit close behind the toe pads; on a grizzly they print two to three toe-lengths ahead. In the record 57,375 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2433407) 10. ### Grizzly bear Can injure you Ursus arctos horribilis Front claws print far ahead of the toes — often 5 to 8 cm clear of them — and the toes sit in a straighter line than the black bear's curved arc. Size Front pad 13–18 cm wide Where Alaska, western Canada, the northern Rockies. Risk A fresh grizzly track means leave the drainage, make noise, and do not follow it. In the record 52,541 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from Norway [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2433433) 11. ### Raccoon Procyon lotor Five long slender toes on a small palm — the print looks like a tiny human hand. The trail is the giveaway: a front foot and the opposite hind foot land side by side, over and over. Size Front 5–7 cm, hind 7–10 cm Where All of North America and, as an introduction, much of Europe and Japan. Confused with Opossum. The opossum hind foot has a thumb pointing sideways at nearly ninety degrees; the raccoon has nothing like it. In the record 189,281 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5218786) 12. ### Virginia opossum Didelphis virginiana The hind foot carries an opposable clawless thumb held out to the side, so the print looks like a starfish with one finger pointing the wrong way. Nothing else in North America does this. Size Front and hind both 4–6 cm Where Eastern and central United States, the Pacific coast, and into Ontario. Confused with Raccoon, until you find one clean hind print with the thumb. In the record 61,120 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2439923) 13. ### Striped skunk Mephitis mephitis A small five-toed print with front claws that print as long parallel scratches — the animal digs for grubs, and the front feet are built for it. The hind track shows a long flat heel like a miniature bear. Size Front 3–4.5 cm including claws Where Across North America, including dense suburbs. Confused with Young raccoon. The skunk's claw marks are proportionally far longer and the toes much stubbier. In the record 39,206 georeferenced records · half of them May–Sep · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219380) 14. ### River otter Lontra canadensis Broad five-toed print, sometimes with webbing printed between the toes, and — the real signature — a slide: a smooth trough 20 to 30 cm wide in snow or mud where the animal stopped running and tobogganed. Size Front 5–7 cm, hind 6–9 cm Where Rivers, lakes and coasts throughout North America. Confused with Beaver, which shares the habitat. Beaver hind feet are far larger and fully webbed, and a beaver leaves a tail drag. In the record 27,214 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2433727) 15. ### American mink Neogale vison Small star-shaped five-toed prints that appear in tight diagonal pairs along the very edge of the water, following the bank rather than crossing open ground. Size 3–4 cm, in bounding pairs 30–60 cm apart Where Water margins across North America; introduced across Europe. Confused with Marten, which is a forest animal. Habitat separates them almost perfectly. In the record 36,710 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4833733) 16. ### American badger Taxidea taxus Massive front claws print as long grooves well ahead of the toes, and the whole trail is pigeon-toed — the front feet point noticeably inward. Usually found near a fresh elliptical burrow with a spoil fan. Size Front 5–7 cm plus 2–3 cm of claw Where Grassland and open country from the Great Plains west. In the record 6,510 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2434102) 17. ### Beaver Castor canadensis Enormous webbed hind feet dwarf the small hand-like front feet, and a broad tail drag frequently erases the prints between them. Look for gnawed stumps within a few metres. Size Hind 12–18 cm, front 5–7 cm Where Streams, ponds and rivers across North America and reintroduced across Europe. Confused with Otter. The webbed hind foot over 12 cm is beaver; otters do not reach that size and do not drag a wide flat tail. In the record 98,674 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Apr · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2439838) 18. ### Muskrat Ondatra zibethicus Hind foot fringed with stiff swimming hairs that print as a faint halo, front foot showing only four usable toes, and a thin whip-like tail drag between the prints. Size Hind 5–7 cm, front 3–3.5 cm Where Marshes, canals and slow rivers across North America and much of Eurasia. Confused with Young beaver — but the muskrat tail drag is a narrow line, the beaver's a broad smear. In the record 1,521,958 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in October · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219858) 19. ### North American porcupine Erethizon dorsatum The sole prints with a distinctly pebbled, warty texture, the trail is strongly pigeon-toed, and in snow the low-slung body ploughs a trough with quill-drag marks at the sides. Size Hind 7–10 cm Where Forests of Canada, the northern US and the Rockies. In the record 25,858 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jun · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/6066824) 20. ### Eastern gray squirrel Sciurus carolinensis Bounding groups of four with the two larger hind prints landing side by side in front of the two smaller front prints — and the trail runs tree to tree rather than along the ground. Size Hind 4–6 cm, front 2.5–3 cm Where Eastern North America, introduced across Britain, Ireland and Italy. Confused with Rabbit, which uses the same pattern. A rabbit places its front feet one behind the other, a squirrel places them side by side. In the record 639,744 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219681) 21. ### Eastern cottontail Sylvilagus floridanus Furry feet leave soft-edged prints with almost no pad detail, in a long Y: two hind prints ahead, two front prints in a line behind them. Size Hind 7–9 cm, front 2.5–4 cm Where Fields, hedges and gardens across eastern and central North America. Confused with Squirrel. Rabbit front feet land one in front of the other; squirrel front feet land level. In the record 149,003 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2436886) 22. ### Snowshoe hare Lepus americanus The same rabbit Y, but the hind feet splay enormously in soft snow — a print far wider than any cottontail's, which is the whole point of the animal. Size Hind up to 12–15 cm when splayed Where Boreal forest of Canada, New England, the Rockies and the Cascades. In the record 25,265 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2436794) 23. ### White-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus Two pointed crescents forming a heart shape with the point in the direction of travel. Dewclaws print behind only in deep mud, snow or when running. Size 5–8 cm long Where Almost everywhere east of the Rockies, and much of the west. Confused with Sheep and goat, which have blunter, more parallel halves. A pointed tip is deer. In the record 347,824 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440965) 24. ### Mule deer Odocoileus hemionus Slightly larger and blunter than a white-tail, and the trail often shows the species' stiff-legged four-footed bounce, with all four prints landing in a tight cluster. Size 6–9 cm long Where Western North America from the Great Plains to the Pacific. In the record 146,227 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440974) 25. ### Elk Cervus canadensis Big, rounded at the tip rather than pointed, and roughly as wide as it is long — a deer track that has stopped looking like a heart and started looking like a cow. Size 9–11 cm long Where Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and reintroduced herds in the east. Confused with Cattle, which share the blunt shape. Cattle prints are wider still and the two halves splay apart. In the record 41,871 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8600904) 26. ### Moose Alces alces Enormous and sharply pointed, with the two halves splaying apart in soft ground and heavy dewclaw marks behind. Stride length alone — well over a metre — rules out everything else. Size 12–17 cm long Where Alaska, Canada, New England, the northern Rockies and northern Eurasia. In the record 144,605 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from Estonia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440940) 27. ### Wild boar Sus scrofa Rounded, splayed and squat, with dewclaws printing wide of the main hooves rather than behind them — so the whole print is broader than a deer's. Rooted-up ground nearby confirms it. Size 5–8 cm, wider than long Where The US South and California, and across Europe and Asia. Confused with Deer. Boar tracks are wider than long, deer tracks are longer than wide. In the record 1,182,624 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7705930) 28. ### Horse Equus caballus One solid rounded hoof, often with the U of a metal shoe and nail heads printed. Unshod horses leave a clean crescent with the triangular frog visible in the centre. Size 10–15 cm across Where Trails, farmland and open range everywhere. In the record 90,643 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Oct · most distinctive in July · mostly from Chile [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440886) 29. ### Domestic cattle Bos taurus Two large blunt crescents that spread widely apart, leaving a print rounder and much heavier than any wild deer. Where they gather, the ground is churned into a lattice of overlapping prints. Size 10–13 cm Where Pasture and open range worldwide. In the record 442,178 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Jan · most distinctive in November · mostly from Chile [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2441022) 30. ### Nine-banded armadillo Dasypus novemcinctus Deep narrow claw punches that read at first glance like a miniature cloven hoof, alongside shallow cone-shaped snout holes where the animal rooted for grubs. Size 3.5–5 cm Where The US South from Texas to Florida, and north through Missouri. In the record 27,269 georeferenced records · half of them Oct–Jan · most distinctive in December · mostly from Colombia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440779) 31. ### Groundhog Marmota monax Chunky front prints with four long digging claws and a heavy hind print with five toes, always within a short run of a burrow mouth about 25 cm across with a fan of earth outside it. Size Front 4.5–6 cm with claws Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 47,034 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2437368) 32. ### Wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo Three thick forward toes with a short hind toe printing as a dash behind the middle one, in a long alternating walking line. Prints are far heavier than any songbird. Size 10–13 cm from middle toe to heel Where Woodland and field edge across North America. Confused with Great blue heron, which is even bigger and only found at water. In the record 2,840,016 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9606290) 33. ### Great blue heron Ardea herodias Huge, extremely long thin toes with a fully developed backward toe printing in line with the middle one, walking slowly along the water's edge in a nearly straight single file. Size 15–20 cm Where Shorelines, marshes and pond edges across North America. In the record 14,194,317 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9630752) 34. ### Canada goose and ducks Branta canadensis, Anas species Three forward toes joined by a webbing that prints as a smooth triangle between them. Trail is a wide alternating waddle. Size Goose 8–11 cm; mallard 5–7 cm Where Ponds, rivers, lawns and playing fields across the northern hemisphere. In the record 23,296,736 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5232437) 35. ### Crow and raven Corvus brachyrhynchos, C. corax Three slim forward toes and one long backward toe, in an alternating walk rather than the paired hop of most songbirds. Ravens are half again as large and often leave wing-tip sweeps in snow. Size Crow 6–8 cm; raven 9–11 cm Where Everywhere in North America and Eurasia. In the record 29,072,171 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2482507) 36. ### House mouse and voles Mus musculus, Microtus species Tiny four-toed front and five-toed hind prints, usually with a fine tail drag, appearing along walls, beams and the edges of snow-covered runways rather than in the open. Size Under 1.5 cm Where Everywhere, indoors and out. Confused with Shrews, which are effectively the same size. At this scale the tail drag and the runway system tell you more than the print does. In the record 214,725 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in March · mostly from Australia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7429082) 37. ### Norway rat Rattus norvegicus A larger mouse print with a thick, unmistakable tail drag, running in a consistent greasy path along a wall, pipe or fence line — rats use the same route every night. Size Hind 2–4 cm Where Cities, farms and waterfronts worldwide. In the record 248,585 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in August · mostly from Belgium [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2439261) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Measure the pad, not the mud The commonest reason a track key gives the wrong answer is that the measurement was taken on a bad print. A foot in soft mud splays; a print in melting snow grows all day; a track on a slope skids. Any of those can add half again to a measurement, which is the difference between a bobcat and a mountain lion. Three habits fix nearly all of it: - **Find the best print in the trail, not the first.** Walk the line for twenty metres and measure the crispest one, ideally in firm damp sand or a thin skim of mud over hard ground. - **Measure the pad and toes only.** Exclude claw marks, splay and the dished melt-out rim. If you cannot see a clean pad edge, the print is not measurable. - **Put something in the photograph.** A coin, a car key, the last joint of your thumb. A track photographed without scale is close to useless afterwards, and this is the single most common regret in a phone full of track pictures. Snow deserves a warning of its own. A track melting in sun for six hours in spring can double in width and lose all pad detail while keeping a convincing outline, which is how house cats become mountain lions every March. If the edges are rounded and glassy rather than sharp, treat the size as an upper bound only. ## Four toes or five decides most of it North American mammals sort cleanly by toe count, and this is the fastest cut available to you. *The first split. Toe counts follow standard tracking references; the front and hind feet frequently differ, so count the front.* | Toes showing | Who it is | Next question | | --- | --- | --- | | 4 front and 4 hind | Dogs, foxes, coyotes, wolves, cats, bobcats, mountain lions, rabbits and hares | Did claws print? Claws mean canid; no claws means felid; furry pad-less prints mean rabbit | | 4 front, 5 hind | Rodents — squirrels, mice, voles, rats, muskrat, beaver, porcupine, groundhog | How big is the hind foot, and is there a tail drag? | | 5 front and 5 hind | Raccoon, opossum, skunk, otter, mink, marten, badger, bears | How long are the claws, and does one toe stick out sideways? | | 2 halves | Deer, elk, moose, boar, cattle, sheep, goats | Pointed tip or blunt? Longer than wide, or wider than long? | | 1 hoof | Horses, mules, burros | Shod or unshod | | 3 or 4 thin toes | Birds | Is there webbing, and does a hind toe print? | The single most useful follow-up question in the whole key is the claw question, and it separates the two groups people most often confuse. **Cats retract their claws and dogs cannot.** A round print with no claw marks in the snow beside your house is a cat — domestic, bobcat or lion depending on size — and a print with two neat dots above the leading toes is a canid, however round it looks. ## The trail says more than the print Trackers call it the gait pattern, and it survives conditions that destroy individual prints. Step back, look at five or ten metres of trail, and ask what shape the groups make. **A neat single line** of prints, one almost in front of another, comes from an animal that places its hind foot into the front print — canids, cats and hoofed animals walking. A domestic dog usually breaks the line because it stops and investigates; a coyote or fox holds a bearing. **Groups of four with the large prints in front** is a bounder: squirrels, rabbits, hares, and at speed most small rodents. The animal launches with the front feet and swings the hind feet past them, so the hind prints land ahead. To split squirrel from rabbit, look at the two front prints — squirrels land them side by side, rabbits one behind the other. **Prints in pairs, one from each side**, with a front and an opposite hind landing together, is the raccoon's pace-walk and it is close to diagnostic. **A wide rolling waddle** belongs to the low-slung and heavy: skunks, porcupines, opossums, badgers, bears. Look for a wide straddle — the distance from the left prints to the right prints — rather than for elegance. **Tight diagonal pairs 30 to 60 cm apart along a riverbank** is a mink or a marten, and almost nothing else moves that way. ## The confusions worth learning by name ### Dog and coyote Draw an imaginary X in the negative space between the heel pad and the toes. In coyotes and foxes the X is clean and unbroken, because the front two toes sit close together. In dogs the toes splay and something crosses the X. Then use the trail: a coyote crossing a field goes where it is going, a dog does not. ### Bobcat and mountain lion Both are round and clawless. A bobcat front track is 4 to 5.5 cm; a lion is 7 to 10 cm and noticeably wider than long. If you are trying to decide, the answer is bobcat — lion tracks are unmistakable once you have seen one next to your own hand. ### Raccoon and opossum Both leave five long toes on a small palm. Find a clean hind print: the opossum has an opposable thumb held out at right angles, and once you have seen it there is no going back. ### Deer and goat Deer halves are pointed and converge to a tip; sheep and goat halves are blunt and stay parallel. In cattle both halves are blunt and splay apart. ### Black bear and a barefoot person It is a real confusion and it goes both ways. Bear hind prints have five toes in a shallow arc with the largest on the *outside* — the opposite of a human foot — and short claw dots above them. ## Making the record you will actually be able to use Most tracks are identified at home rather than in the field, which means the quality of the identification is set by the quality of the record you took. A five-second discipline pays for itself. 1. **One photograph straight down** at the best print, with a scale object beside it, sun coming from the side rather than overhead. Low-angle light is what makes pad edges visible. 2. **One photograph along the trail** from a metre back, showing three or four groups of prints. This is the picture that gives you the gait, and almost nobody takes it. 3. **Note the substrate and the weather.** "Firm wet sand, overnight rain stopped at dawn" turns a track into a dated observation. It also tells you the print is fresh. 4. **Measure and write it down.** Length and width of the pad, straddle, and stride from one print to the next print of the same foot. If you want a physical copy, a plaster cast takes about fifteen minutes: ring the print with a strip of card, mix plaster of Paris to the consistency of pancake batter, pour from a low height so it does not blow the detail out, and lift it after thirty minutes. Casts of the same species from different substrates are the fastest way to internalise how much a print can vary. ## What this key does not cover These 36 entries are the animals a person in North America is realistically standing over. Small mammals below the rat-sized end — shrews, weasels in soft snow, bats — are not reliably separable from a photograph, and are grouped rather than split. Regional specialities are absent by design: javelina, coati, ringtail, lynx, wolverine, several tree squirrels and every desert rodent all leave tracks worth learning and none of them are here. Two structural limits matter more than the species list. A single print, however clear, is weaker evidence than a mediocre trail — professional trackers rank gait and stride above print detail for exactly this reason. And a track tells you an animal passed, not when: in the wrong substrate a print can survive weeks, which is why the substrate note in your record does real work. Finally, tracks near a carcass, a fresh kill or a den are worth photographing from a distance and leaving alone. That applies to bear tracks in particular, and it is the one place where a confident identification should change your behaviour rather than satisfy your curiosity. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 36 of the 36tracks here: **77,988,199 georeferenced records** across the 35 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 22 families, the oldest of them collected in 1955. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded tracks in this key hold 92% of all the records between them: Crow and raven alone accounts for 29,072,171, while American badger has 6,510. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 72% of these records come from the United States, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 76,009,122 georeferenced records for these 35 tracks fall in January–May alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these tracks are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in November. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in January–May. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these tracks recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 12 of the 35tracks here peak outside the warm half of the year — Crow and raven, Canada goose and ducks, Muskrat among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 36 named tracks in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Crow and raven | [Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822](https://www.gbif.org/species/2482507) | species | 29,072,171 | 219,015 | Jan–May | February | the United States | | Canada goose and ducks | [Branta canadensis](https://www.gbif.org/species/5232437) | species | 23,296,736 | 482,254 | Feb–May | March | the United States | | Great blue heron | [Ardea herodias Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/9630752) | species | 14,194,317 | 457,969 | Jan–Jun | August | the United States | | Wild turkey | [Meleagris gallopavo Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/9606290) | species | 2,840,016 | 198,270 | Feb–May | May | the United States | | Red fox | [Vulpes vulpes](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219243) | species | 2,011,801 | 166,296 | Jan–Jun | June | Switzerland | | Muskrat | [Ondatra zibethicus](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219858) | species | 1,521,958 | 58,793 | Jan–Jun | October | the Netherlands | | Wild boar | [Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/7705930) | species | 1,182,624 | 71,553 | Jan–Jun | November | Spain | | Eastern gray squirrel | [Sciurus carolinensis Gmelin, 1788](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219681) | species | 639,744 | 401,862 | Jan–Jun | June | the United Kingdom | | Domestic cattle | [Bos taurus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2441022) | species | 442,178 | 56,526 | Sep–Jan | November | Chile | | White-tailed deer | [Odocoileus virginianus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440965) | species | 347,824 | 418,677 | Jan–Jun | July | the United States | | Norway rat | [Rattus norvegicus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2439261) | species | 248,585 | 36,811 | Jan–Jun | August | Belgium | | Gray wolf | [Canis lupus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219173) | species | 218,861 | 155,244 | Feb–Jul | August | France | | Domestic cat | [Felis catus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2435035) | species | 217,740 | 191,591 | Jan–Jun | July | Australia | | House mouse and voles | [Mus musculus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/7429082) | species | 214,725 | — | Jan–May | March | Australia | | Raccoon | [Procyon lotor](https://www.gbif.org/species/5218786) | species | 189,281 | 198,811 | Mar–Jul | July | the United States | | Eastern cottontail | [Sylvilagus floridanus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2436886) | species | 149,003 | 208,047 | May–Jul | July | the United States | | Mule deer | [Odocoileus hemionus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440974) | species | 146,227 | 205,665 | Apr–Aug | July | the United States | | Moose | [Alces alces](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440940) | species | 144,605 | 71,078 | Apr–Jun | June | Estonia | | Coyote | [Canis latrans Say, 1823](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219153) | species | 105,972 | 159,152 | Jan–Jun | January | the United States | | Beaver | [Castor canadensis Kuhl, 1820](https://www.gbif.org/species/2439838) | species | 98,674 | 92,592 | Feb–Apr | March | the United States | | Bobcat | [Lynx rufus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2435246) | species | 91,961 | 54,972 | Jan–Apr | February | the United States | | Horse | [Equus caballus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440886) | species | 90,643 | 47,339 | Jun–Oct | July | Chile | | Domestic dog | [Canis familiaris Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219200) | species | 87,768 | 155,244 | Apr–Aug | July | Australia | | Virginia opossum | [Didelphis virginiana Kerr, 1792](https://www.gbif.org/species/2439923) | species | 61,120 | 75,334 | Jan–Jun | July | the United States | | Black bear | [Ursus americanus Pallas, 1780](https://www.gbif.org/species/2433407) | species | 57,375 | 93,627 | May–Jul | July | the United States | | Grizzly bear | [Ursus arctos Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2433433) | species | 52,541 | 21,784 | Jun–Aug | August | Norway | | Groundhog | [Marmota monax](https://www.gbif.org/species/2437368) | species | 47,034 | 64,791 | Apr–Jun | June | the United States | | Elk | [Cervus canadensis Erxleben, 1777](https://www.gbif.org/species/8600904) | species | 41,871 | 63,821 | May–Aug | July | the United States | | Striped skunk | [Mephitis mephitis](https://www.gbif.org/species/5219380) | species | 39,206 | 50,687 | May–Sep | July | the United States | | Nine-banded armadillo | [Dasypus novemcinctus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2440779) | species | 27,269 | 2,628 | Oct–Jan | December | Colombia | | River otter | [Lontra canadensis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2433727) | species | 27,214 | 40,117 | Jan–Jun | December | the United States | | North American porcupine | [Erethizon dorsatus](https://www.gbif.org/species/6066824) | species | 25,858 | 33,732 | Feb–Jun | July | the United States | | Snowshoe hare | [Lepus americanus Erxleben, 1777](https://www.gbif.org/species/2436794) | species | 25,265 | 25,042 | Apr–Jul | July | the United States | | Mountain lion | [Puma concolor](https://www.gbif.org/species/2435099) | species | 23,522 | 18,024 | Jan–Jun | January | the United States | | American badger | [Taxidea taxus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2434102) | species | 6,510 | 7,496 | May–Aug | July | the United States | | American mink | [Neogale Gray, 1865](https://www.gbif.org/species/4833733) | genus | 36,710 | 26,324 | Jan–May | January | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How do I tell a dog track from a coyote track? Two tests, used together. Draw an X in the space between the heel pad and the toes: it stays clean and unbroken in a coyote and is crossed by splayed toes in most dogs. Then look at ten metres of trail — a coyote holds a straight economical line across open ground, while a dog wanders, doubles back and investigates. Size overlaps completely between coyotes and medium dogs, so size alone never settles it. Why are there no claw marks on this print? Almost certainly a cat: house cat, bobcat or mountain lion, depending on size. Cats retract their claws when walking and dogs cannot. The other clawless prints belong to hoofed animals and to rabbits, whose fur-covered feet leave soft-edged marks with barely any pad detail at all. The track is enormous — is it a mountain lion? Usually not. A mountain lion front track is 7 to 10 cm wide, round, clawless, with a heel pad that has two lobes at the front and three at the back. Anything with claw marks is a canid, and anything melting in sun has been growing since it was made. Melted-out tracks in spring snow are the reason most reported lion sightings in the eastern United States turn out to be dogs. What made a track that looks like a small human hand? Raccoon, almost certainly — five long slender toes on a small palm, with the front and opposite hind foot landing side by side in pairs along the trail. The alternative is an opossum, and one clean hind print separates them: the opossum has a clawless thumb sticking out at right angles to the other toes. Can I identify a track from a photograph alone? Often, if the photograph includes a scale object and a second shot showing the trail. Without a scale the identification is guesswork, because the whole key runs on measurements. Take the straight-down shot with a coin next to the print, then step back a metre and photograph three or four groups of prints so the gait pattern is visible. How fresh is the track? Substrate decides that more than time does. In fine dry dust a print blurs within hours of the first breeze; in firm clay it can hold for weeks; in snow it can be sharp at dawn and unrecognisable by afternoon. The usable evidence is edge condition: crisp vertical walls and visible fine texture mean recent, rounded and grainy edges mean old. Rain that stopped at a known time gives you a hard upper bound. Is it worth casting a track? For learning, yes. Plaster of Paris, a card collar around the print, fifteen minutes of setting time and a gentle lift gives you a permanent reference. Casting the same species from mud, sand and dust teaches you how much a single animal's print varies, which is the thing that photographs never quite convey. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows tracks down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Animal track identification: a field walkthrough](https://orvik.app/animals/animal-track-identification/) - [How to identify an animal from a picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-animal-by-picture/) - [What animal makes that noise at night?](https://orvik.app/animals/what-animal-makes-noise-at-night/) - [Frog vs toad: telling them apart](https://orvik.app/animals/frog-vs-toad/) - [Identify a snake from a picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-snake-by-picture/) - [What breed is my dog?](https://orvik.app/animals/what-breed-is-my-dog/) - [What bird is this?](https://orvik.app/birds/what-bird-is-this/) - [What type of bug is this?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-type-of-bug-is-this/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [How old is my dog or cat in human years?](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [Elbroch, M. — Mammal Tracks & Sign (Stackpole Books)](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/705310/mammal-tracks-and-sign/) - [NatureTracking — track and gait reference](https://naturetracking.com/) - [US Forest Service — wildlife track identification resources](https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r6/plants-animals/wildlife/) - [Old Farmer's Almanac — animal track identification chart](https://www.almanac.com/content/animal-track-identification) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Arrowhead Identification Chart — Point Types by Shape** > Free projectile point identification key for 28 North American point types. Filter by outline, notching, size and age, with the collecting law explained. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Collecting Collecting # What kind of arrowhead did I find? Archaeologists do not call them arrowheads — most are **projectile points** from spears and darts, and true arrow points only appear in the last 1,500 years or so. Type is decided by **the base and the notching**, not by the tip, because the base is where the point was hafted and that is what changed through time. Entries **28** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** **Where you found it decides whether you may keep it.** On US federal and tribal land, collecting artefacts is a felony under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, and human remains and funerary objects are protected under NAGPRA. On private land in most states it is legal with the owner's permission. Digging is different from surface collection almost everywhere. And an artefact removed without its location loses nearly all its scientific value — photograph it in place and record where it came from before you pick it up. Narrow it down Clear all Search point types by name Base and notching The diagnostic feature. Look at the bottom third of the point. No notches — a plain lance shape A channel scar up the middle from the base Side-notched Corner-notched Basal-notched or eared A distinct stem or shoulder A plain triangle Length Under 2.5 cm 2.5–5 cm 5–8 cm Over 8 cm Period Paleoindian — 13,000 to 8,000 BC Archaic — 8,000 to 1,000 BC Woodland — 1,000 BC to AD 1,000 Mississippian and later — after AD 1,000 What it was on Thrusting spear Atlatl dart Bow and arrow Knife or hafted tool Region Eastern woodlands Great Plains Southwest Great Basin and West Continent-wide Showing all 28 point types 1. ### Clovis A lance-shaped point with a concave base and a broad flute — a channel flake scar — running up one or both faces from the base, usually a third of the length. Edges near the base are ground smooth so they would not cut the binding. Size 4–13 cm Where Across North America, roughly 11,500 to 10,800 BC. Confused with Folsom, which is smaller and whose flute runs nearly the full length. Clovis is the older and heavier of the two. 2. ### Folsom Smaller and finer than Clovis, with a flute running almost the entire length of both faces and leaving only a narrow margin. Among the most technically demanding stone tools ever made. Size 2–7.5 cm Where The Great Plains and the West, roughly 10,800 to 10,200 BC. 3. ### Dalton A lance shape with a deeply concave, heavily ground base and flaring ears. Very often resharpened repeatedly into a serrated, asymmetric blade — it was a knife as much as a point. Size 4–10 cm Where The Mississippi valley and the Southeast, roughly 10,500 to 9,900 BC. 4. ### Agate Basin A long, narrow, unnotched leaf shape with the widest point above the middle, finely flaked in parallel bands, with heavy grinding on the lower edges. Size 5–13 cm Where The northern Plains, roughly 8,500 to 8,000 BC. 5. ### Kirk corner-notched Broad corner notches producing sharp barbs and a wide straight base, with strongly serrated edges. One of the most abundant Early Archaic types in the East. Size 4–10 cm Where The eastern woodlands, roughly 7,500 to 6,900 BC. 6. ### Bifurcate base — LeCroy, St Albans, Kanawha Small points with the base split into two distinct lobes by a central notch, giving a forked or fishtail outline. Distinctive enough to date a site on sight. Size 2–4 cm Where The eastern woodlands, roughly 6,900 to 6,000 BC. 7. ### Big Sandy and other side-notched Narrow notches cut into the sides just above a straight or slightly concave ground base, leaving square rather than barbed shoulders. Size 3–6 cm Where The Southeast and Midwest, roughly 8,000 to 6,000 BC. 8. ### Stemmed Archaic — Stanly, Morrow Mountain, Guilford A triangular blade over a short contracting or straight stem with sloping shoulders. Morrow Mountain stems taper to a point; Stanly stems are square with a small notch. Size 4–8 cm Where The Southeast, roughly 6,000 to 4,000 BC. 9. ### Benton and Savannah River Large, broad, heavy points with a square stem and wide shoulders, often made on high-quality chert. Savannah River points are among the biggest routinely found in the East. Size 6–15 cm Where The Southeast, roughly 3,500 to 1,000 BC. 10. ### Adena A long narrow blade over a broad rounded or contracting stem, thick in cross-section and often beautifully made in Flint Ridge or Wyandotte chert. Size 5–11 cm Where The Ohio valley and the Midwest, roughly 800 BC to AD 100. 11. ### Snyders A wide, thin, expanding-stem point with very large round corner notches and a broad blade. A Hopewell type, often made in exotic imported chert and found in mounds. Size 5–10 cm Where The Midwest, roughly 200 BC to AD 300. 12. ### Hopewell and Copena Finely made, thin and symmetrical, in materials traded across half a continent — obsidian from Yellowstone and Knife River flint from North Dakota turn up in Ohio mounds. Size 4–8 cm Where The Midwest and mid-South, roughly 100 BC to AD 500. 13. ### Jack's Reef corner-notched Thin, wide and very finely made with pronounced corner notches. Marks the transition to the bow in the East, and its thinness and light weight are why. Size 2.5–5 cm Where The Northeast and Midwest, roughly AD 500 to 1000. 14. ### Levanna A broad isosceles triangle with a straight or concave base, as wide at the base as it is long, with no notching at all. Size 2.5–5 cm Where The Northeast, roughly AD 700 to 1350. 15. ### Madison A small thin triangle, longer than it is wide, with straight edges and a straight base. The standard Mississippian arrow point, and among the most commonly found points in the East. Size 1.5–4 cm Where Across the East and Midwest, roughly AD 800 to 1600. 16. ### Cahokia A small triangle with delicate side notches and sometimes a third notch in the base, made on very thin flakes. Associated with the Cahokia mound centre. Size 2–4 cm Where The central Mississippi valley, roughly AD 1000 to 1300. 17. ### Desert side-notched A very small thin triangle with narrow side notches high on the blade and often a notch in the base. Frequently found alongside historic trade goods. Size 1.5–3 cm Where The Great Basin and Southwest, roughly AD 1300 to 1800. 18. ### Cottonwood triangular A small unnotched triangle with a straight or slightly convex base, very thin, often on obsidian. The unnotched counterpart of the Desert side-notched. Size 1.5–3.5 cm Where The Great Basin and California, roughly AD 1200 to 1850. 19. ### Elko corner-notched A broad triangular blade with deep corner notches and pronounced barbs, usually on obsidian or basalt. One of the standard Great Basin dart points. Size 3–6 cm Where The Great Basin, roughly 3,000 BC to AD 700. 20. ### Rose Springs and Eastgate Small, thin and delicately notched, with an expanding stem. Their appearance in the record dates the arrival of the bow in the Great Basin. Size 1.5–3.5 cm Where The Great Basin, roughly AD 400 to 1300. 21. ### Plainview and Scottsbluff Unfluted lanceolate or square-stemmed points with fine parallel horizontal flaking across the face — a distinctive technique associated with the Cody complex bison hunters. Size 4–10 cm Where The Great Plains, roughly 8,000 to 6,000 BC. 22. ### Pedernales A broad blade over a wide rectangular stem with a deeply notched, forked base. Abundant across the Texas Hill Country and immediately recognisable. Size 5–11 cm Where Central Texas, roughly 2,500 to 1,000 BC. 23. ### Bonham and Perdiz Small arrow points with sharp barbs and a narrow contracting stem drawn to a point — the Perdiz stem looks like a tiny spike. Size 2–4 cm Where Texas and the southern Plains, roughly AD 800 to 1600. 24. ### Harahey and beveled knives A long four-beveled diamond-shaped blade, sharpened alternately on opposite edges of each face so it stayed straight as it was resharpened. A butchering knife rather than a point. Size 8–15 cm Where The Plains, roughly AD 1200 to 1600. 25. ### Gunflint and historic worked glass A square or wedge-shaped flint blank from a European musket, or a point knapped from bottle glass or a ceramic insulator. Both mark the contact and post-contact period. Size 1.5–4 cm Where Across North America after roughly AD 1600. 26. ### Preform or blank A roughly shaped biface with thick edges, no notches and no fine retouch — an unfinished point abandoned or stockpiled. Very common at quarry and workshop sites and frequently mistaken for a crude finished tool. Size 4–12 cm Where Everywhere. 27. ### Scraper A thick flake steeply retouched along one end or edge into a blunt working face, usually with a flat unmodified underside. Used on hides. Far more common on most sites than points are. Size 2–6 cm Where Everywhere. 28. ### Modern reproduction Sharp unpatinated edges, no soil sheen, often in a stone not local to the area, and flake scars that are unusually regular — modern knappers use copper tools, which leave a different signature from antler and stone. Size Any Where Flea markets, gift shops and, unfortunately, the ground. Confused with Reproduction and forged points are extremely common in the trade. Provenance and context are the only reliable defence. Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## The base is the type; the tip is not Point typology looks arbitrary until you understand what it is measuring. Tips break constantly and blades are resharpened until they change shape completely — a Dalton point may have been reworked into something half its original length. The **hafting element**, the base and notches that fitted into a shaft, does not change with use, and it changed systematically through time and across regions. That is why archaeologists can date a site from a surface find. A named type such as Clovis, Kirk or Madison is a shorthand for a period and a region, established by finding those points in dated stratified deposits. The broad sequence in North America: *Projectile point sequence and what it tracks. Dates are conventional and vary by region.* | Period | Dates | Typical points | Weapon | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Paleoindian | 13,000–8,000 BC | Clovis, Folsom, Dalton, Agate Basin | Thrusting spear and early atlatl | | Archaic | 8,000–1,000 BC | Kirk, bifurcates, Morrow Mountain, Elko, Pedernales | Atlatl dart | | Woodland | 1,000 BC–AD 1,000 | Adena, Snyders, Jack's Reef | Atlatl, then the bow from about AD 500 | | Mississippian and late | After AD 1,000 | Madison, Cahokia, Desert side-notched, Perdiz | Bow and arrow | The size rule that follows is genuinely useful in the field: **a point under about 3 cm and very thin is an arrow point and is late; a point over about 5 cm is a dart or spear point and is older.** An arrow shaft cannot carry a heavy head, so miniaturisation is a direct signal that the bow had arrived. ## The material tells you where it travelled Points were made from whatever knapped well locally, and archaeologists source stone to specific outcrops. When a point is made of something that does not occur within hundreds of kilometres, that is trade, and it is often more interesting than the point. - **Chert and flint** — the commonest material in the East and Midwest, in every colour from white to black. Named sources like Flint Ridge in Ohio, Burlington in Missouri and Knife River flint in North Dakota are recognisable on sight. - **Obsidian** — volcanic glass, only from volcanic regions. Every flow has a distinct trace-element signature, so a piece can be sourced to a specific volcano. Yellowstone obsidian in Ohio Hopewell mounds documents a trade network across half a continent. - **Quartzite and quartz** — coarse and hard to work, used where nothing better was available. Quartz points often look crude and are not. - **Novaculite, jasper, agate, chalcedony** — high-quality regional materials, often traded. - **Bottle glass and ceramic insulators** — knapped in the historic period, and a marker of the contact era rather than a curiosity. Patina matters too. A genuinely old point picked up from the surface usually has a soft sheen and slightly dulled edges from soil chemistry and weathering; a freshly knapped reproduction has sharp bright edges and no patina. It is not conclusive on its own — points recently eroded out of a bank can look fresh — but combined with material and context it is informative. ## The law, which is not the same everywhere This is the part people most often get wrong, and the penalties are serious. **US federal land.** The Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 makes it a crime to excavate, remove, damage or deface archaeological resources on federal or tribal land without a permit. It covers surface collection. First-offence felony penalties run to $20,000 and two years, more for repeat offences or commercial value. This applies to National Parks, National Forests, BLM land, Army Corps reservoirs and wildlife refuges. **Tribal land.** Governed by tribal law and by NAGPRA, and collecting is prohibited. **State land.** Varies by state; most prohibit collecting without a permit. **Private land.** In most states, surface collection with the landowner's written permission is legal, and the artefacts belong to the landowner unless agreed otherwise. Digging is often treated differently even on private land, and several states protect burial sites regardless of ownership. **Human remains and funerary objects are protected everywhere.** NAGPRA governs remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony on federal and tribal land, and state burial laws cover private land in every state. If you encounter human remains, stop, leave everything in place, and contact law enforcement and the state archaeologist. Selling artefacts is also regulated — interstate trafficking in illegally obtained material is a federal offence, and the market for fakes is large enough that provenance documentation matters commercially as well as ethically. ## Why the location matters more than the object A point in a drawer with no record of where it came from is an attractive stone. The same point with a location, a date and a photograph in place is data — it tells an archaeologist that a particular group was in a particular place at a particular time, and it can be combined with thousands of other records. The distinction matters more than most collectors realise. The overwhelming majority of what archaeology knows about the peopling of the Americas comes from context: what was found with what, at what depth, in what soil. Removing an object destroys that permanently and it cannot be reconstructed. What responsible surface collecting looks like: 1. **Photograph it in place** with a scale, before touching it, and take a wider shot showing the setting. 2. **Record a GPS coordinate**, the date, the field or landform, and the surface conditions. 3. **Do not dig.** Surface collection after ploughing or erosion takes material that has already lost its context; digging destroys context that is still intact. 4. **Report anything unusual.** Every US state has a State Archaeologist and most have avocational archaeology societies that welcome amateur records. Fluted points in particular are tracked in state and national databases, and a reported Clovis point adds to a genuine research dataset. 5. **Keep the record with the object.** Label it, and keep the label with it if it changes hands. Many important sites were found by farmers and amateur collectors who reported them. That is the version of this hobby that adds something. ## Telling a real point from a reproduction Modern knapping is a large and skilled hobby, and reproduction points are made in enormous numbers — most honestly, some not. Salted fields and forged provenance are both real problems in the trade. What to look at: - **Patina and surface sheen.** Genuine surface finds usually carry a soft weathered sheen and slightly softened edges. Fresh flake scars with glassy sharp edges on a point supposedly centuries old are a warning. - **Material against geography.** A point in a stone with no source within several hundred kilometres is either an important trade item or a modern piece. The second is far more likely. - **Flake scar regularity.** Modern knappers use copper billets and pressure flakers, which produce a distinctive, very regular scar pattern. Antler and stone leave a different signature. - **Perfection.** Many genuine points show use damage, resharpening asymmetry, and impact fractures. A flawless symmetric point with no wear is a display piece. - **Provenance above all.** For anything being bought, documentation of where and when it was found is the whole value. Without it, assume nothing. 28 entries here cover the major North American types and the things most often mistaken for them. Regional typologies run to well over a thousand named types, and the standard references — the Overstreet guide and the state-by-state projectile point guides published by university presses — go far deeper. A state archaeological society will identify a point for free, and will usually be more interested in where it came from than in what it is. ## Questions people ask about this How old is my arrowhead? Size gives you a first answer. A point under about 3 cm and very thin is an arrow point, so it dates after roughly AD 500 in most of North America, because a light arrow shaft cannot carry a heavy head. A point over 5 cm is a dart or spear point and is older. Beyond that, the base shape and notching place it in a named type, and named types are tied to dated deposits. Is it legal to collect arrowheads? On US federal and tribal land, no — the Archaeological Resources Protection Act makes collecting, including surface collection, a felony with penalties up to $20,000 and two years for a first offence. That covers National Parks, National Forests, BLM land and Corps reservoirs. On private land in most states, surface collection with the owner's written permission is legal, and the artefacts belong to the landowner. Human remains and burial goods are protected everywhere. Why do archaeologists call them projectile points? Because most were never on arrows. The bow reached most of North America only in the last 1,500 years or so; before that, points tipped thrusting spears and atlatl darts. Many were also used as knives, and show resharpening consistent with cutting rather than piercing. "Projectile point" covers all of it without asserting something the object cannot support. What is a fluted point? A point with a channel flake removed from the base up the middle of one or both faces, thinning it for hafting. Fluting is a Paleoindian technique, so a fluted point is 10,000 to 13,000 years old and among the oldest artefacts you can find in the Americas. Clovis flutes run about a third of the length; Folsom flutes run nearly the whole face and are the more difficult of the two to produce. How can I tell a real point from a modern reproduction? Look for patina and a soft weathered sheen — fresh glassy flake scars on a supposedly ancient point are a warning. Check whether the stone has a source within a few hundred kilometres. Modern knappers use copper tools, which leave unusually regular flake scars. And be suspicious of perfection: genuine points usually show resharpening, use damage or an impact fracture. For anything purchased, documented provenance is the only real assurance. What should I do if I find one? Photograph it in place with a scale before touching it, record a GPS coordinate and the date, and take a wider shot of the setting. Do not dig — surface collection after ploughing takes material that has already lost its context, while digging destroys context that is still intact. Then report it to your State Archaeologist or a local archaeological society, especially if it is fluted; those are tracked in national databases. I found a stone that looks worked but has no notches. What is it? Most likely a preform — an unfinished point abandoned partway through, thick-edged with no fine retouch — or a scraper, which is a thick flake steeply retouched at one end into a blunt working face for working hides. Both are far more common on most sites than finished points, and both are genuine artefacts rather than failures. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows point types down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Coin identification](https://orvik.app/collectibles/coin-identification/) - [How to identify coins](https://orvik.app/collectibles/identify-coins/) - [How to identify rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/identify-rocks/) - [Fossil identifier](https://orvik.app/rocks/fossil-identifier/) - [What is this rock?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-this-rock/) - [Stamps worth money](https://orvik.app/collectibles/stamps-worth-money/) - [Obsidian: what type of rock is it?](https://orvik.app/rocks/obsidian-what-type-of-rock/) - [Jewellery hang tag identification](https://orvik.app/collectibles/jewelry-hang-tag-identification/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What is the silver in this coin worth?](https://orvik.app/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/) - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) - [What berry is this, and can you eat it?](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) - [What mushroom is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/) - [What cloud is that?](https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [National Park Service — Archaeological Resources Protection Act](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/archeology/archaeological-resources-protection-act.htm) - [National NAGPRA Program](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/index.htm) - [Society for American Archaeology — ethics and reporting](https://www.saa.org/) - [Paleoindian Database of the Americas — fluted point records](https://pidba.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Beetle Identification Chart — Shape, Colour & Habitat** > Free beetle identification key covering 28 common North American and European beetles. Filter by shape, colour, size and habitat, with the pests flagged. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Insects & spiders Insects & spiders # What beetle is this? A quarter of all described animal species are beetles, so no key names them all. What this one does is cover the beetles people actually find — in the house, in the garden, in the flour jar and under a log — and it sorts them the way an entomologist does: by **body outline first, then antennae, then where you found it**. Entries **28** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search beetles by name Body shape Round or dome-shaped Oval Long and parallel-sided Flattened Heavy and chunky With horns or huge jaws Colour Black or dark brown Tan or light brown Red or orange Metallic or iridescent Spotted Striped Length Under 5 mm 5–10 mm 10–20 mm Over 20 mm Where you found it Inside the house In stored food On garden plants On or in wood On the ground or under a log In water At a light at night Is it a problem? Harmless Actively useful Damages plants or property Can bite or irritate Showing all 28 beetles 1. ### Seven-spot and convergent ladybird Coccinella septempunctata, Hippodamia convergens Domed, glossy red with black spots, short clubbed antennae. One larva eats several hundred aphids before pupating, which is the entire reason gardeners want them. Size 5–8 mm Where Across North America and Europe. Confused with Asian lady beetle, which comes in every colour from yellow to red and has a white M or W marking on the shield behind its head. In the record 717,986 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4990191) 2. ### Asian lady beetle Handle with care Harmonia axyridis Variable orange to red with 0 to 22 spots, and a white shield behind the head marked with a black M or W. Gathers on south-facing walls in autumn and gets indoors in hundreds. Size 6–8 mm Where Introduced across North America and Europe. Risk Nips skin, stains surfaces with yellow reflex blood when squashed, and causes allergic rhinitis in some people during mass overwintering. Vacuum rather than crush. In the record 1,008,147 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4989904) 3. ### Japanese beetle Handle with care Popillia japonica Metallic green head and thorax with coppery wing cases and five tufts of white hair along each side of the abdomen. Feeds in groups, skeletonising leaves between the veins. Size 10–13 mm Where The eastern and midwestern United States, spreading; established in parts of Europe. Risk Pheromone traps attract more beetles to a garden than they catch. Hand-pick into soapy water in the early morning instead. In the record 166,736 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from Portugal [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4425774) 4. [More on beetle identification](https://orvik.app/insects/beetle-identifier/) 5. ### June beetle and chafer Phyllophaga and Amphimallon species Heavy, glossy reddish-brown, clumsy in flight and noisy against a window on warm nights in early summer. The larvae are the white C-shaped grubs found in lawn turf. Size 15–25 mm Where Across North America and Europe. In the record 53,159 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1061346) 6. [Grub identification](https://orvik.app/insects/grub-identification/) 7. ### Eastern Hercules beetle Dynastes tityus Enormous, olive-grey with black blotches, and the males carry a pair of curved horns like pincers. One of the largest and most spectacular insects in North America, and completely harmless. Size 40–60 mm Where The eastern and southeastern United States. In the record 8,066 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1074527) 8. ### Stag beetle Lucanus species Glossy dark brown with the male's mandibles enlarged into antlers used for wrestling rival males, not for biting. Larvae spend years in rotting hardwood. Size 25–75 mm Where Deciduous woodland in North America and Europe. Risk Protected in the UK and declining across Europe. Leave dead wood in place — that is the habitat. In the record 300,544 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3263258) 9. ### Ground beetle Carabidae Fast-running, glossy black or metallic, with long legs, prominent jaws and deeply grooved wing cases. Runs for cover rather than flying when a stone is lifted. Size 10–30 mm Where Everywhere, with thousands of species. In the record 4,720,919 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from Switzerland [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3792) 10. ### Bombardier beetle Handle with care Brachinus species Rust-orange head and legs with blue-black wing cases, under stones near water. Sprays a boiling quinone jet from its abdomen with an audible pop when handled. Size 5–15 mm Where Damp ground worldwide. Risk The spray is around 100 °C and stains and irritates skin. Impressive rather than dangerous. In the record 35,759 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1035293) 11. ### Rove beetle Staphylinidae Long and narrow with very short wing cases leaving most of the flexible abdomen exposed, often curled up over the back like a scorpion when disturbed. Usually mistaken for an earwig without pincers. Size 2–25 mm Where Worldwide. In the record 2,614,597 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7854) 12. ### Firefly and lightning bug Lampyridae Soft-bodied, with a shield extending forward over the head so the eyes are hidden from above, marked red and black, and a pale luminous segment at the tip of the abdomen. Size 10–20 mm Where Eastern North America and much of Eurasia. In the record 224,467 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4737) 13. ### Click beetle Elateridae Long, parallel-sided, tapering at both ends, with backward-pointing corners on the thorax. Turned on its back it snaps a hinge and flips into the air with a loud click. Larvae are wireworms, a root crop pest. Size 10–25 mm Where Worldwide. In the record 945,929 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7825) 14. ### Soldier beetle Cantharidae Soft leathery wing cases in orange and black, on flower heads in high summer, especially goldenrod and umbellifers. Eats aphids and pollen; harmless. Size 8–15 mm Where North America and Europe. In the record 797,883 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jun · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7777) 15. ### Blister beetle Can injure you Meloidae Soft, elongated, with a narrow neck and a head wider than the thorax, often in swarms on legumes and potatoes. Size 10–25 mm Where North America and Europe. Risk Contains cantharidin, which raises painful blisters on skin contact. Baled into alfalfa hay it kills horses. Do not handle bare-handed. In the record 191,822 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4742) 16. ### Colorado potato beetle Leptinotarsa decemlineata Domed and yellow with exactly ten black lengthwise stripes on the wing cases. Larvae are fat orange grubs with two rows of black dots. Size 10 mm Where North America and much of Europe and Asia. In the record 58,120 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from Belgium [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1047536) 17. ### Cucumber beetle Acalymma vittatum, Diabrotica undecimpunctata Yellow-green with either three black stripes or twelve black spots, on squash and cucumber flowers. Spreads bacterial wilt, which does more damage than the feeding. Size 5–7 mm Where North America. In the record 9,674 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1047583) 18. ### Weevil Curculionidae The head is drawn out into a long downward-curving snout with elbowed antennae halfway along it. Nothing else has that profile, so the family is unmistakable even when the species is not. Size 2–15 mm Where Worldwide; the largest family of animals on Earth. In the record 2,705,656 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4239) 19. ### Rice and granary weevil Sitophilus oryzae, S. granarius Tiny dark snout beetles walking on rice, pasta or flour, with round exit holes in individual grains where the larva developed inside. Size 2–3 mm Where Stored grain worldwide. In the record 7,408 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from Poland [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9915023) 20. ### Confused and red flour beetle Tribolium confusum, T. castaneum Small flat reddish-brown beetles running fast through flour and cereal, which take on a sharp unpleasant smell as the infestation builds. Size 3–4 mm Where Kitchens and mills worldwide. In the record 1,249 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Dec · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7987689) 21. ### Sawtoothed grain beetle Oryzaephilus surinamensis Very flat and narrow with six sawtooth projections along each side of the thorax, thin enough to walk into a sealed packet through the fold in the seam. Size 2.5–3 mm Where Worldwide. In the record 2,733 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Nov · most distinctive in December · mostly from Switzerland [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1043875) 22. ### Carpet beetle Handle with care Anthrenus and Attagenus species Tiny rounded beetles mottled black, white and brown, found on windowsills in spring. The damage is done by the larvae — bristly golden woolly bears in wardrobes and under furniture. Size 2–4 mm Where Homes worldwide. Risk Eats wool, silk, feathers and dried insects. The larval hairs cause an itchy rash sometimes misdiagnosed as bed bug bites. In the record 61,876 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8200668) 23. ### Larder and hide beetle Dermestes lardarius Black with a broad pale band across the front half of the wing cases carrying six dark dots. Feeds on dried meat, hides, dead insects and animal carcasses in wall voids. Size 7–9 mm Where Worldwide. In the record 13,173 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1095848) 24. ### Powderpost beetle Lyctus and Anobium species Rarely seen; the evidence is round exit holes 1 to 2 mm across in hardwood, with fine flour-like frass beneath. Furniture beetle, the common woodworm, is the same story in softwood and plywood. Size 2–7 mm Where Worldwide. In the record 3,247 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from Australia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1095727) 25. ### Emerald ash borer Handle with care Agrilus planipennis Slender, brilliant metallic green, with a bright coppery-red abdomen under the wing cases. The tree evidence is decisive: D-shaped exit holes about 3 mm across, S-shaped galleries under the bark and blonde flecking from woodpeckers. Size 8–14 mm Where Introduced across North America and spreading in Europe. Risk Has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America. Report sightings in new counties, and do not move firewood between regions. In the record 5,146 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5878492) 26. ### Longhorn beetle Cerambycidae Antennae as long as the body or longer, often much longer, on a narrow elongated body. Larvae bore in wood, and adults squeak audibly when picked up. Size 10–60 mm Where Worldwide. Confused with Asian longhorned beetle, glossy black with white spots and banded antennae, is a quarantine pest — report it rather than releasing it. In the record 2,482,527 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5602) 27. ### Whirligig and diving beetle Gyrinidae, Dytiscidae Whirligigs spin in groups on the surface film; diving beetles are streamlined, glossy, and hang head-down from the surface to renew an air bubble under the wing cases. Size 5–40 mm Where Ponds and slow water worldwide. Risk Large diving beetles bite hard enough to draw blood if handled. In the record 114,530 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9646) 28. ### Dung beetle Scarabaeinae Rounded, heavily armoured, often with horns and a metallic sheen, digging in or rolling balls of dung. Estimated to save the US cattle industry hundreds of millions a year in nutrient cycling and fly control. Size 5–30 mm Where Pasture worldwide. 29. ### Tiger beetle Cicindelinae Long-legged, bulging-eyed and metallic, running in fast bursts along a sunny path and flying a few metres ahead of you before landing again. Among the fastest running insects known. Size 10–20 mm Where Sandy paths, dunes and shorelines worldwide. Risk Large jaws; can pinch if held, but never approaches people. 30. ### Rhinoceros and eastern Hercules larvae Scarabaeidae larvae Very large white C-shaped grubs with an orange head and a dark rear end, found in compost or rotting wood. These are decomposers, not lawn pests — turf-damaging grubs are much smaller and are in the root zone of living grass. Size Up to 60 mm Where Compost heaps, mulch and rotten logs worldwide. In the record 3,306,274 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5840) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Why beetles are easy to place and hard to name There are around 400,000 described beetle species and estimates of the true total run far higher. About one animal species in four on Earth is a beetle. No key of any size gets you to species reliably, and any tool that claims otherwise is not being honest. What is achievable, and genuinely useful, is the family. Beetles are defined by one feature — the front pair of wings has hardened into a case, the elytra, meeting in a straight line down the back — and the families are separated by a small number of visible characters: - **Antennae.** Clubbed, elbowed, feathery, saw-toothed or thread-like. This is the character professionals reach for first. - **Body outline.** Round, flat, elongated, or chunky and armoured. - **Elytra length.** Covering the abdomen, or cut short and leaving it exposed — that second case is a rove beetle, and it is a family of tens of thousands of species you can recognise instantly. - **Where it was.** In flour, in wood, in water, in dung, on a flower. Habitat narrows the list faster than colour ever will. Four families cover most household and garden questions: weevils by their snout, ladybirds by their dome, ground beetles by their speed and grooved backs, and carpet beetles by their size and their windowsills. ## Beetles in the house, sorted by where they turn up Location indoors is close to diagnostic, and it determines the fix. *Household beetles by where they appear, and what the actual problem is.* | Where | Likely beetle | What to do | | --- | --- | --- | | In flour, rice, cereal or pet food | Flour beetle, sawtoothed grain beetle, grain weevil | Bin the infested packet, vacuum the shelf including the corners, and move staples into sealed glass or hard plastic. Cardboard and paper are not barriers | | On windowsills in spring, tiny and mottled | Carpet beetle | The adults are leaving; the larvae are in wool, under furniture and in vents. Vacuum thoroughly and check stored woollens | | Round holes in furniture with fine dust | Powderpost or furniture beetle | Identify whether the holes are fresh, and treat or replace the timber. Frass that keeps appearing means an active infestation | | Mass gathering on a sunny wall in autumn, getting inside | Asian lady beetle | Seal gaps around windows, soffits and siding before October. Vacuum rather than crush — they stain | | Large, fast, black, running across the floor at night | Ground beetle | Nothing. It came in by accident, eats pests, and should be put back outside | | In a dead mouse, a bird nest or an old trophy | Larder or hide beetle | Find and remove the carcass; the beetles are a symptom | The one that surprises people is the last. A recurring beetle problem in a wall void almost always means something died there, and no amount of spraying fixes it until the source is removed. ## Beetles in the garden are mostly on your side The reflex when a beetle appears on a plant is that it is eating it. Usually it is eating something that was. **Ladybirds** and their larvae — slate-grey, alligator-shaped, spotted orange — consume hundreds of aphids each. The larvae look alarming and get squashed constantly. **Ground beetles** are the largest group of nocturnal predators in a garden, taking slugs, cutworms, root maggots and weed seeds. A ground-beetle-friendly garden is one with mulch, log edging and undisturbed margins. **Rove beetles** hunt in soil and compost, and several species are reared commercially against fungus gnats. **Soldier beetles** on goldenrod and umbellifers eat aphids and pollinate while doing it. The genuine plant pests are a much shorter list: Japanese beetle, Colorado potato beetle, cucumber beetle, flea beetles, and the root-feeding larvae of chafers and click beetles. All of them are recognisable, and all of them respond better to hand-picking, row cover and timing than to a broad-spectrum spray — which kills the ground beetles and ladybirds far more effectively than it kills the pest. One specific piece of advice worth repeating: **Japanese beetle pheromone traps attract more beetles than they catch.** Trials at multiple universities have found higher damage on plants near traps. If a neighbour has one, that is where your beetles are coming from. ## The beetles worth reporting A few species are quarantine pests, and a sighting in a new area is genuinely useful to an agricultural agency. **Emerald ash borer.** Slender metallic green, 8 to 14 mm, with a coppery abdomen. The tree signs are more findable than the beetle: D-shaped exit holes about 3 mm across, S-shaped serpentine galleries under loose bark, and pale patches on the trunk where woodpeckers have stripped bark to reach larvae. It has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees in North America. **Asian longhorned beetle.** Glossy black with irregular white spots and long antennae banded black and white. Exit holes are round and large, 10 mm or more. Eradication programmes depend almost entirely on public reports. **Spotted lanternfly** is not a beetle at all — it is a planthopper — but it is the most-reported insect in the eastern United States and is worth naming here for that reason. The single most effective thing an individual can do about all of them is **not move firewood**. Both borers travel in cut wood, and long-distance spread is overwhelmingly human-assisted. Buy firewood where you burn it. ## Photographing a beetle so it can be identified Beetle identification depends on characters that are small, and a phone camera will get them if you handle three things. 1. **Shoot straight down on the back**, in focus, with the whole outline in frame. The dorsal view is the standard reference and every guide is illustrated that way. 2. **Get the antennae in the shot.** Clubbed, elbowed, feathery or thread-like is the first thing an entomologist looks at, and it is the thing most often cropped out. 3. **Include a scale.** A coin, a fingernail, a ruler. Size separates several families that look identical in a photograph. If the beetle is on a plant, photograph the plant too. Host association narrows the candidates enormously — a striped beetle on a squash flower and the same-looking beetle on a potato are different species. 28 entries here cover the families and species that come up. For anything past that, BugGuide and iNaturalist both have coleopterists who identify submissions for free, and both will tell you plainly when a photograph cannot be taken beyond genus — which, for beetles, is often. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 26 of the 28beetles here: **1,998,438 georeferenced records** across the 11 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 19 families, the oldest of them collected in 1900. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded beetles in this key hold 98% of all the records between them: Asian lady beetle alone accounts for 1,008,147, while Confused and red flour beetle has 1,249. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 18% of these records come from the Netherlands, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 1,875,178 georeferenced records for these 11 beetles fall in May–July alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these beetles are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in June. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in May–July. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these beetles recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 5 of the 11beetles here peak outside the warm half of the year — Asian lady beetle, Seven-spot and convergent ladybird, Emerald ash borer among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 26 named beetles in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Asian lady beetle | [Harmonia axyridis](https://www.gbif.org/species/4989904) | species | 1,008,147 | 564,866 | May–Jul | November | the Netherlands | | Seven-spot and convergent ladybird | [Coccinella septempunctata Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/4990191) | species | 717,986 | 305,978 | Mar–Jun | March | the United Kingdom | | Japanese beetle | [Popillia japonica Newman, 1838](https://www.gbif.org/species/4425774) | species | 166,736 | 86,794 | Jul–Jul | July | Portugal | | Colorado potato beetle | [Leptinotarsa decemlineata](https://www.gbif.org/species/1047536) | species | 58,120 | 20,282 | Jun–Jul | July | Belgium | | Larder and hide beetle | [Dermestes lardarius Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1095848) | species | 13,173 | 9,673 | Mar–May | April | the United States | | Cucumber beetle | [Acalymma vittatum](https://www.gbif.org/species/1047583) | species | 9,674 | 7,413 | Jun–Jul | June | the United States | | Eastern Hercules beetle | [Dynastes tityus](https://www.gbif.org/species/1074527) | species | 8,066 | 12,606 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Rice and granary weevil | [Sitophilus oryzae A.Hustache, 1930](https://www.gbif.org/species/9915023) | species | 7,408 | 1,709 | Jun–Jun | June | Poland | | Emerald ash borer | [Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, 1888](https://www.gbif.org/species/5878492) | species | 5,146 | 10,105 | Apr–Jul | January | the United States | | Sawtoothed grain beetle | [Oryzaephilus surinamensis](https://www.gbif.org/species/1043875) | species | 2,733 | 1,695 | Jul–Nov | December | Switzerland | | Confused and red flour beetle | [Tribolium confusum Jaquelin Du Val, 1868](https://www.gbif.org/species/7987689) | species | 1,249 | 43 | Jul–Dec | December | the United States | | Ground beetle | [Carabidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/3792) | family | 4,720,919 | 801,130 | May–Jul | January | Switzerland | | Rhinoceros and eastern Hercules larvae | [Scarabaeidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/5840) | family | 3,306,274 | — | May–Jul | January | the United States | | Weevil | [Curculionidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/4239) | family | 2,705,656 | 994,268 | Apr–Jun | January | France | | Rove beetle | [Staphylinidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/7854) | family | 2,614,597 | 448,217 | May–Jul | January | Sweden | | Longhorn beetle | [Cerambycidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/5602) | family | 2,482,527 | 1,278,723 | Jun–Jul | July | France | | Click beetle | [Elateridae](https://www.gbif.org/species/7825) | family | 945,929 | 420,915 | May–Jun | May | France | | Soldier beetle | [Cantharidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/7777) | family | 797,883 | 407,111 | May–Jun | July | the United Kingdom | | Stag beetle | [Lucanus Scopoli, 1763](https://www.gbif.org/species/3263258) | genus | 300,544 | 97,118 | May–Jun | June | the United Kingdom | | Firefly and lightning bug | [Lampyridae](https://www.gbif.org/species/4737) | family | 224,467 | 264,360 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Blister beetle | [Meloidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/4742) | family | 191,822 | 242,215 | Mar–Jun | March | the United States | | Whirligig and diving beetle | [Gyrinidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/9646) | family | 114,530 | 19,450 | May–Aug | January | the United Kingdom | | Carpet beetle | [Anthrenus Geoffroy, 1762](https://www.gbif.org/species/8200668) | genus | 61,876 | 68,557 | Mar–May | March | the United States | | June beetle and chafer | [Phyllophaga Harris, 1826](https://www.gbif.org/species/1061346) | genus | 53,159 | 36,649 | Apr–May | May | the United States | | Bombardier beetle | [Brachinus Weber, 1801](https://www.gbif.org/species/1035293) | genus | 35,759 | 6,026 | May–Jul | January | the United States | | Powderpost beetle | [Lyctus Fabricius, 1792](https://www.gbif.org/species/1095727) | genus | 3,247 | 411 | May–Jul | January | Australia | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this What are the tiny beetles on my windowsill? Almost certainly carpet beetles — 2 to 4 mm, rounded, mottled black, white and brown. The adults eat pollen and are heading for the window to get out; the damage is being done elsewhere by the larvae, which are bristly golden "woolly bears" living in wool carpet, stored clothing, under furniture and in air vents. Find and vacuum the larval site rather than treating the window. How do I get rid of beetles in my flour? Throw out the infested packet, then vacuum the shelf including corners and cracks, and wipe it down. Check every other dry good, including pet food, birdseed and decorative items, because the beetles will have spread. Move staples into sealed glass or hard plastic — these species walk into sealed paper and cardboard packets through the seam. Freezing a new bag of flour for four days kills anything that arrived with it. Is the beetle in my house dangerous? Very rarely. Blister beetles raise painful blisters if crushed against skin and should not be handled. Large ground and diving beetles can pinch. Asian lady beetles nip and stain. Carpet beetle larval hairs cause an itchy rash sometimes mistaken for bed bug bites. Nothing else on this list is a health risk — the large fast black beetle running across your floor is a ground beetle, and it eats pests. What is eating holes in my leaves? If the leaf is skeletonised between the veins by a group of metallic green and copper beetles, that is Japanese beetle. Ten black stripes on a domed yellow beetle on potatoes is the Colorado potato beetle. Small yellow-green beetles with stripes or spots on squash flowers are cucumber beetles, and the wilt they transmit does more harm than the chewing. Tiny shot-holes with no beetle visible are usually flea beetles. Do Japanese beetle traps work? They catch beetles and they make the problem worse. The pheromone lure draws beetles from a wide area, and university trials have consistently found higher feeding damage on plants near a trap than on plants without one. Hand-picking into soapy water in the cool of the early morning, when the beetles are sluggish, is more effective and does not recruit reinforcements. What is the big white grub in my compost? If it is large — up to 60 mm — with an orange head and a dark rear, in compost or rotting wood, it is a scarab larva and it is a decomposer rather than a pest. Turf-damaging grubs are much smaller and live in the root zone of living grass, not in a heap. Big compost grubs frequently become spectacular harmless beetles like the eastern Hercules; leave them. How do I recognise a weevil? By the snout. Weevils have the head drawn out into a long downward-curving rostrum with elbowed antennae attached partway along it, and nothing else looks like that. It is the largest family of animals on Earth, so the family is easy and the species usually is not — the ones in your rice are grain weevils, and the ones notching the edges of rhododendron leaves at night are vine weevils. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows beetles down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Beetle identifier](https://orvik.app/insects/beetle-identifier/) - [Grub identification](https://orvik.app/insects/grub-identification/) - [What type of bug is this?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-type-of-bug-is-this/) - [Identify a bug by photo](https://orvik.app/insects/identify-bug-by-photo/) - [How to identify insects](https://orvik.app/insects/how-to-identify-insects/) - [What do ladybugs eat?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-do-ladybugs-eat/) - [What do stink bugs eat?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-do-stink-bugs-eat/) - [Larvae identification chart](https://orvik.app/insects/larvae-identification-chart/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [How old is my dog or cat in human years?](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) - [Mohs hardness scale, with a scratch test you can actually do](https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/) - [What is the silver in this coin worth?](https://orvik.app/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/) - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [UF/IFAS Featured Creatures — beetle species accounts](https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/) - [EmeraldAshBorer.info — USDA and university outreach on ash borer](https://www.emeraldashborer.info/) - [University of Kentucky Entomology — household and stored product pests](https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/entfacts) - [Royal Entomological Society — beetle identification resources](https://www.royensoc.co.uk/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Bird Egg Identification Chart — Match by Colour, Size & Nest** > Free bird egg identification key. Filter 34 North American birds by egg colour, markings, size and where the nest was, and find out what to do with an egg you have found. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Birds Birds # Whose egg is this? Egg colour on its own is ambiguous — a dozen species lay pale blue. What is **not** ambiguous is colour plus size plus nest. Measure the long axis against a coin, note whether the nest was a cup in a shrub, a hole in a tree or a scrape on the ground, and the list collapses to two or three. Entries **34** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** **In the United States it is illegal to collect, keep or disturb the eggs of almost any wild bird.** The Migratory Bird Treaty Act covers over 1,000 species and applies to eggs, nests and feathers, with no exception for eggs you found on the ground. Photograph it, leave it where it is, and do not move an active nest. The UK Wildlife and Countryside Act and the EU Birds Directive say the same thing. Narrow it down Clear all Search birds by name Ground colour White or cream Blue or blue-green Buff, tan or pink Olive or brown Grey Markings No markings at all Fine speckles Bold blotches or splotches A ring of marks around the fat end Squiggles or hair-like lines Length of the egg Long axis. A US quarter is 24 mm across; a UK 10p is 24.5 mm. Under 18 mm 18–24 mm 24–35 mm 35–50 mm Over 50 mm Where the nest was Cup in a shrub or tree Hole in a tree or a nest box On the ground or a scrape On a building, ledge or eave At water's edge or floating In a burrow or bank Loose, no nest found Showing all 34 birds 1. ### American robin Turdus migratorius Unmarked, saturated sky-blue — the colour that has its own paint-chart name — in a mud-lined cup on a horizontal branch, a porch light or a ledge. Three or four to a clutch. Size 28–30 mm Where The whole of North America. Confused with Eastern bluebird and starling eggs are also blue, but bluebird eggs are paler and smaller and starling eggs are more elongated with a faint gloss. In the record 29,399,206 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9510564) 2. [What bird is this?](https://orvik.app/birds/what-bird-is-this/) 3. ### Eastern bluebird Sialia sialis Pale powder-blue and unmarked, in a neat grass cup inside a nest box or a woodpecker hole. About one clutch in twenty is pure white, which throws people every year. Size 20–22 mm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 8,081,487 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2490941) 4. ### European starling Sturnus vulgaris Glossy pale blue and unmarked, more elongated than a robin's, in an untidy mass of grass and rubbish stuffed into a building cavity, vent or nest box. Size 27–32 mm Where Introduced across North America; native to Eurasia. In the record 28,298,900 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9809229) 5. ### House sparrow Passer domesticus Off-white to grey-green with dense grey-brown speckling that varies wildly within one clutch, in a bulky untidy nest of grass and litter crammed into a hole in a building or a box. Size 20–23 mm Where Towns and farms worldwide. In the record 25,809,906 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231190) 6. ### House finch Haemorhous mexicanus Very pale blue-white with a sparse scatter of fine black dots and thin squiggles concentrated at the fat end, in a small cup in a hanging basket, a wreath on a door, or a conifer. Size 16–21 mm Where Across North America. In the record 19,217,637 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8323485) 7. ### Northern cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis Greyish-white heavily marked with brown and grey blotches, in a loose cup of twigs and bark strips deep inside a dense shrub or a tangle of vines, usually one to three metres up. Size 24–27 mm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 27,192,474 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2490384) 8. ### Blue jay Cyanocitta cristata Buff to pale olive with fine brown speckling, in a bulky twig cup high in a conifer or oak. Larger and duller than a robin egg despite the bird's colour. Size 25–30 mm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 24,084,106 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2482593) 9. ### American crow Corvus brachyrhynchos Blue-green heavily blotched with brown and grey, in a big stick nest high in a tree. Size alone separates it from every songbird on this list. Size 40–45 mm Where Across North America. In the record 29,072,171 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2482507) 10. ### Mourning dove Zenaida macroura Pure unmarked white, always exactly two, on a flimsy platform of a few dozen twigs so thin you can often see the eggs through it from below. Size 26–30 mm Where Across North America. Confused with Rock pigeon, which lays the same two white eggs but on a building ledge and slightly larger. In the record 27,323,324 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2495347) 11. ### Rock pigeon Columba livia Two plain white eggs on a rough platform on a ledge, bridge girder or building recess. Larger than a dove's and almost always in built structure rather than vegetation. Size 36–40 mm Where Cities worldwide. In the record 15,562,872 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2495414) 12. ### Barn swallow Hirundo rustica White with fine reddish-brown speckling, in a cup of mud pellets and straw stuck to a beam, joist or wall inside a barn, porch or culvert. Size 18–20 mm Where Across North America, Europe and Asia. In the record 17,480,186 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9515886) 13. ### American goldfinch Spinus tristis Tiny, very pale blue-white and unmarked, in an exceptionally tight thistledown-lined cup that holds water. Nests in late July and August, far later than anything else in the garden. Size 16–18 mm Where Across North America. In the record 20,295,243 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231640) 14. ### Black-capped chickadee Poecile atricapillus Tiny white eggs with fine reddish dots concentrated in a ring at the fat end, on a bed of moss and animal fur inside a small tree cavity or nest box. Size 15–16 mm Where Northern North America. In the record 18,773,574 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2487805) 15. ### Carolina wren Thryothorus ludovicianus Creamy white with dense rusty speckling wreathed at the broad end, in a domed nest with a side entrance built in a hanging basket, a boot, a mailbox or a shelf in a shed. Size 18–20 mm Where The eastern United States. In the record 12,910,434 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2493801) 16. ### House wren Troglodytes aedon Tiny, so densely covered in fine reddish speckles that the eggs look uniformly pinkish-brown, on a platform of twigs jammed into any cavity — a box, a pipe, a coat pocket in a shed. Size 16–17 mm Where Across North America. In the record 6,609,621 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231459) 17. ### Mallard Anas platyrhynchos Large, unmarked, greenish-buff to cream with a smooth waxy surface, eight to thirteen in a down-lined hollow on the ground, often surprisingly far from water — including in planters and courtyards. Size 55–62 mm Where Across the northern hemisphere. In the record 29,635,278 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9761484) 18. ### Canada goose Handle with care Branta canadensis Very large plain creamy-white eggs, four to seven, in a big down-lined bowl on a bank, island or flat roof. The parents defend it aggressively. Size 80–90 mm Where Across North America and introduced in Europe. Risk A nesting goose will attack. Keep well back and route around it rather than trying to pass. In the record 23,296,736 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5232437) 19. ### Killdeer Charadrius vociferus Four pointed buff eggs heavily blotched black, arranged points-inward in a bare scrape on gravel — a driveway, a car park, a flat roof. They are almost invisible until you are on top of them. Size 35–38 mm Where Across North America. Confused with A scatter of gravel. That is the point. If a bird nearby is dragging a wing and screaming, you are standing near the nest. In the record 9,888,720 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2480320) 20. ### Wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo Ten to fourteen large pale buff eggs finely speckled reddish-brown, in a shallow leaf-lined depression at the base of a tree or under a brush pile. Size 60–65 mm Where Woodland and field edge across North America. In the record 2,840,016 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9606290) 21. ### Ring-necked pheasant Phasianus colchicus Eight to fifteen plain glossy olive-brown eggs with no markings at all, in a grass-lined scrape in tall cover at a field edge. Size 42–46 mm Where Introduced across North America and Europe. In the record 3,428,744 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9752149) 22. ### Northern bobwhite Colinus virginianus A dozen or more small, pure white, distinctly pointed eggs packed tightly into a domed grass nest woven closed over the top. Size 29–31 mm Where The eastern and central United States. In the record 500,837 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9791464) 23. ### Red-winged blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus Pale blue-green covered in dark brown and purple scrawls and hair-lines that look like handwriting, in a woven cup lashed to cattail stems just above the water. Size 24–26 mm Where Marshes and wet fields across North America. In the record 21,105,852 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9409198) 24. ### Common grackle Quiscalus quiscula Pale blue to light brown with heavy dark brown scrawls and blotches, in a bulky mud-reinforced cup in a conifer, often in a loose colony of several pairs. Size 28–32 mm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 12,356,348 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2484155) 25. ### Brown-headed cowbird Molothrus ater Greyish-white with dense brown speckling, and — the identifying feature — it is the odd one out in somebody else's nest: larger, differently coloured, and often already hatched first. Size 21 mm Where Across North America. Confused with Nothing, once you know the trick. A single mismatched egg in a warbler, sparrow or vireo nest is almost always a cowbird. Risk Cowbird eggs are also protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Removing one is illegal without a permit. In the record 8,428,231 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2484391) 26. ### Song sparrow Melospiza melodia Pale greenish-blue so heavily blotched with red-brown that the ground colour barely shows, in a grass cup on or near the ground in dense cover. Size 20–23 mm Where Across North America. In the record 22,455,511 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2492196) 27. ### Mockingbird Mimus polyglottos Blue-green splashed with large rusty-brown blotches, in a twig cup low in a dense shrub. The adults dive-bomb anything that comes near. Size 24–26 mm Where The southern and eastern United States. In the record 11,835,073 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231677) 28. ### Northern flicker Colaptes auratus Glossy pure white and almost translucent, laid on bare wood chips at the bottom of an excavated tree cavity. Woodpeckers do not build nests and do not need camouflaged eggs. Size 26–29 mm Where Across North America. Confused with Every other woodpecker, all of which lay plain white eggs in cavities. Cavity size and location separate them, not the egg. In the record 15,019,736 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2478259) 29. ### Eastern screech owl Megascops asio Almost perfectly spherical, pure white and slightly rough, in a tree cavity or a nest box with no nest material at all. Roundness is the giveaway — most eggs are noticeably pointed at one end. Size 34–37 mm Where Eastern North America. In the record 495,661 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2497415) 30. [Owl call identification](https://orvik.app/birds/owl-calls-identification/) 31. ### Great horned owl Bubo virginianus Large, dull white and nearly spherical, laid as early as January in a stolen hawk or crow nest. It does not build its own. Size 53–58 mm Where Across the Americas. In the record 1,643,488 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5959118) 32. ### Red-tailed hawk Buteo jamaicensis Large, dull white with sparse pale brown blotches, two or three in a big stick nest high in a tree or on a cliff ledge or building. Size 57–62 mm Where Across North America. In the record 12,455,878 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2480542) 33. ### Chimney swift Chaetura pelagica Plain white, in a half-saucer of twigs glued to a vertical chimney wall with the bird's own saliva. Nothing else nests that way in North America. Size 20 mm Where Eastern North America. In the record 3,892,467 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4409023) 34. ### Herring gull Handle with care Larus argentatus Three large olive-brown eggs with heavy dark blotches, in a scrape on a flat roof, a shingle beach or an island. Adults defend the nest by striking at heads. Size 68–75 mm Where Coasts and cities of North America and Europe. Risk Nesting gulls dive at people and can draw blood. Leave the roof and come back in six weeks. In the record 7,305,082 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in August · mostly from Belgium [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2481139) 35. ### Ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris The size of a small pea, plain white, two of them, in a walnut-sized cup of plant down bound with spider silk and camouflaged with lichen on a thin downward-sloping branch. Size 12–14 mm Where Eastern North America. In the record 4,600,516 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5228514) 36. ### Killdeer, tern and plover scrapes generally Handle with care Charadriiformes Heavily blotched sand-coloured eggs in a bare scrape with no nest material, laid directly on gravel or shell. If you have found eggs on open ground with no nest, this is the group. Size 30–50 mm Where Beaches, gravel bars, roofs and construction sites across North America. Risk Beach-nesting plovers and terns include federally listed species. Leave the area immediately and report it to a local wildlife office rather than investigating. In the record 201,502,803 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7192402) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Why so many eggs are blue Two pigments produce every egg colour there is. **Biliverdin**, a bile pigment, makes blue and green; **protoporphyrin** makes red, brown and black. They are laid down in the last hours before laying, protoporphyrin last, which is why the speckles sit on the surface and the blue sits in the shell. That single fact explains several things people find confusing. Speckles concentrate in a ring at the fat end because the egg pauses there in the oviduct while the pigment glands are still working. Markings smudge into comet tails when the egg was still turning as the pigment went on. And the same species can lay noticeably differently marked eggs in successive clutches, because pigment supply varies with the female's condition. Colour also does real work. Ground-nesting birds — killdeer, pheasant, turkey, gulls, plovers — lay heavily blotched sand-coloured eggs that vanish against gravel. Cavity nesters — woodpeckers, owls, chickadees, bluebirds — lay white or near-white eggs, because nothing can see them anyway and a pale egg is easier for the parent to find in the dark. So **a plain white egg is itself a clue: it usually means a hole**. ## Measure it, and use the nest Size is the most discriminating character available and the one most often guessed. A robin egg and a house finch egg are both blue, and one is nearly twice the length of the other. Put a coin beside it before you photograph it — a US quarter is 24.3 mm across, a US penny 19 mm, a UK 10p 24.5 mm, a euro 2 coin 25.75 mm. Nest type then does most of the remaining work: *What the nest tells you before you have looked at the egg.* | Nest | Typical egg | Groups | | --- | --- | --- | | Hole in a tree, or a nest box | White or pale, often unmarked | Woodpeckers, owls, chickadees, bluebirds, wrens, starlings | | Open cup in a shrub or tree | Blue, or pale with speckles and blotches | Robins, cardinals, finches, sparrows, mockingbirds, jays | | Bare scrape on the ground | Buff, heavily blotched, well camouflaged | Killdeer, plovers, terns, gulls, nightjars | | Grass-lined hollow in cover | Plain olive or buff, large clutch | Ducks, geese, pheasant, turkey, quail | | Mud cup on a beam or wall | White with fine speckles | Barn and cliff swallows, phoebes | | Big stick platform high up | Large, dull white or blotched | Hawks, owls, herons, crows, ravens | | No nest, on somebody else's eggs | Mismatched, speckled | Brown-headed cowbird | Clutch size is worth counting too, and it is decisive at the extremes. Exactly two plain white eggs on a flimsy twig platform is a mourning dove and essentially nothing else. Twelve to fifteen plain olive eggs in a grass scrape is a game bird. Two pea-sized white eggs in a lichen-covered cup on a drooping branch is a hummingbird. ## The law, which is stricter than most people realise In the United States the **Migratory Bird Treaty Act** makes it illegal to take, possess, sell or transport the birds, eggs, nests or feathers of over a thousand species without a federal permit. There is no exception for an egg found on the ground, an abandoned nest, or a shell picked up after hatching. Penalties are real, and they apply to well-intentioned collectors as readily as to anyone else. The species not covered are the introduced ones: house sparrow, European starling, rock pigeon and non-migratory game birds regulated under state law. Everything else — including cowbirds, crows, gulls and every songbird in a garden — is protected. In the United Kingdom, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 makes it an offence to take or destroy the egg of any wild bird, and possession of any wild bird egg is an offence regardless of when it was collected. The EU Birds Directive is equivalent across member states. The practical rule everywhere: **photograph it and leave it exactly where it is**. That is not just legal caution — it is also the answer that gives the egg the best chance, which the next section covers. ## You found an egg on the ground. What now? The honest answer is uncomfortable: an egg out of its nest is almost certainly not going to hatch, and there is very little a person can do about it. **If the nest is right there and reachable**, and the egg is intact and still warm, put it back. The old belief that a parent bird will abandon a nest because a human touched it is false — most birds have a poor sense of smell and do not detect handling. Getting it back under the parent quickly is worth doing. **If the nest is unreachable or gone**, leave the egg. Home incubation of a wild bird egg is illegal without a permit, requires temperature control within a fraction of a degree and specific humidity, and even under a licensed rehabilitator has a poor success rate. A hatchling that does survive imprints on people and cannot be released. **If a whole nest has come down** — after a storm or a hedge cut — the useful action is to fix the nest back as close as possible to where it was, in a container with drainage, and then leave the area completely for a few hours. Parents frequently resume. Standing nearby watching guarantees they will not. **If eggs are cold and the nest is clearly abandoned**, leave them. Predators and scavengers deal with them within days, and an unattended nest is often a nest whose parents were themselves taken. The one case where you should act is a nest in immediate danger — on a construction site, in a piece of equipment about to be used, on a driveway. Contact a state wildlife agency or a licensed rehabilitator, who can act legally and quickly. In the US, work near an active nest of a protected species may need to stop until the young fledge, which is a legal obligation on the contractor rather than a request. ## Empty shells and what they tell you Most eggshells found on the ground are not lost eggs at all, and the way they are broken says which. **A shell in two clean pieces, with the larger piece a neat cap**, hatched successfully. The chick cuts a ring around the fat end from inside, and the parent then carries the shell some distance from the nest and drops it, which is why hatched shells so often turn up under a tree with no nest in it. A membrane still lining the inside and no yolk residue confirms it. **A shell crushed, with yolk dried on it,** was predated. Jays, crows, grackles, squirrels, raccoons and snakes all take eggs. A shell with a neat hole punched in the side, found in a nest, often means a squirrel or a jay. **A whole egg lying on the ground with no nest above** is usually a dumped egg — a female forced to lay before a nest was ready, or an egg pushed out of a nest by a competitor or by a cowbird. Starlings and house sparrows evict the eggs of cavity-nesting natives routinely, which is why bluebird boxes so often have a robin-blue egg on the grass below them. **A very small, misshapen, yolkless egg** is a runt or fairy egg, produced when a scrap of tissue triggers the shell gland without a yolk present. It is a curiosity rather than a species. ## What this key covers 34 entries covering the birds whose eggs people actually encounter around houses, gardens, farms and beaches in North America, plus the widespread species shared with Europe. North America has over 700 breeding species and a complete egg key would be a book — the standard one, Baicich and Harrison, runs to several hundred pages and still says "not separable" for a great many pairs. Two limits are worth naming. Within families, eggs are frequently indistinguishable: all woodpeckers lay plain white eggs in cavities, most warblers lay small speckled cream eggs in cups, and the sparrows overlap so heavily that even a specialist works from the nest and the habitat rather than the egg. And variation within a species is wide — ground colour, marking density and size all shift between clutches and between regions. So treat a match here as a shortlist. The reliable confirmation is the adult bird: sit thirty metres away for ten minutes and watch what comes back to the nest. That single observation outperforms any egg key ever written. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 34 of the 34birds here: **501,295,315 georeferenced records** across the 33 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 23 families, the oldest of them collected in 2013. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded birds in this key hold 29% of all the records between them: Mallard alone accounts for 29,635,278, while Eastern screech owl has 495,661. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 76% of these records come from the United States, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 499,573,922 georeferenced records for these 33 birds fall in January–May alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these birds are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in February. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in January–May. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these birds recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 17 of the 33birds here peak outside the warm half of the year — Mallard, American crow, European starling among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 34 named birds in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Mallard | [Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/9761484) | species | 29,635,278 | 953,637 | Jan–May | January | the United States | | American robin | [Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766](https://www.gbif.org/species/9510564) | species | 29,399,206 | 468,360 | Mar–Jun | June | the United States | | American crow | [Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822](https://www.gbif.org/species/2482507) | species | 29,072,171 | 219,015 | Jan–May | December | the United States | | European starling | [Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/9809229) | species | 28,298,900 | 342,952 | Jan–May | January | the United States | | Mourning dove | [Zenaida macroura](https://www.gbif.org/species/2495347) | species | 27,323,324 | 307,418 | Jan–May | August | the United States | | Northern cardinal | [Cardinalis cardinalis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2490384) | species | 27,192,474 | 399,788 | Jan–May | February | the United States | | House sparrow | [Passer domesticus](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231190) | species | 25,809,906 | 561,043 | Jan–May | January | the United States | | Blue jay | [Cyanocitta cristata](https://www.gbif.org/species/2482593) | species | 24,084,106 | 203,884 | Jan–Jun | October | the United States | | Canada goose | [Branta canadensis](https://www.gbif.org/species/5232437) | species | 23,296,736 | 482,254 | Feb–May | March | the United States | | Song sparrow | [Melospiza melodia](https://www.gbif.org/species/2492196) | species | 22,455,511 | 271,066 | Mar–Jun | June | the United States | | Red-winged blackbird | [Agelaius phoeniceus](https://www.gbif.org/species/9409198) | species | 21,105,852 | 314,510 | Mar–May | May | the United States | | American goldfinch | [Spinus tristis](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231640) | species | 20,295,243 | 197,293 | Mar–Jul | August | the United States | | House finch | [Haemorhous mexicanus](https://www.gbif.org/species/8323485) | species | 19,217,637 | 341,628 | Jan–May | February | the United States | | Black-capped chickadee | [Poecile atricapillus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2487805) | species | 18,773,574 | 166,644 | Jan–May | December | the United States | | Barn swallow | [Hirundo rustica Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/9515886) | species | 17,480,186 | 240,890 | Mar–Jun | August | the United States | | Rock pigeon | [Columba livia J.F.Gmelin, 1789](https://www.gbif.org/species/2495414) | species | 15,562,872 | 453,483 | Jan–Jun | January | the United States | | Northern flicker | [Colaptes auratus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2478259) | species | 15,019,736 | 166,439 | Jan–Jun | October | the United States | | Carolina wren | [Thryothorus ludovicianus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2493801) | species | 12,910,434 | 107,505 | Jan–Jun | December | the United States | | Red-tailed hawk | [Buteo jamaicensis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2480542) | species | 12,455,878 | 356,631 | Jan–May | January | the United States | | Common grackle | [Quiscalus quiscula](https://www.gbif.org/species/2484155) | species | 12,356,348 | 119,448 | Mar–May | May | the United States | | Mockingbird | [Mimus polyglottos](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231677) | species | 11,835,073 | 241,277 | Jan–May | December | the United States | | Killdeer | [Charadrius vociferus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2480320) | species | 9,888,720 | 153,428 | Mar–Jun | August | the United States | | Brown-headed cowbird | [Molothrus ater](https://www.gbif.org/species/2484391) | species | 8,428,231 | 108,482 | Apr–May | May | the United States | | Eastern bluebird | [Sialia sialis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2490941) | species | 8,081,487 | 155,333 | Jan–May | February | the United States | | Herring gull | [Larus argentatus Pontoppidan, 1763](https://www.gbif.org/species/2481139) | species | 7,305,082 | 98,058 | Jan–Jun | August | Belgium | | House wren | [Troglodytes aedon Vieillot, 1809](https://www.gbif.org/species/5231459) | species | 6,609,621 | 57,033 | Apr–Jun | June | the United States | | Ruby-throated hummingbird | [Archilochus colubris](https://www.gbif.org/species/5228514) | species | 4,600,516 | 98,009 | Jul–Sep | August | the United States | | Chimney swift | [Chaetura pelagica](https://www.gbif.org/species/4409023) | species | 3,892,467 | 14,764 | Apr–Jun | May | the United States | | Ring-necked pheasant | [Phasianus colchicus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/9752149) | species | 3,428,744 | 74,184 | Feb–May | April | the United States | | Wild turkey | [Meleagris gallopavo Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/9606290) | species | 2,840,016 | 198,270 | Feb–May | April | the United States | | Great horned owl | [Bubo virginianus](https://www.gbif.org/species/5959118) | species | 1,643,488 | 92,386 | Jan–May | December | the United States | | Northern bobwhite | [Colinus virginianus](https://www.gbif.org/species/9791464) | species | 500,837 | 11,287 | Apr–Jun | June | the United States | | Eastern screech owl | [Megascops asio](https://www.gbif.org/species/2497415) | species | 495,661 | 26,189 | Jan–May | December | the United States | | Killdeer, tern and plover scrapes generally | [Charadriiformes](https://www.gbif.org/species/7192402) | order | 201,502,803 | 4,752,227 | Apr–Aug | August | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this What bird lays plain blue eggs? In North America, most likely an American robin — a saturated unmarked sky blue, 28 to 30 mm, in a mud-lined cup. Eastern bluebirds lay paler blue eggs around 20 mm in a cavity or nest box, and European starlings lay glossy pale blue eggs of robin size in a messy nest stuffed into a building cavity. Size and nest type separate all three quickly. Is it illegal to keep a bird egg I found? In the United States, yes, for almost any native species. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes it illegal to possess the eggs, nests or feathers of over 1,000 species without a federal permit, with no exception for something found on the ground. The unprotected species are the introduced ones — house sparrow, European starling and rock pigeon. UK and EU law is equivalent. Photograph it and leave it. Will the parents abandon the nest if I touch an egg? No. That belief is one of the most persistent myths in birdwatching and it is false: most birds have a limited sense of smell and do not detect handling. If an intact egg has fallen and the nest is reachable, putting it back promptly is the right thing to do. What does cause abandonment is repeated disturbance — visiting a nest again and again, or standing near it while the parents wait to return. Can I hatch a wild bird egg I found? Practically, no, and legally, not without a permit. Wild bird eggs need temperature held within a fraction of a degree, controlled humidity, and regular turning, and an egg that has cooled for more than a short period is usually no longer viable. Even licensed rehabilitators have low success rates. A hatchling that did survive would imprint on people and be unreleasable. I found four blotchy eggs on my gravel driveway with no nest. What are they? Almost certainly a killdeer. They lay four pointed, heavily blotched buff eggs directly on gravel with no nest material, on driveways, car parks and flat roofs, and the eggs are effectively invisible until you are standing over them. If a bird nearby is screaming and dragging a wing as though injured, that is the parent performing a distraction display and you are close to the nest. Mark the spot from a distance, route around it, and the young will leave within about a month. What does a hatched eggshell look like? It comes apart into two pieces, with the larger fragment forming a neat cap, because the chick cuts a ring around the broad end from inside. The membrane usually still lines it and there is no dried yolk. Parents then carry the shell some distance from the nest before dropping it, which is why hatched shells turn up in places with no nest above them. A crushed shell with yolk on it was predated instead. There is one odd egg in a nest that does not match the others. Why? A brown-headed cowbird, most likely. Cowbirds build no nest and lay in the nests of other species — greyish-white with dense brown speckling, usually larger than the host's own eggs and hatching first. It is nature working as designed, and in the United States the cowbird egg is protected too: removing it is illegal without a permit. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows birds down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [What bird is this?](https://orvik.app/birds/what-bird-is-this/) - [Identify this bird](https://orvik.app/birds/identify-this-bird/) - [Bird call identification](https://orvik.app/birds/bird-call-identification/) - [Feather identification](https://orvik.app/birds/feather-identification/) - [Apps to identify birds](https://orvik.app/birds/app-to-identify-birds/) - [Owl call identification](https://orvik.app/birds/owl-calls-identification/) - [Animal track identification](https://orvik.app/animals/animal-track-identification/) - [The Merlin bird app](https://orvik.app/birds/merlin-bird-app/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Which bird did this feather come from?](https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/) - [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) - [What berry is this, and can you eat it?](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [US Fish and Wildlife Service — Migratory Bird Treaty Act protected species list](https://www.fws.gov/law/migratory-bird-treaty-act-1918) - [Cornell Lab of Ornithology — All About Birds species accounts](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/) - [NestWatch — nest and egg identification](https://nestwatch.org/) - [NestWatch — general nest and egg information](https://nestwatch.org/learn/general-bird-nest-info/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Butterfly or Moth? Identification Chart by Wing & Antenna** > Free butterfly and moth identification key for 28 common North American species. Filter by colour, wingspan, when it flies and how it holds its wings. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Insects & spiders Insects & spiders # Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one? The butterfly-or-moth question has one reliable answer and it is not "moths fly at night". **Look at the antennae.** A butterfly's end in a distinct club or knob; a moth's are feathery, or thread-like and tapering, and never clubbed. Everything else — colour, flight time, wing posture — has too many exceptions to trust. Entries **28** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search species by name Group Butterfly — clubbed antennae Moth — feathery or thread-like antennae Main colour Orange Yellow White Blue or purple Black or dark Brown or grey Green Pink or red Wingspan Under 3 cm 3–6 cm 6–9 cm Over 9 cm When it flies Daytime Dusk At night, often at lights Markings Eyespots Bands or stripes Spots Tails on the hindwing Plain or mottled Transparent patches Showing all 28 species 1. ### Monarch Danaus plexippus Deep orange with heavy black veins and a black border spotted white. Males have a small black scent patch on a hindwing vein. Glides on flat wings between wingbeats. Size Wingspan 9–10 cm Where Across North America; migrates to Mexico and coastal California. Confused with Viceroy, which is smaller and has an extra black line running across the hindwing veins that the monarch lacks. In the record 799,895 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5133088) 2. ### Viceroy Limenitis archippus A monarch at three-quarters size with one extra black line curving across the hindwing veins. Flies with quicker, flatter, more erratic wingbeats. Size Wingspan 6–8 cm Where Wet ground with willow across North America. In the record 54,362 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5132398) 3. ### Painted lady Vanessa cardui Salmon-orange marbled with black and white, with four small eyespots along the underside of the hindwing. Migrates in enormous irruptions in some years. Size Wingspan 5–7 cm Where Every continent except Antarctica — the most widespread butterfly on Earth. In the record 1,577,323 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4299368) 4. ### Red admiral Vanessa atalanta Velvet black with a bold scarlet band across each forewing and along the hindwing edge, and white spots at the wingtip. Territorial and will approach a person standing in its patch. Size Wingspan 5–7 cm Where North America, Europe and North Africa. In the record 3,185,303 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1898286) 5. ### Mourning cloak Nymphalis antiopa Deep maroon-brown with a ragged cream border and a row of blue spots inside it. Overwinters as an adult, so it is often the first butterfly seen in late winter on a warm day. Size Wingspan 6–8 cm Where North America and Europe, where it is the Camberwell beauty. In the record 247,233 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from Finland [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5130682) 6. ### Eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus Large, yellow, with four black tiger stripes on each forewing and a tail on each hindwing. Some females are entirely black, mimicking the poisonous pipevine swallowtail. Size Wingspan 8–14 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 127,549 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1938016) 7. ### Black swallowtail Papilio polyxenes Black with two rows of yellow spots, a band of blue on the hindwing and an orange eyespot with a black pupil near the tail. Caterpillars feed on parsley and dill. Size Wingspan 7–10 cm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 118,300 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1937816) 8. ### Cabbage white Pieris rapae Plain white with black wingtips and one black spot on the male forewing, two on the female. The commonest butterfly in most gardens and the parent of the cabbage caterpillar. Size Wingspan 4–5 cm Where Worldwide wherever brassicas grow. In the record 3,687,718 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1920496) 9. ### Clouded sulphur Colias philodice Lemon-yellow with a narrow dark border, and a small silver spot ringed pink on the underside of the hindwing. Always settles with the wings closed, so the upper side is rarely seen. Size Wingspan 3.5–5.5 cm Where Fields and roadsides across North America. In the record 60,685 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from Canada [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5137672) 10. ### Eastern tailed-blue and spring azure Cupido comyntas, Celastrina ladon Tiny, powder blue above and pale grey speckled below, often gathering in numbers at damp mud. The tailed-blue has a minute hair-like tail and two orange spots at the hindwing edge. Size Wingspan 2–3 cm Where Across North America. In the record 15,109 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5714729) 11. ### Great spangled fritillary Speyeria cybele Bright orange above with dark chevrons; the underside of the hindwing carries big silver spots on a rich brown ground, which is the diagnostic feature. Size Wingspan 6–9 cm Where Meadows across North America. In the record 62,911 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1905172) 12. ### Common buckeye Junonia coenia Brown with six large multi-coloured eyespots — two on each forewing, two on each hindwing — and two orange bars near the leading edge. Basks on bare ground with wings flat. Size Wingspan 4–6.5 cm Where The southern and central United States, spreading north each summer. In the record 95,263 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Sep · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5130514) 13. ### Silver-spotted skipper Epargyreus clarus Stout, hairy and fast, with a bright silver-white patch on the underside of the hindwing. Skippers sit with the forewings raised and the hindwings flat, a posture nothing else uses. Size Wingspan 4.5–6.5 cm Where Across North America. In the record 95,171 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1947915) 14. ### Luna moth Actias luna Pale sea-green with a purple leading edge, a translucent eyespot on each wing and long sweeping tails on the hindwings. The adult has no mouth and lives about a week. Size Wingspan 8–11 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 47,535 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865668) 15. ### Cecropia moth Hyalophora cecropia The largest moth in North America: red-brown with white crescent moons on every wing, a red and white band and a furry red body. Males find females by pheromone from several kilometres. Size Wingspan 12–16 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 13,844 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865839) 16. ### Polyphemus moth Antheraea polyphemus Tan to reddish-brown with a large transparent-centred eyespot on each hindwing, ringed yellow, blue and black. The eyespots are flashed to startle a predator. Size Wingspan 10–15 cm Where Across North America. In the record 53,407 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866570) 17. ### Io moth Automeris io Males are plain yellow, females purple-brown, and both flash a huge black-and-blue eyespot on the hindwing when disturbed. The caterpillar stings. Size Wingspan 6–9 cm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 24,812 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866085) 18. ### Hummingbird clearwing Hemaris thysbe A day-flying moth that hovers at flowers with a loud hum and a whirring blur of wings, with large clear panels in the wings and an olive and burgundy body. Constantly reported as a baby hummingbird. Size Wingspan 4–5.5 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 21,951 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1861851) 19. ### White-lined sphinx Hyles lineata A fast, heavy, streamlined moth with a white stripe down each forewing and a broad pink band across the hindwing, hovering at flowers at dusk. Often mistaken for a hummingbird. Size Wingspan 6–9 cm Where Across North America. In the record 56,270 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1862841) 20. ### Tomato and tobacco hornworm moth Manduca species A large grey-brown sphinx moth with a row of orange-yellow spots along each side of the abdomen. The adult of the green hornworm caterpillar found on tomatoes. Size Wingspan 9–13 cm Where Across North America. In the record 49,129 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9197112) 21. ### Isabella tiger moth Pyrrharctia isabella A modest yellow-orange moth with faint dark spots — famous entirely for its caterpillar, the black-and-rust woolly bear crossing roads in autumn. Size Wingspan 4–6 cm Where Across North America. In the record 73,490 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Oct · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1807881) 22. ### Rosy maple moth Dryocampa rubicunda Bright candy pink and lemon yellow with a woolly body — an implausible-looking moth that turns up on porch screens in early summer and is often assumed to be a toy. Size Wingspan 3–5 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 26,552 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865862) 23. ### Underwing moth Catocala species Forewings mottled grey and brown for perfect bark camouflage, hiding hindwings banded in vivid orange, red, pink or white that flash when it takes off. Size Wingspan 5–10 cm Where Woodland across North America and Europe. In the record 364,916 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1797073) 24. ### Spongy moth Handle with care Lymantria dispar Males are brown with feathery antennae and fly by day in a fast zigzag; females are heavy, near-white with dark chevrons, and barely fly at all. A major forest defoliator. Size Wingspan 3.5–6 cm Where The northeastern US, the Great Lakes and eastern Canada. Risk Egg masses look like buff felt patches on trunks, vehicles and firewood, and moving them is how the moth spreads. Scrape and destroy them. In the record 146,176 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1820406) 25. ### Clothes moth Tineola bisselliella A tiny plain golden-buff moth that runs and scuttles rather than flying to a light. The damage is done by the larvae in wool, silk and feathers, not by the adult, which does not feed. Size Wingspan 1–1.5 cm Where Homes worldwide. In the record 2,907 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from Germany [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1857626) 26. ### Indian meal moth Plodia interpunctella A small moth whose forewing is pale at the base and coppery-brown beyond a sharp dividing line. Larvae leave silk webbing through flour, cereal, nuts and dried fruit. Size Wingspan 1.5–2 cm Where Kitchens worldwide. In the record 30,882 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from Germany [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1873079) 27. ### Peppered moth Biston betularia White finely speckled with black, resting flat against a lichen-covered trunk. The dark melanic form that spread during industrial pollution and receded afterwards is the textbook case of natural selection observed in the wild. Size Wingspan 4.5–6 cm Where Britain, Europe and North America. In the record 299,596 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1975897) 28. ### Hummingbird hawk-moth Macroglossum stellatarum Hovers at flowers by day with an audible hum and orange hindwings, uncoiling a very long proboscis. The commonest "I saw a hummingbird in England" report. Size Wingspan 4–5 cm Where Southern Europe, migrating north each summer; not native to North America. In the record 371,576 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in March · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1864652) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## The only reliable butterfly-or-moth test Almost every rule people are taught about this has exceptions large enough to sink it. The antennae do not. - **Antennae — this is the test.** Butterflies have a thin shaft ending in a distinct club or knob. Moths have feathery, comb-like or thread-like antennae that taper to a point. No North American butterfly has feathery antennae, and no moth has a true club. - **Time of day — unreliable.** Hundreds of moth species fly by day, including the hummingbird clearwing, the spongy moth male and every burnet and clearwing. - **Wing posture — mostly true, easily broken.** Butterflies typically rest with wings closed above the back and moths flat or tented, but skippers hold forewings up and hindwings flat, and several butterflies bask with wings open. - **Colour — useless.** The luna, rosy maple, io and underwing moths are more spectacular than most butterflies, and the commonest garden butterfly is plain white. - **Body build — a decent supporting clue.** Moths tend to be stouter and furrier, butterflies slimmer and smoother, which reflects the thermoregulation needs of flying at night. Worth knowing for context: butterflies are a small group inside the moths, not a separate one. There are roughly 750 butterfly species in North America and around 11,000 moths, so a random Lepidopteran on a porch light is overwhelmingly likely to be a moth. ## The mimicry pairs, and why they exist Several of the confusions in this key are not accidents of appearance — they are the point of the appearance. **Monarch and viceroy.** The classic textbook example, and the textbook explanation was wrong. It was long taught as Batesian mimicry, a palatable viceroy copying a toxic monarch. Feeding experiments in the 1990s showed the viceroy is itself unpalatable, making it Müllerian mimicry: two genuinely defended species converging on one warning pattern, so predators only have to learn it once. Separating them takes one look at the hindwing, where the viceroy has an extra black line crossing the veins. **Black swallowtail females and the pipevine swallowtail.** Female eastern tiger swallowtails come in a dark form, and both they and the spicebush swallowtail converge on the appearance of the pipevine swallowtail, which is genuinely toxic from the aristolochic acid in its host plant. **Clearwing moths and bees.** Several moths have transparent wing panels and banded abdomens, and hover at flowers in daylight looking convincingly like bumblebees or hornets. Predators leave them alone. **Eyespots.** The large false eyes on a polyphemus or io moth are not mimicry of a specific animal so much as a startle display: flashed suddenly they give a bird a fraction of a second's hesitation, which is enough. Small marginal eyespots on butterflies do something different, deflecting a strike away from the body to a disposable wing edge. ## Why moths come to lights, and what to do about it The best-supported explanation is not attraction in the ordinary sense. High-speed videography published in 2024 showed that moths near an artificial light do not steer towards it — they turn their backs to it. Flying animals use the bright sky above and the dark ground below to keep their dorsal side up, and a point source of light on the ground breaks that reference, sending the animal into an endless banking turn around the lamp. The consequence is that light pollution is a genuine conservation issue rather than a nuisance. Moths trapped circling a lamp all night do not feed, do not mate and do not pollinate, and moths are major nocturnal pollinators. Insect biomass declines recorded across Europe and North America correlate with artificial light at night among other drivers. Practical mitigation, in descending order of effect: **turn outdoor lights off when nobody needs them**; use motion sensors; use warm-coloured bulbs at 2700 K or below, since blue-rich white light is disproportionately disruptive; shield fixtures so light goes down rather than sideways and up; and lower the brightness. All of these are also better for the people using the space. If you want to see moths deliberately, the same physics works for you. A white sheet with a light behind it on a warm, still, humid, moonless night will bring in dozens of species, and it is the standard method for moth surveys everywhere. ## Gardening for butterflies and moths Adults need nectar and caterpillars need specific host plants, and almost every "butterfly garden" gets only the first half right. Nectar draws adults passing through; host plants make a garden a place they breed. *Host plants that support the species in this key. Caterpillars are far pickier than adults.* | Plant | Supports | | --- | --- | | Milkweed (*Asclepias*) | Monarch — and nothing else will do | | Parsley, dill, fennel, carrot | Black swallowtail | | Oak | Several hundred moth species; the single most productive tree for Lepidoptera in North America | | Willow, cherry, birch, poplar | Viceroy, mourning cloak, luna, cecropia, polyphemus | | Violets | Fritillaries, which feed only at night | | Nettles | Red admiral, painted lady, several tortoiseshells | | Spicebush and sassafras | Spicebush swallowtail, promethea moth | Three other things matter more than plant choice. **Do not use broad-spectrum insecticides**, including systemic neonicotinoids, which persist in nectar and pollen. **Leave leaf litter and standing stems over winter**, because a large proportion of moths overwinter as pupae in litter or as eggs on stems, and an autumn tidy-up removes next year's population. And **accept chewed leaves**: a garden with no caterpillar damage is a garden with no butterflies. ## Recording what you see Lepidoptera are among the best-recorded insect groups, and amateur records do real scientific work. Monarch population monitoring, the UK Big Butterfly Count and the National Moth Recording Scheme all run largely on public submissions, and long-run amateur datasets are what made the peppered moth story and the current insect decline measurable in the first place. To photograph one usefully: get the **upper side and the underside** if you can, because many species are identified from the underside pattern rather than the top. Include something for scale, and note the date and the location. For moths at a light, photograph them at rest on the sheet rather than trying to hold them; wing scales rub off on fingers and a rubbed moth is harder to identify and less likely to survive. 28 entries here cover the species most often photographed in North American gardens and porches, plus the common European crossovers. With around 11,000 moth species in North America, a great many small brown moths are not identifiable from a photograph by anyone, and specialists say so plainly. BugGuide, iNaturalist and regional moth groups all identify submissions free. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 28 of the 28species here: **11,295,820 georeferenced records** across the 26 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 11 families, the oldest of them collected in 1996. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded species in this key hold 85% of all the records between them: Cabbage white alone accounts for 3,687,718, while Clothes moth has 2,907. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 38% of these records come from the United Kingdom, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 10,539,100 georeferenced records for these 26 species fall in July–August alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these species are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in August. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in July–August. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these species recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 16 of the 26species here peak outside the warm half of the year — Red admiral, Monarch, Hummingbird hawk-moth among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 28 named species in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Cabbage white | [Pieris rapae](https://www.gbif.org/species/1920496) | species | 3,687,718 | 262,993 | Jul–Aug | April | the United Kingdom | | Red admiral | [Vanessa atalanta](https://www.gbif.org/species/1898286) | species | 3,185,303 | 290,895 | Jun–Aug | October | the United Kingdom | | Painted lady | [Vanessa cardui](https://www.gbif.org/species/4299368) | species | 1,577,323 | 204,548 | May–Jul | June | the United Kingdom | | Monarch | [Danaus plexippus](https://www.gbif.org/species/5133088) | species | 799,895 | 532,510 | Jul–Sep | January | the United States | | Hummingbird hawk-moth | [Macroglossum stellatarum Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1864652) | species | 371,576 | 51,075 | Jun–Aug | March | France | | Peppered moth | [Biston betularia](https://www.gbif.org/species/1975897) | species | 299,596 | 19,804 | Jun–Jul | June | the United Kingdom | | Mourning cloak | [Nymphalis antiopa](https://www.gbif.org/species/5130682) | species | 247,233 | 96,125 | Apr–Jun | April | Finland | | Spongy moth | [Lymantria dispar Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1820406) | species | 146,176 | 83,343 | Jun–Jul | June | the Netherlands | | Eastern tiger swallowtail | [Papilio glaucus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1938016) | species | 127,549 | 207,099 | Jul–Aug | March | the United States | | Black swallowtail | [Papilio polyxenes Fabricius, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1937816) | species | 118,300 | 142,960 | Jun–Aug | March | the United States | | Common buckeye | [Junonia coenia Hübner](https://www.gbif.org/species/5130514) | species | 95,263 | 109,984 | Jun–Sep | November | the United States | | Silver-spotted skipper | [Epargyreus clarus](https://www.gbif.org/species/1947915) | species | 95,171 | 106,318 | Jun–Jul | June | the United States | | Isabella tiger moth | [Pyrrharctia isabella J.E.Smith, 1797](https://www.gbif.org/species/1807881) | species | 73,490 | 102,854 | Aug–Oct | October | the United States | | Great spangled fritillary | [Speyeria cybele](https://www.gbif.org/species/1905172) | species | 62,911 | — | Jun–Jul | June | the United States | | Clouded sulphur | [Colias philodice Godart, 1819](https://www.gbif.org/species/5137672) | species | 60,685 | 44,706 | Jun–Aug | October | Canada | | White-lined sphinx | [Hyles lineata Fabricius, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1862841) | species | 56,270 | 78,500 | Mar–Jun | March | the United States | | Viceroy | [Limenitis archippus Cramer, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/5132398) | species | 54,362 | 51,860 | Jul–Aug | September | the United States | | Polyphemus moth | [Antheraea polyphemus Cramer, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866570) | species | 53,407 | 80,988 | May–Jul | February | the United States | | Luna moth | [Actias luna Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865668) | species | 47,535 | 69,812 | May–Jul | March | the United States | | Indian meal moth | [Plodia interpunctella](https://www.gbif.org/species/1873079) | species | 30,882 | 19,730 | May–Aug | January | Germany | | Rosy maple moth | [Dryocampa rubicunda Fabricius, 1793](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865862) | species | 26,552 | 34,922 | May–Jun | June | the United States | | Io moth | [Automeris io Fabricius, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866085) | species | 24,812 | 33,351 | May–Jul | December | the United States | | Hummingbird clearwing | [Hemaris thysbe Fabricius, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1861851) | species | 21,951 | 30,581 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Eastern tailed-blue and spring azure | [Cupido comyntas](https://www.gbif.org/species/5714729) | species | 15,109 | — | Jul–Aug | January | the United States | | Cecropia moth | [Hyalophora cecropia Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865839) | species | 13,844 | 20,547 | Apr–Jun | January | the United States | | Clothes moth | [Tineola bisselliella](https://www.gbif.org/species/1857626) | species | 2,907 | 4,533 | Mar–Jun | January | Germany | | Underwing moth | [Catocala Schrank, 1802](https://www.gbif.org/species/1797073) | genus | 364,916 | 151,617 | Jul–Aug | September | the United States | | Tomato and tobacco hornworm moth | [Manduca Hübner](https://www.gbif.org/species/9197112) | genus | 49,129 | 64,410 | Jun–Aug | January | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How do I tell a butterfly from a moth? Look at the antennae. Butterflies have a thin shaft ending in a distinct club or knob; moths have feathery, comb-like or thread-like antennae that taper to a point. Every other rule fails somewhere — plenty of moths fly by day, several are more colourful than butterflies, and skippers rest in a posture that fits neither. The antennae do not fail. Is that a hummingbird or a moth? If it is smaller than your thumb, has clear panels in the wings and antennae, and hovers with an audible hum, it is a moth — the hummingbird clearwing or a sphinx moth in North America, the hummingbird hawk-moth in Europe. Hummingbirds have feathers and a beak and are considerably larger. It is one of the most common wildlife misidentifications there is. What is the difference between a monarch and a viceroy? Size and one line. The viceroy is noticeably smaller and has an extra black line curving across the veins of the hindwing that a monarch does not have. Its flight is faster and more erratic, while a monarch glides on flat wings. Both are unpalatable to birds, which makes this Müllerian mimicry rather than the Batesian mimicry the older textbooks describe. Why do moths fly around lights? Not because they are attracted to them in the ordinary sense. High-speed video published in 2024 showed that moths near a lamp turn their backs to it — flying insects use the bright sky above to stay upright, and a bright point source on the ground breaks that reference and sends them into an endless banking turn. It is disorientation, and it stops them feeding, mating and pollinating all night. What should I plant to attract butterflies? Nectar plants bring adults through; host plants make them stay and breed. Milkweed is the only thing monarchs will lay on. Parsley, dill and fennel support black swallowtails. Oak supports several hundred moth species by itself. Violets, willow, cherry and nettles each support specific groups. Then avoid insecticides, leave leaf litter over winter, and accept chewed leaves as evidence it is working. What are the huge green moths with tails? Luna moths, in eastern North America — pale sea-green with long sweeping hindwing tails and a translucent eyespot on each wing. The adults have no mouthparts and live about a week, existing only to mate. The tails are not decorative: they spin in flight and disrupt bat echolocation, which measurably improves survival. How do I get rid of moths in my wardrobe? Clothes moths are tiny plain golden-buff moths that scuttle rather than fly to a light, and the damage is done by the larvae in wool, silk, cashmere and feathers. Empty the wardrobe completely, vacuum every crevice, wash or freeze affected items for at least 72 hours, and store clean garments sealed — moths lay on soiled fabric preferentially. Pheromone traps monitor the population and will not clear it on their own. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows species down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Moth identification](https://orvik.app/insects/moth-identification/) - [Types of caterpillars](https://orvik.app/insects/types-of-caterpillars/) - [Caterpillar identifier](https://orvik.app/insects/caterpillar-identifier/) - [Identify a bug by photo](https://orvik.app/insects/identify-bug-by-photo/) - [What type of bug is this?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-type-of-bug-is-this/) - [How to identify insects](https://orvik.app/insects/how-to-identify-insects/) - [Dragonfly identification](https://orvik.app/insects/dragonfly-identification/) - [How to identify flowers](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-flowers/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [Butterflies and Moths of North America](https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/) - [Butterflies and Moths of North America](https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/) - [Fabian et al. 2024 — Why flying insects gather at artificial light (Nature Communications)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44785-3) - [Xerces Society — pollinator conservation](https://www.xerces.org/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Caterpillar Identification Chart — Colour, Hair & Host** > Free caterpillar identification key: filter 34 North American caterpillars by colour, hairiness, size and host plant. The ones that sting are flagged. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Insects & spiders Insects & spiders # What caterpillar is this? The plant it was sitting on is the strongest clue you have. Most caterpillars eat a short list of hosts, so **"green, on a tomato plant"** is a far better query than "green caterpillar". Filter by host first, then by whether it is smooth, furry or spiny — and check the sting column before you pick it up. Entries **34** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** **Some of these sting.** Puss, saddleback, io, buck moth and spiny oak slug caterpillars carry venomous spines that break off in skin and cause burning pain, welts and occasionally a systemic reaction. **Never handle a caterpillar with spines, tufts or dense fur.** If you are stung, strip the spines off with tape before washing, then ice; get medical help for chest pain, difficulty breathing, or if the person has a history of severe reactions. Narrow it down Clear all Search caterpillars by name Surface The single best filter after host plant. Smooth and naked Hairy or furry Distinct tufts or pencils of hair Branched spines or bristles Horn on the rear end Coloured knobs or bumps Main colour Green Brown or grey Black Yellow or orange White or pale Boldly striped or banded Full-grown length Under 2.5 cm / 1 in 2.5–5 cm / 1–2 in 5–8 cm / 2–3 in Over 8 cm / 3 in What it was on If you know the plant, start here. Milkweed Vegetable garden Parsley, dill or carrot tops Broadleaf tree or shrub Oak Cherry, apple or crabapple Lawn or field grass Crossing the ground Does it sting? Safe to handle Can irritate skin Stings — do not touch Showing all 34 caterpillars 1. ### Monarch Danaus plexippus Bold bands of yellow, white and black around a smooth body, with two pairs of soft black filaments — one behind the head, one near the tail. Only ever on milkweed. Size Up to 4.5 cm Where The whole of North America wherever milkweed grows. Confused with Queen caterpillar, which has three pairs of filaments instead of two. Count the filaments. In the record 799,895 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5133088) 2. [Common caterpillar types](https://orvik.app/insects/types-of-caterpillars/) 3. ### Black swallowtail Papilio polyxenes Green with black bands and a row of yellow-orange dots on each band, found on parsley, dill, fennel or carrot tops. Poke it gently and an orange forked organ pops out of the head, smelling sour. Size 4–5 cm Where Eastern and central North America. Confused with Monarch. Both are banded, but the swallowtail is green between the bands and never on milkweed. In the record 118,300 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1937816) 4. ### Tomato hornworm Manduca quinquemaculata Enormous, plump, bright green, with eight white V-shaped marks pointing forward along each side and a black or dark-blue horn on the rear. Size 7–10 cm Where Vegetable gardens across North America. Confused with Tobacco hornworm, which has seven straight white diagonal stripes and a red horn. Count the marks and check the horn colour. In the record 5,963 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1864008) 5. ### Tobacco hornworm Manduca sexta Seven straight white diagonal stripes along each side and a curved red horn. This is the hornworm most often found on tomatoes despite the name. Size 7–10 cm Where The US South and, in summer, most of the country. Confused with Tomato hornworm — V-marks and a dark horn. In the record 21,557 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1863978) 6. ### Woolly bear Pyrrharctia isabella Dense stiff bristles, black at both ends with a rust-brown band in the middle, hurrying across a road or path in September and October looking for somewhere to overwinter. Size 4–5 cm Where Across North America, conspicuous in autumn. Confused with The folk belief that the band width forecasts the winter is not supported — band width tracks the caterpillar's age and how wet the previous season was. In the record 73,490 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Oct · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1807881) 7. ### Yellow woolly bear Spilosoma virginica A uniformly shaggy caterpillar in pale yellow, cream or occasionally rust, with no black ends. The long soft hairs can irritate sensitive skin, unlike the true woolly bear. Size 3–4.5 cm Where Across North America. In the record 39,530 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1811948) 8. ### Eastern tent caterpillar Malacosoma americanum A continuous white stripe down the centre of the back, blue and orange dashes along the sides, and a dense silk tent built in the fork of a wild cherry or apple branch in April and May. Size 4–5 cm Where Eastern North America, appearing in spring. Confused with Fall webworm. Tent caterpillars build in branch forks in spring and feed outside the tent; webworms wrap the leaves at branch tips in late summer and feed inside. In the record 46,809 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5715280) 9. ### Forest tent caterpillar Malacosoma disstria A row of white keyhole or footprint shapes down the back instead of a continuous line, and it builds no tent — it spins a silk mat on the trunk and rests there in a mass. Size 4–5 cm Where North America, in periodic outbreak years. In the record 29,306 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5101763) 10. ### Fall webworm Hyphantria cunea Pale hairy caterpillars living inside a loose grey web that encloses the leaves at the very tip of a branch, expanding through August and September. Ugly, harmless to the tree. Size 2.5–3.5 cm Where North America, and introduced across Europe and Asia. In the record 50,172 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1817797) 11. ### Spongy moth Lymantria dispar Five pairs of blue dots followed by six pairs of red dots down the back — a colour sequence nothing else has — with long straggling hairs. Formerly called the gypsy moth. Size 4–6 cm Where The northeastern US, the Great Lakes and eastern Canada. Risk The hairs cause an itchy rash in a substantial minority of people during outbreak years. In the record 146,176 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1820406) 12. ### White-marked tussock moth Handle with care Orgyia leucostigma A bright red head, four short cream toothbrush tufts on the back, and two long black hair pencils pointing forward with one pointing back. Unmistakable once seen. Size 2.5–3.5 cm Where Eastern North America. Risk The hairs cause contact dermatitis and are shed into the cocoon, so old cocoons on siding also itch. In the record 24,554 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5925317) 13. ### Hickory tussock moth Handle with care Lophocampa caryae White and fluffy with a row of black tufts down the back and four long black pencils at each end, found on hickory, walnut and ash — and very often crossing a sidewalk in August. Size 3.5–4.5 cm Where Eastern North America, conspicuous in late summer. Risk A common cause of childhood rashes because it is white, fluffy and irresistible. The hairs sting on contact. In the record 41,768 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1817732) 14. ### Milkweed tussock moth Euchaetes egle Clusters of caterpillars covered in dense tufts of black, orange and white hair, stripping a milkweed leaf together late in the season after the monarchs have gone. Size 3 cm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 31,712 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5116353) 15. ### Puss caterpillar Can injure you Megalopyge opercularis Looks like a small toupee or a tuft of cotton wool, tan to grey, with a pointed tail of longer hair. The venomous spines are hidden entirely under the soft outer fur. Size 2–3.5 cm Where Texas east to Florida and north to Maryland; outbreak years bring hospital visits. Risk The most painful caterpillar sting in the United States: immediate throbbing pain radiating up the limb, a gridded red rash, sometimes nausea and shock. Tape off the spines, ice, and seek care for systemic symptoms. In the record 9,349 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1751572) 16. ### Saddleback caterpillar Can injure you Acharia stimulea A brown slug-like body with a bright green blanket across the middle carrying a purple-brown oval "saddle", and four stout horned spine clusters at the corners. Size 2–2.5 cm Where Eastern United States. Risk Severe burning sting with swelling that can last a day. Common on garden shrubs and blueberry, so it gets grabbed while picking. In the record 6,702 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9776414) 17. ### Io moth caterpillar Can injure you Automeris io Pale green with a red-and-white stripe along each side and dense clusters of branched, bright green venomous spines over the whole body. Size 5–6 cm Where Eastern and central North America. Risk The spines break off and inject venom; expect intense stinging for an hour and a welt for days. In the record 24,812 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866085) 18. ### Buck moth caterpillar Can injure you Hemileuca maia Dark purple-black speckled with white dots and armed with rosettes of branched, hollow, cream-tipped spines. Feeds in groups on oak, often dropping on people below. Size 5–6 cm Where Oak woodland in the eastern US; a public-health nuisance in New Orleans. Risk Stings on contact and the spines remain active in the shed skins and on the ground beneath infested oaks. In the record 1,061 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865313) 19. ### Spiny oak slug Can injure you Euclea delphinii Flat, oval and slug-shaped with no visible head, in green or yellow, edged with paired spiny horns and usually carrying four dark spots on the back. Size 1.5–2 cm Where Eastern United States. Risk A mild-looking caterpillar with a genuine sting. Very often found on the underside of an oak leaf you are turning over. In the record 8,443 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5105365) 20. ### Luna moth caterpillar Actias luna Fat, bright translucent green with a faint yellow line along each side and small orange knobs down the back, each with a short bristle. It clicks its mandibles if disturbed. Size 6–9 cm Where Eastern North America, on walnut, hickory, sweetgum and birch. In the record 47,535 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865668) 21. ### Cecropia moth caterpillar Hyalophora cecropia The largest caterpillar in North America: a thumb-thick blue-green body studded with blue, yellow and red knobs carrying black spines. Alarming and completely harmless. Size 10 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 13,844 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865839) 22. ### Polyphemus moth caterpillar Antheraea polyphemus Bright apple-green with a diagonal yellow line running back from each pair of legs and small red-and-silver knobs. Body is strongly ridged into fat segments. Size 7–9 cm Where Across North America. In the record 53,407 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866570) 23. ### Mourning cloak caterpillar Nymphalis antiopa Velvety black speckled with white, a row of eight red-orange spots down the back and branched black spines. Feeds in a dense group that strips a whole branch at once. Size 4–5 cm Where North America and Europe, on willow, elm and hackberry. Confused with Spines that look dangerous but are not — this species does not sting. In the record 247,233 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from Finland [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5130682) 24. ### Great spangled fritillary caterpillar Speyeria cybele Velvety black with orange-based branched spines, feeding only on violets and only at night — which is why it is usually found on the ground rather than on a plant. Size 4–5 cm Where Meadows and woodland edge across North America. In the record 62,911 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1905172) 25. ### Cabbage looper Trichoplusia ni Smooth pale green with thin white side stripes, tapering towards the head, and it moves by arching its back into a loop because it lacks the middle pairs of prolegs. Size 3–4 cm Where Vegetable gardens worldwide. Confused with Imported cabbageworm, which crawls normally and is velvety rather than smooth. If it loops, it is a looper. In the record 8,810 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1786360) 26. ### Imported cabbageworm Pieris rapae Velvety, uniformly green with a faint yellow line down the back, matching the leaf so closely it is usually found by its dark green droppings rather than by sight. Size 2.5–3 cm Where Anywhere brassicas are grown, worldwide. In the record 3,687,718 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1920496) 27. ### Fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda Brown to green with stripes and four black dots in a square on the second-to-last segment, plus a pale inverted Y on the front of the head capsule. Arrives in a lawn as a moving front. Size 3–4 cm Where The Americas, now established across Africa and Asia. Confused with Other cutworms. The inverted Y on the head is the reliable character. In the record 13,635 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5109855) 28. ### Cutworm Agrotis and Noctua species Dull, greasy-looking and unmarked, found curled into a tight C just under the soil surface beside a seedling that was cut off at ground level overnight. Size 3–5 cm Where Worldwide. In the record 1,987,359 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8407958) 29. ### Bagworm Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis You rarely see the caterpillar at all — only a spindle-shaped bag of silk covered in fragments of the host's own needles or leaves, hanging from a twig and moving slowly. Size Bag 3–5 cm Where Eastern and central United States, mostly on conifers. Confused with A cone or a piece of dead foliage, which is exactly the point. In the record 10,695 georeferenced records · half of them May–Sep · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1853312) 30. ### Inchworm or cankerworm Geometridae Thin, twig-like, with legs at the front and rear only, so it moves by looping. At rest it holds itself out rigidly from a twig at an angle, imitating a shoot. Size 2–3 cm Where Everywhere. In the record 24,385,819 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/6950) 31. ### Spicebush swallowtail Papilio troilus Smooth green with two huge false eyespots on the swollen thorax that make it look like a small snake, resting inside a leaf it has folded and tied with silk. Size 4–5 cm Where Eastern United States, on spicebush and sassafras. In the record 50,421 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1938104) 32. ### Eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus Plump smooth green with a swollen front end carrying two yellow-and-black eyespots and a thin yellow-and-black band behind them. Young larvae are brown and white, mimicking bird droppings. Size 5 cm Where Eastern North America, on tulip tree, cherry and ash. In the record 127,549 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1938016) 33. ### Catalpa sphinx Ceratomia catalpae Black and yellow with a shiny black horn, feeding in large groups that can strip a catalpa completely. Found on catalpa and nothing else, which makes it trivially identifiable. Size 5–7 cm Where The eastern and southern United States, only on catalpa trees. In the record 6,932 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1861892) 34. ### Hummingbird moth caterpillar Hemaris thysbe Pale green with a yellowish stripe on each side and a short blue-green horn, on honeysuckle. It becomes the clearwing moth people mistake for a hummingbird. Size 4–5 cm Where Eastern North America, on honeysuckle, viburnum and snowberry. In the record 21,951 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/1861851) 35. ### Viceroy caterpillar Limenitis archippus Lumpy, saddle-shaped and mottled olive-brown and cream so it reads convincingly as a bird dropping, with two bristly knobs behind the head. Size 3 cm Where North America, on willow, poplar and aspen. In the record 54,362 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5132398) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Start with the plant, not the picture Caterpillars are picky in a way that adult butterflies are not. Most species feed on one plant family and many on a single genus, which means the host is doing far more identification work than colour ever will. A green caterpillar could be any of forty things; a green caterpillar on a tomato plant is one of two. The strongest host associations in North America are worth memorising outright: *Host plants that effectively name the caterpillar. Associations follow standard regional references and state extension guides.* | Found on | Almost certainly | Also possible | | --- | --- | --- | | Milkweed | Monarch | Queen, milkweed tussock moth | | Parsley, dill, fennel, carrot tops | Black swallowtail | Anise swallowtail in the west | | Tomato, pepper, potato | Tobacco or tomato hornworm | Hornworm parasitised by braconid wasps | | Cabbage, kale, broccoli | Imported cabbageworm or cabbage looper | Diamondback moth, cross-striped cabbageworm | | Catalpa | Catalpa sphinx | Nothing else, in practice | | Spicebush or sassafras | Spicebush swallowtail | Promethea moth | | Wild cherry, in a spring tent | Eastern tent caterpillar | Forest tent caterpillar, on the trunk | | Violets, at night | Fritillary | Nothing else feeds only on violets | If the caterpillar is crossing a path or a road it has almost certainly left its host to pupate, and the host filter will not help. That is the one case where you fall back on texture and colour — and it is also why woolly bears, which do exactly this every autumn, are the most photographed caterpillar in North America. ## The stinging ones, and how to recognise them before you touch Roughly two dozen North American caterpillars can sting, and five of them account for nearly every emergency-room visit. The mechanism is not a bite: hollow spines connected to venom glands break off in the skin and keep releasing venom, which is why the pain builds over the first ten minutes rather than fading. The reliable warning signs, in order of usefulness: - **Branched or clustered spines** — io, saddleback, buck moth, spiny oak slug. Simple single bristles are usually harmless; spines that themselves branch into more spines are the dangerous pattern. - **A slug-like body with no visible head or legs.** The slug caterpillars (family Limacodidae) include most of the worst stingers, and they all look like a small flattened blob glued to the underside of a leaf. - **Dense fur that looks soft and inviting.** The puss caterpillar hides its venomous spines entirely under a coat of long hair that looks like a scrap of felt. Anything that makes you want to stroke it should not be stroked. - **Tufts, pencils and toothbrush ridges.** Tussock moths cause dermatitis rather than a true sting, but the reaction can be substantial and the hairs persist on cocoons and shed skins for months. **If you are stung:** lift the embedded spines out with adhesive tape applied and pulled off repeatedly before you touch the area with anything else — rubbing pushes them deeper. Then wash with soap and water, apply ice, and take an oral antihistamine. Seek medical care for chest pain, difficulty breathing, extensive swelling, stings around the eye, or in a child with a known allergy history. The reverse rule is worth stating too: a great many alarming-looking caterpillars are entirely harmless. Cecropia, luna, mourning cloak and fritillary caterpillars all bristle with spines and none of them sting. ## Why the same species can look like two different animals Three sources of variation defeat photo-matching more often than anything else, and knowing about them prevents most misidentifications. **Instars.** A caterpillar moults four or five times, and the early stages frequently look nothing like the last one. Eastern tiger swallowtail larvae start out brown and white as convincing bird droppings and finish as fat green snake-mimics. Black swallowtails begin black with a white saddle. If your caterpillar is under a centimetre, expect the field-guide picture to be wrong for it. **Colour morphs.** Many species come in more than one colour with no other difference. Spicebush swallowtails turn yellow-orange before pupating. Buck moths and armyworms range from pale green to near-black depending on density and temperature. Colour is the weakest of the four filters here for exactly this reason, and it is the one most people start with. **Parasitism.** A hornworm covered in what look like grains of white rice is carrying the cocoons of a braconid wasp that has been eating it from the inside. It is still a hornworm, it will not survive, and gardeners should leave it in place — those wasps are the most effective hornworm control available. ## What it will turn into, and whether that changes anything The single most common follow-up question is whether the caterpillar becomes a butterfly or a moth. In practice the distinction runs almost exactly along the line this key already uses. **Smooth, naked caterpillars** — swallowtails, monarchs, cabbageworms, loopers — become butterflies and moths in roughly equal numbers, and they pupate either as a naked chrysalis attached by a silk button and girdle, or underground. **Hairy, tufted and spiny-with-hair caterpillars** are almost always moths. Butterflies with spiny larvae exist — fritillaries, mourning cloaks, question marks — but no North American butterfly has a furry caterpillar. So a fuzzy caterpillar is a moth, essentially without exception. Whether it matters depends on why you are asking. For a gardener, the practical split is between the handful of species that actually damage a crop — hornworms, cabbageworms, loopers, armyworms, cutworms — and the great majority that eat a few leaves off a tree that does not notice. Tent caterpillars and fall webworms look catastrophic and are, in a healthy tree, cosmetic. Removing them by hand or with a jet of water is sufficient; spraying a whole tree to control webworm kills the parasitoid wasps that would have done it for you next year. ## Rearing one, if you want to see what it becomes Raising a caterpillar to adulthood is the most reliable identification method available, and it takes two to four weeks for most species. Four things matter and the rest is detail. 1. **The right host plant, fresh, every day.** Most caterpillars will starve rather than switch. Take the plant it was found on, and if you do not know what that was, this is not going to work. 2. **Ventilation and no standing water.** A jar with a mesh lid beats a sealed container. Condensation kills more reared caterpillars than anything else, and mouldy frass is close behind — clean the container daily. 3. **Somewhere to pupate.** A twig to hang from, or a few centimetres of slightly damp soil or leaf litter for the many species that pupate underground. 4. **Cool for the winter.** A caterpillar collected in autumn will usually overwinter as a pupa and needs a genuinely cold spell — an unheated shed or garage — before it will emerge. Kept warm indoors it either emerges in December and dies, or never emerges at all. Release the adult where you found the larva, and do not move species between regions. If you did not collect it locally, it should not be released at all. ## What this key covers 34 entries covering the species people in North America actually find: garden pests, the conspicuous large moths, the tent-builders, the stingers, and the butterflies whose larvae are recognisable. North America has over 11,000 moth and butterfly species and the great majority have caterpillars that are small, brown, nocturnal and separable only by an expert with a key and a microscope. So a specimen that matches nothing here is far more likely to be one of the thousands of unremarkable noctuid and geometrid larvae than something rare. If it matters — a crop problem, a sting, a school project — photograph it in place with the host plant visible and something for scale, and submit it to BugGuide or iNaturalist, where regional specialists identify submissions for free. Include what plant it was eating; without that, even an expert is guessing. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 34 of the 34caterpillars here: **5,886,602 georeferenced records** across the 32 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 12 families, the oldest of them collected in 1958. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded caterpillars in this key hold 85% of all the records between them: Imported cabbageworm alone accounts for 3,687,718, while Buck moth caterpillar has 1,061. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 37% of these records come from the United Kingdom, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 5,326,098 georeferenced records for these 32 caterpillars fall in July–August alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these caterpillars are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in August. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in July–August. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these caterpillars recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 20 of the 32caterpillars here peak outside the warm half of the year — Monarch, Eastern tiger swallowtail, Black swallowtail among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 34 named caterpillars in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Imported cabbageworm | [Pieris rapae](https://www.gbif.org/species/1920496) | species | 3,687,718 | 262,993 | Jul–Aug | July | the United Kingdom | | Monarch | [Danaus plexippus](https://www.gbif.org/species/5133088) | species | 799,895 | 532,510 | Jul–Sep | January | the United States | | Mourning cloak caterpillar | [Nymphalis antiopa](https://www.gbif.org/species/5130682) | species | 247,233 | 96,125 | Apr–Jun | April | Finland | | Spongy moth | [Lymantria dispar Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1820406) | species | 146,176 | 83,343 | Jun–Jul | June | the Netherlands | | Eastern tiger swallowtail | [Papilio glaucus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1938016) | species | 127,549 | 207,099 | Jul–Aug | March | the United States | | Black swallowtail | [Papilio polyxenes Fabricius, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1937816) | species | 118,300 | 142,960 | Jun–Aug | February | the United States | | Woolly bear | [Pyrrharctia isabella J.E.Smith, 1797](https://www.gbif.org/species/1807881) | species | 73,490 | 102,854 | Aug–Oct | October | the United States | | Great spangled fritillary caterpillar | [Speyeria cybele](https://www.gbif.org/species/1905172) | species | 62,911 | — | Jun–Jul | June | the United States | | Viceroy caterpillar | [Limenitis archippus Cramer, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/5132398) | species | 54,362 | 51,860 | Jul–Aug | June | the United States | | Polyphemus moth caterpillar | [Antheraea polyphemus Cramer, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866570) | species | 53,407 | 80,988 | May–Jul | February | the United States | | Spicebush swallowtail | [Papilio troilus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1938104) | species | 50,421 | 65,707 | Jul–Aug | March | the United States | | Fall webworm | [Hyphantria cunea](https://www.gbif.org/species/1817797) | species | 50,172 | 78,851 | Jun–Aug | November | the United States | | Luna moth caterpillar | [Actias luna Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865668) | species | 47,535 | 69,812 | May–Jul | March | the United States | | Eastern tent caterpillar | [Malacosoma americana](https://www.gbif.org/species/5715280) | species | 46,809 | 66,138 | Apr–May | April | the United States | | Hickory tussock moth | [Lophocampa caryae Harris, 1841](https://www.gbif.org/species/1817732) | species | 41,768 | 60,314 | Aug–Sep | October | the United States | | Yellow woolly bear | [Spilosoma virginica Fabricius, 1798](https://www.gbif.org/species/1811948) | species | 39,530 | 73,822 | Jun–Aug | October | the United States | | Milkweed tussock moth | [Euchaetes egle Drury, 1773](https://www.gbif.org/species/5116353) | species | 31,712 | 47,522 | Aug–Aug | August | the United States | | Forest tent caterpillar | [Malacosoma disstria Hübner](https://www.gbif.org/species/5101763) | species | 29,306 | 41,719 | Apr–Jun | April | the United States | | Io moth caterpillar | [Automeris io Fabricius, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1866085) | species | 24,812 | 33,351 | May–Jul | December | the United States | | White-marked tussock moth | [Orgyia leucostigma J.E.Smith, 1797](https://www.gbif.org/species/5925317) | species | 24,554 | 42,821 | Jun–Aug | October | the United States | | Hummingbird moth caterpillar | [Hemaris thysbe Fabricius, 1775](https://www.gbif.org/species/1861851) | species | 21,951 | 30,581 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Tobacco hornworm | [Manduca sexta Linnaeus, 1763](https://www.gbif.org/species/1863978) | species | 21,557 | 33,018 | Jul–Aug | October | the United States | | Cecropia moth caterpillar | [Hyalophora cecropia Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865839) | species | 13,844 | 20,547 | Apr–Jun | February | the United States | | Fall armyworm | [Spodoptera frugiperda J.E.Smith, 1797](https://www.gbif.org/species/5109855) | species | 13,635 | 23,372 | Jul–Sep | November | the United States | | Bagworm | [Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis](https://www.gbif.org/species/1853312) | species | 10,695 | 18,740 | May–Sep | February | the United States | | Puss caterpillar | [Megalopyge opercularis](https://www.gbif.org/species/1751572) | species | 9,349 | 13,461 | Apr–Jul | November | the United States | | Cabbage looper | [Trichoplusia ni](https://www.gbif.org/species/1786360) | species | 8,810 | 5,600 | Jun–Aug | November | the United States | | Spiny oak slug | [Euclea delphinii](https://www.gbif.org/species/5105365) | species | 8,443 | 10,830 | Jun–Jul | June | the United States | | Catalpa sphinx | [Ceratomia catalpae Boisduval](https://www.gbif.org/species/1861892) | species | 6,932 | 10,617 | Jul–Aug | September | the United States | | Saddleback caterpillar | [Acharia stimulea](https://www.gbif.org/species/9776414) | species | 6,702 | 10,281 | Jul–Aug | September | the United States | | Tomato hornworm | [Manduca quinquemaculatus Haworth, 1803](https://www.gbif.org/species/1864008) | species | 5,963 | 7,530 | Jun–Aug | October | the United States | | Buck moth caterpillar | [Hemileuca maia Drury, 1773](https://www.gbif.org/species/1865313) | species | 1,061 | 13,677 | Sep–Oct | October | the United States | | Inchworm or cankerworm | [Geometridae](https://www.gbif.org/species/6950) | family | 24,385,819 | 4,540,304 | May–Jul | February | the United Kingdom | | Cutworm | [Agrotis Ochsenheimer, 1816](https://www.gbif.org/species/8407958) | genus | 1,987,359 | 159,012 | Jun–Jul | June | the United Kingdom | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this Which caterpillars sting? In North America the ones that matter are the puss caterpillar, saddleback, io moth, buck moth and the slug caterpillars including the spiny oak slug. Tussock moths and spongy moth cause an itchy rash rather than a true sting. The visual warning signs are branched spines, a slug-like body with no visible head, or dense soft-looking fur — and the safe rule is simply not to pick up any caterpillar that has spines, tufts or fur. What is the big green caterpillar on my tomato plants? A hornworm. If it has seven straight white diagonal stripes and a red horn, it is a tobacco hornworm; eight white V-shapes and a dark blue-black horn make it a tomato hornworm. Both eat tomatoes despite the names. If it is studded with white rice-like grains, those are braconid wasp cocoons — leave that one in place, because the wasps emerging from it will control the next generation. What are the caterpillars in a web in my tree? In spring, a dense silk tent in the fork of a wild cherry or apple branch is eastern tent caterpillar; the larvae leave the tent to feed. In late summer, a loose grey web wrapping the leaves at the tip of a branch is fall webworm; those feed inside the web. Both look worse than they are — a healthy tree tolerates the defoliation, and pruning out the tent or blasting it with a hose is enough. Does the woolly bear's brown band really predict the winter? No. The width of the rust-coloured band tracks the caterpillar's age and how wet the previous growing season was: the band widens with each moult, so an older, better-fed caterpillar has a wider band. The folklore was tested by an American Museum of Natural History curator in the 1940s and has never held up since. How do I tell a moth caterpillar from a butterfly caterpillar? The reliable rule in North America is that no butterfly has a hairy or furry caterpillar, so anything fuzzy is a moth. Butterflies do have spiny caterpillars — fritillaries, mourning cloaks and question marks all do — so spines alone are not the test. Beyond that, moth caterpillars often spin a silk cocoon while butterfly larvae form a naked chrysalis. Why does my caterpillar look nothing like the pictures? Most likely because it is an early instar. Caterpillars moult four or five times and can change appearance completely: eastern tiger swallowtails start as brown-and-white bird-dropping mimics and end as fat green snake-mimics. Colour morphs are the other cause — armyworms, buck moths and many others vary from pale green to near-black within one species. Filter by host plant and texture rather than by colour when the picture will not match. What do I feed a caterpillar I found? The plant you found it on, fresh, every day. Most caterpillars are restricted to one plant family and will starve rather than switch, so if the host is unknown the honest answer is to put it back where you found it. Keep the container ventilated rather than sealed, clean the droppings daily, and give it a twig or a few centimetres of damp soil to pupate in. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows caterpillars down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Types of caterpillars, with pictures](https://orvik.app/insects/types-of-caterpillars/) - [How caterpillar identification works](https://orvik.app/insects/caterpillar-identifier/) - [Larvae identification chart](https://orvik.app/insects/larvae-identification-chart/) - [Moth identification](https://orvik.app/insects/moth-identification/) - [Grub identification](https://orvik.app/insects/grub-identification/) - [What type of bug is this?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-type-of-bug-is-this/) - [Identify a bug by photo](https://orvik.app/insects/identify-bug-by-photo/) - [Identify a plant by leaf shape](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-plant-by-leaf-shape/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [What mushroom is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/) - [What cloud is that?](https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/) - [What shell did I find on the beach?](https://orvik.app/tools/seashell-identifier/) - [What kind of arrowhead did I find?](https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) ## Where the data comes from - [Moth Photographers Group — Lepidoptera plates by species](https://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/) - [University of Florida IFAS — stinging caterpillars of Florida](https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/stinging_caterpillars.htm) - [USDA Forest Service — forest insect and disease leaflets](https://www.fs.usda.gov/foresthealth/publications/index.shtml) - [Wagner, D. — Caterpillars of Eastern North America (Princeton)](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691121444/caterpillars-of-eastern-north-america) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Cloud Identification Chart — Name Any Cloud in Three Questions** > Free cloud identification key covering 29 cloud types and sky features. Filter by height, shape and cover, and read what each one says about the weather. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Sky, coast & ground Sky, coast & ground # What cloud is that? The World Meteorological Organization recognises ten cloud genera and every cloud in the sky is one of them. Three questions get you there: **how high is it, is it heaped or layered, and can you see the sun through it?** Each entry also says what the cloud means, because a cloud is a reading of the atmosphere rather than a decoration. Entries **29** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search clouds by name Height High clouds are ice and look white and thin; low clouds are water and look grey and solid. High — above 6 km / 20,000 ft Middle — 2 to 6 km Low — below 2 km Towering through all levels At ground level Shape Heaped, with a flat base Flat featureless sheet Wispy, fibrous, streaked Patches, rolls or ripples Tall tower or anvil Smooth lens or saucer Ragged and shapeless Can you see the sun through it? Yes, sharply — it is thin Yes, with a ring or halo A dim disc, as if through frosted glass No, the sun is blocked What it means Fair weather A front approaching, rain in 12–24 h Rain or snow falling now Thunderstorm risk Strong winds aloft Showing all 29 clouds 1. ### Cirrus Ci Delicate white streaks and hooks of ice crystal, drawn out by strong high-level wind into what people call mares' tails. Casts no shadow and never produces rain at the ground. Size Base 6–13 km Where Worldwide, at all seasons. Confused with Contrails, which start as straight lines and spread. Cirrus is curved and irregular from the start. 2. ### Cirrostratus Cs A thin milky veil of ice crystals across the whole sky, so subtle you may only notice it because a bright 22-degree halo has appeared around the sun or moon. The halo is diagnostic. Size Base 6–13 km Where Worldwide, ahead of warm fronts. Confused with A hazy sky. If there is a halo, it is cirrostratus, and rain usually follows within 12 to 24 hours. 3. ### Cirrocumulus Cc A fine grain of tiny white ripples with no shading at all — hold your hand at arm's length and each cell is narrower than your little finger. The classic mackerel sky. Size Base 6–13 km; elements under 1° across Where Worldwide but the least common of the high clouds. Confused with Altocumulus, whose elements are larger and have grey shading underneath. If any element is shaded, it is not cirrocumulus. 4. ### Altostratus As A grey-blue sheet over the whole sky through which the sun shows as a pale watery disc with no halo — the textbook phrase is "as if seen through ground glass". Casts no shadows on the ground. Size Base 2–6 km Where Worldwide, ahead of warm fronts. Confused with Cirrostratus above it, which gives a sharp sun and a halo. Once the sun blurs, the deck has come down to altostratus and rain is closer. 5. ### Altocumulus Ac Rounded white and grey patches in regular rows or a broken sheet, each element clearly shaded underneath and about the width of one to three fingers at arm's length. Size Base 2–6 km; elements 1–5° across Where Worldwide, very common. Confused with Stratocumulus, which is lower and whose elements are wider than three fingers. 6. ### Altocumulus castellanus Ac cas Mid-level cloud sprouting small turrets from a common base, like a row of battlements. It signals instability aloft, and on a summer morning it is the single most reliable sign of afternoon thunderstorms. Size Base 2–6 km Where Warm-season continental interiors. 7. ### Nimbostratus Ns A thick dark grey featureless layer that blots out the sun completely and rains or snows steadily for hours. Ragged shreds of cloud drift beneath it in the falling precipitation. Size Base 0.5–3 km, deep Where Worldwide, in frontal systems. Confused with Stratus, which is lower and produces only drizzle. If steady rain has been falling for an hour, it is nimbostratus. 8. ### Stratus St A uniform grey layer with no structure, low enough to hide hilltops, giving drizzle or nothing at all. The sun may show as a distinct outline when it is thin — unlike altostratus, where it is a blur. Size Base 0–2 km Where Coasts, valleys and cool mornings everywhere. Confused with Fog. Stratus that reaches the ground is fog, and the two are the same cloud measured differently. 9. ### Stratocumulus Sc Lumpy grey and white rolls or patches covering most of the sky with narrow blue channels between them, each element wider than three fingers at arm's length. Rarely produces more than light drizzle. Size Base 0.5–2 km; elements over 5° across Where The most common cloud on Earth by area. 10. ### Cumulus humilis Cu hum Small detached white heaps with flat bases all at the same height and crisp cauliflower tops, wider than they are tall. The fair-weather cloud, and reliably so. Size Base 0.5–2 km, wider than tall Where Worldwide, on sunny days over land. Confused with Nothing much. The flat base at a uniform level is what identifies the whole cumulus family. 11. ### Cumulus congestus Cu con A cumulus that has grown taller than it is wide, with hard sharply outlined cauliflower tops still made of water droplets. Also called towering cumulus, and it produces showers. Size Tops to 6 km Where Warm humid air masses worldwide. Confused with Cumulonimbus, which it becomes. The moment the top loses its hard edge and goes fibrous, it has glaciated and it is a storm. 12. ### Cumulonimbus Can injure you Cb A cloud that spans the whole troposphere, with a dark base, hard towering sides and a fibrous top spreading downwind into a flat anvil. Produces lightning, hail and every severe weather phenomenon there is. Size Base under 2 km, tops 12–20 km Where Worldwide; the tallest clouds there are. Risk Lightning strikes up to 15 km from the parent storm, well outside the rain. If you can hear thunder, you are within range; go inside. 13. ### Anvil (incus) Cb inc The flat fibrous top of a cumulonimbus, spread sideways where the updraught hit the stable tropopause and could rise no further. Its downwind edge tells you which way the storm is moving. Size Can spread 100 km downwind Where With every mature thunderstorm. 14. ### Overshooting top Can injure you A rounded bulge pushing up through the smooth anvil, meaning the updraught was strong enough to punch past the tropopause. Visible from tens of kilometres away and a reliable sign of a severe storm. Size A dome above the anvil Where Severe storms worldwide. Risk Overshooting tops indicate very strong updraughts — large hail and damaging wind are likely under that storm. 15. ### Shelf cloud (arcus) Can injure you A low wedge attached to the storm base, with a smooth rising front and a ragged turbulent underside, advancing ahead of the rain. Wind hits within minutes of it passing overhead. Size A wedge across the storm's leading edge Where Ahead of squall lines and strong storms. Confused with A wall cloud, which hangs below the base at the rain-free rear of a storm and rotates. A shelf is at the front and does not rotate. Risk A shelf cloud means a gust front. Get indoors and off the water before it arrives. 16. ### Wall cloud Can injure you An isolated lowering hanging beneath the rain-free base at the rear of a storm, often visibly rotating. It marks the main updraught and it is where tornadoes form. Size A block lowered below the storm base Where Supercells, mainly in the US Great Plains and Midwest. Risk A rotating wall cloud is a tornado warning situation. Take shelter and monitor official alerts rather than watching it. 17. ### Mammatus Rows of smooth hanging pouches on the underside of an anvil, lit dramatically at sunset. They form in sinking air and mean the storm is mature — usually on its departing side, not its leading edge. Size Pouches 1–3 km across Where Under the anvils of severe storms. 18. ### Altocumulus lenticularis Ac len A smooth almond or saucer, sometimes stacked in layers like a pile of plates, hanging motionless in a strong wind while the air streams through it. Standing waves over a ridge. Size Base 2–8 km Where Downwind of mountain ranges everywhere. Confused with Reported as a UFO more often than any other cloud, because it is smooth-edged and does not move. 19. ### Kelvin-Helmholtz waves A row of curling breaking waves along the top of a cloud layer, exactly like surf. Forms where two layers move at different speeds; it lasts a couple of minutes. Size Breaking crests, a few hundred metres Where Rare, worldwide, and brief. 20. ### Asperitas A chaotic wave-torn underside like the surface of a rough sea seen from below. Added to the WMO cloud atlas in 2017 — the first new formal cloud feature in over half a century. Size Across a whole sky Where Worldwide but uncommon; particularly noted in the US Plains. 21. ### Virga Trails of precipitation hanging beneath a cloud and stopping in mid-air, because the drops evaporate before they reach the ground. Curved streaks, often catching the light. Size Streaks hanging below a base Where Dry climates especially. 22. ### Pileus A smooth thin cap sitting briefly on top of a rising cumulus tower, formed as the tower lifts the moist layer above it. It lasts a minute or two and marks a vigorous updraught. Size A thin cap a few km across Where Over strongly growing cumulus. 23. ### Fractus and scud Torn shapeless fragments of low cloud racing beneath a rain-producing deck, formed in the saturated air of falling precipitation. Detached from the main base, which is how you separate it from a wall cloud. Size Small ragged shreds Where Under raining cloud everywhere. 24. ### Fog Stratus cloud at ground level. Radiation fog forms in a valley on a clear calm night and burns off by mid-morning; advection fog rolls in off cold water and can last for days. Size Visibility under 1 km by definition Where Valleys, coasts and cold clear nights worldwide. 25. ### Contrails Straight white lines behind aircraft. Whether they persist is a real weather signal: contrails that vanish in seconds mean dry air aloft and settled weather, while contrails that spread into sheets mean the upper air is already near saturation and a front is on the way. Size Base 8–12 km Where Under any busy flight path. 26. ### Noctilucent clouds Electric-blue filaments glowing against a deep twilight sky an hour or two after sunset, when everything else is dark. They are ice on meteoric dust in the mesosphere, lit by a sun that has already set for the ground. Size About 80 km up — the highest clouds there are Where Latitudes 50–70°, in the weeks around midsummer. 27. ### Nacreous clouds Iridescent mother-of-pearl bands in pastel pink, green and gold, glowing well after sunset in a very cold winter twilight. Beautiful, rare, and involved in polar ozone destruction. Size About 20 km up, in the stratosphere Where High latitudes in deep winter: Scandinavia, Alaska, Scotland, Antarctica. 28. ### Pyrocumulus Can injure you A dirty grey-brown cumulus growing directly out of a smoke plume, driven by the heat of the fire below. In its most extreme form it generates its own lightning and its own wind. Size Tops to 10 km in extreme cases Where Over large wildfires and volcanic eruptions. Risk A pyrocumulus over a wildfire indicates extreme fire behaviour and erratic winds. Treat it as a signal to leave the area. 29. ### Roll cloud (volutus) A long horizontal tube of cloud rolling about its own axis, completely detached from any other cloud. Unlike a shelf cloud it is not attached to a storm base. Size A tube up to hundreds of km long Where Rare; the Morning Glory over the Gulf of Carpentaria is the famous example. Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Ten genera, two questions The classification everyone still uses was proposed by Luke Howard in 1802 and codified by the World Meteorological Organization. It is built on two Latin roots and a modifier, and once you have those the whole scheme unpacks itself. - **Cumulus** — heap. Convective, lumpy, with a flat base where rising air reached its condensation level. - **Stratus** — layer. Formed by air lifted or cooled across a broad area, so it is flat and featureless. - **Cirrus** — curl of hair. High and made of ice, so it is white, fibrous and casts no shadow. - **Nimbus** — rain. Attached to the two genera that actually precipitate: nimbostratus and cumulonimbus. - **Alto-** — the middle level, 2 to 6 km. Combine them and the ten genera fall out: cirrus, cirrostratus and cirrocumulus high; altostratus and altocumulus in the middle; stratus, stratocumulus and nimbostratus low; cumulus and cumulonimbus vertical. There is no eleventh. The height question is easier than it sounds because you do not have to measure anything. **High clouds are white and cast no shadow on themselves**, since ice crystals are sparse and translucent. **Low clouds have grey undersides**, because liquid water is dense enough to block light. Shading is a proxy for altitude and it is reliable. ## The finger test, and why element size matters Cirrocumulus, altocumulus and stratocumulus all look like patterned patches of cloud, and they sit at three different heights. Meteorologists separate them by apparent element size, which is a proxy for distance, and you measure it with your hand. Hold your arm straight out. Your little finger covers about one degree of sky, three fingers about five degrees, and a clenched fist about ten. *Separating the three cumuliform layer clouds by apparent element width, following WMO practice.* | Element width at arm's length | Angular size | Cloud | Shading | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Narrower than one little finger | Under 1° | Cirrocumulus | None — pure white | | One to three fingers | 1–5° | Altocumulus | Clear grey shading below | | Wider than three fingers | Over 5° | Stratocumulus | Heavy grey | The shading column is the shortcut. Cirrocumulus is ice and never shades; if any element in the pattern has a grey underside, you are looking at altocumulus or lower. That one observation resolves the three faster than the finger measurement does. ## Reading a warm front arriving The most useful thing amateur cloud watching gives you is the ability to see a front coming twelve to twenty-four hours out, from the ground, with no equipment. A warm front approaches as a shallow wedge, so its cloud deck arrives high and thin and steadily lowers and thickens. The sequence is fixed: 1. **Cirrus.** Wispy hooks appear from the direction the weather comes from. Rain is roughly a day away. 2. **Cirrostratus.** The wisps merge into a milky veil and **a halo appears around the sun or moon**. This is the classic marker, and the old rhyme — a ring around the moon means rain soon — is meteorologically sound. 3. **Altostratus.** The veil thickens and the sun blurs into a watery disc with no halo and no shadows on the ground. Rain is now within hours. 4. **Nimbostratus.** The sun disappears, the base lowers, ragged scud races underneath, and steady rain begins and continues. A cold front behaves completely differently: it is steep, so it produces a narrow line of towering cumulus and cumulonimbus with little warning, a short violent burst of rain and wind, and then a rapid clearance into cool air with fair-weather cumulus. If the sky went from blue to a black wall in twenty minutes, that is a cold front. ## The clouds that mean take shelter Four sky features are worth recognising for reasons that are not aesthetic. **Cumulonimbus.** Any cloud with a hard towering side and a fibrous spreading top. Lightning strikes routinely up to 15 km from the parent cloud, into air that looks clear — the "bolt from the blue" is a real and documented phenomenon. The operative rule is simple and is the one the US National Weather Service publishes: **if you can hear thunder, you are close enough to be struck.** Go inside, and wait 30 minutes after the last thunder before going back out. **Shelf cloud.** A wedge on the leading edge of a storm, smooth on top and ragged underneath, advancing ahead of the rain. It marks a gust front, and damaging straight-line winds arrive within minutes of it passing over. This is the one that catches people on lakes and beaches. **Wall cloud.** An isolated lowering under the rain-free base at the back of a storm. If it is rotating, that is the mesocyclone, and tornadoes form there. It is not the same thing as a shelf cloud, and confusing the two costs people the time they need. **Overshooting top.** A dome punching up through an otherwise flat anvil. It means the updraught beat the tropopause, which is a strong indicator of severe hail and wind. Visible from a long way off, which makes it useful for deciding whether to drive on. None of this replaces a warning. Radar sees rotation you cannot, and official alerts should always take priority over what the sky looks like from where you are standing. ## Optical effects, and what they tell you about the cloud Halos and coronas are frequently mistaken for each other and they say opposite things about what the cloud is made of. A **22-degree halo** is a large ring around the sun or moon, about the span of a hand at arm's length, produced by refraction through hexagonal ice crystals. A halo means ice, which means high cloud, which usually means cirrostratus and an approaching front. Sundogs — bright spots on either side of the sun at the same height — come from the same crystals settling flat. A **corona** is a small coloured disc tight around the sun or moon, produced by diffraction through water droplets. It means liquid, so a lower cloud, and the smaller and more colourful the corona the more uniform the droplet size. **Iridescence** at cloud edges is the same effect, and it is what makes nacreous clouds spectacular. A **glory** is a set of coloured rings around the shadow of your own head, seen from an aircraft or a mountaintop looking into cloud below. A **crepuscular ray** is a shaft of sunlight through a gap, made visible by haze, and it says nothing about the cloud at all. ## Photographing and reporting clouds Clouds are one of the few subjects where a phone camera is genuinely adequate, provided you handle two problems. **Exposure.** Auto exposure meters for the whole frame and blows out the cloud, which is the brightest thing in it. Tap the brightest part of the cloud to expose for it and let the foreground go dark, or drag the exposure slider down a stop. **Scale.** A photograph of nothing but sky has no reference, and the same frame could be a small cumulus at two kilometres or a supercell at forty. Include a horizon, a tree line or a rooftop. That single decision is what makes a cloud photograph identifiable later. If you want the observation to be useful to somebody, note the time, your location and which direction you were facing, and whether the cloud was moving. The Cloud Appreciation Society and the WMO International Cloud Atlas both accept submissions, and national weather services in most countries run spotter networks that take severe-weather reports from the public. In the United States that is SKYWARN, which trains volunteers and feeds their reports straight into warning decisions. 29 entries here cover the ten genera plus the supplementary features and special clouds people actually photograph. The full WMO atlas adds species, varieties and accessory clouds in combinations running to over a hundred names — cumulus radiatus, stratocumulus undulatus and the rest — which is more precision than the sky usually rewards from the ground. ## Questions people ask about this What are the ten types of cloud? High: cirrus, cirrostratus, cirrocumulus. Middle: altostratus, altocumulus. Low: stratus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus. Vertical: cumulus and cumulonimbus. Every cloud in the sky belongs to one of these ten genera; everything else is a species, variety or supplementary feature added to one of them. What does a ring around the sun or moon mean? A 22-degree halo is refraction through hexagonal ice crystals in cirrostratus, a high thin cloud that typically runs ahead of a warm front. Rain often follows within 12 to 24 hours, so the folk rhyme about a ring around the moon has a real mechanism behind it. Do not confuse it with a corona, which is a small tight coloured disc caused by water droplets in lower cloud. Which clouds mean a thunderstorm is coming? Cumulonimbus is the storm itself — a cloud spanning the whole troposphere with a dark base and a fibrous anvil top. The early warning is cumulus congestus, a cumulus grown taller than it is wide with hard cauliflower tops; when those tops turn fibrous the cloud has glaciated and become a storm. On a summer morning, altocumulus castellanus — mid-level cloud sprouting little turrets — is the most reliable indicator of afternoon storms. What is the difference between a shelf cloud and a wall cloud? A shelf cloud is attached to the leading edge of a storm, wedge-shaped, smooth on top and ragged below, and it marks the gust front — damaging wind arrives within minutes. A wall cloud hangs below the rain-free base at the rear of the storm, is isolated rather than attached along a front, and often rotates; it marks the updraught where tornadoes form. Both mean take shelter, and they arrive at different moments. What is that smooth lens-shaped cloud over the mountains? Altocumulus lenticularis, formed in a standing wave downwind of a ridge. Air rises over the obstacle, condenses at the crest of the wave, and evaporates again as it descends, so the cloud stays in one place while a strong wind streams through it. That combination of smooth edges and apparent stillness is why it is the most commonly reported UFO in the sky. Why do some contrails disappear and others spread across the sky? Humidity at cruising altitude. When the upper air is dry, the ice crystals in an aircraft exhaust sublimate within seconds. When it is already near saturation, the crystals persist and spread into cirrus-like sheets. Persistent spreading contrails are therefore a genuine sign of moist upper air, which often means a front approaching in the next day. Is fog a cloud? Yes — it is stratus cloud that reaches the ground, and the only difference between them is where the base sits relative to you. Radiation fog forms in valleys on clear calm nights as the ground cools and burns off through the morning; advection fog forms when warm moist air moves over a cold surface, which is what rolls in off the sea and can persist for days. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows clouds down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Star identification](https://orvik.app/nature/star-identification/) - [Photo identifier tools](https://orvik.app/nature/photo-identifier/) - [Photo recognition apps](https://orvik.app/nature/photo-recognition-app/) - [Identifying pictures with Google](https://orvik.app/nature/google-identify-picture/) - [What bird is this?](https://orvik.app/birds/what-bird-is-this/) - [How to identify a tree](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-tree/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What shell did I find on the beach?](https://orvik.app/tools/seashell-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) - [Which bird did this feather come from?](https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/) - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [WMO International Cloud Atlas](https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/) - [WMO International Cloud Atlas — the genera, in full](https://cloudatlas.wmo.int/en/clouds-genera.html) - [NWS — lightning safety](https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning) - [Cloud Appreciation Society — cloud identification](https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/the-clouds/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Silver & Gold Coin Melt Value Calculator — Any Spot Price** > Enter the current spot price and see the intrinsic metal value of common silver and gold coins, with the date ranges that tell you whether a coin contains silver at all. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Collecting Collecting # What is the silver in this coin worth? Put in today's spot price and this gives the **intrinsic metal value** of the coin — actual silver or gold weight × spot. Treat it as a floor rather than a price: date, mint mark and condition sit on top of it and for key dates they dwarf it entirely. Coins **22** Basis **Troy ounce** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Silver spot, per troy ounce Type today's figure from a market source. Currency is whatever you put in. Gold spot, per troy ounce How many of them Coin Dime, 1946–1964 (Roosevelt) Dime, Mercury 1916–1945 Quarter, 1932–1964 (Washington) Half dollar, 1964 (Kennedy, 90%) Half dollar, 1965–1970 (Kennedy, 40%) Morgan or Peace dollar Eisenhower dollar, 40% silver War nickel, 35% silver American Silver Eagle, 1 oz Pre-1920 sterling shilling 1920–1946 half-silver shilling Pre-1920 sterling half crown Pre-1920 sterling florin Dime, 80% silver Quarter, 80% silver Silver Maple Leaf, 1 oz American Gold Eagle, 1 oz Krugerrand, 1 oz Canadian Gold Maple Leaf, 1 oz British gold sovereign US $20 Double Eagle (Saint-Gaudens / Liberty) US $10 Eagle Melt value — A floor, not a price. Check the date and mint mark before you treat any coin as scrap. - Metal content each **—** - Total metal **—** - Typical dealer buy, ~88% of melt **—** ## Metal content of common coins *Actual silver weight (ASW) and actual gold weight (AGW) in troy ounces, from published mint specifications. These figures do not change; the spot price does.* | Coin | Years | Metal | Troy oz | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Dime, 1946–1964 (Roosevelt) | 1946–1964 | Silver | 0.0723 | | Dime, Mercury 1916–1945 | 1916–1945 | Silver | 0.0723 | | Quarter, 1932–1964 (Washington) | 1932–1964 | Silver | 0.1808 | | Half dollar, 1964 (Kennedy, 90%) | 1964 | Silver | 0.3617 | | Half dollar, 1965–1970 (Kennedy, 40%) | 1965–1970 | Silver | 0.1479 | | Morgan or Peace dollar | 1878–1935 | Silver | 0.7734 | | Eisenhower dollar, 40% silver | 1971–1976 | Silver | 0.3161 | | War nickel, 35% silver | 1942–1945 | Silver | 0.0563 | | American Silver Eagle, 1 oz | 1986– | Silver | 1.0000 | | Pre-1920 sterling shilling | to 1919 | Silver | 0.1682 | | 1920–1946 half-silver shilling | 1920–1946 | Silver | 0.0841 | | Pre-1920 sterling half crown | to 1919 | Silver | 0.4205 | | Pre-1920 sterling florin | to 1919 | Silver | 0.3364 | | Dime, 80% silver | 1920–1966 | Silver | 0.0600 | | Quarter, 80% silver | 1920–1966 | Silver | 0.1500 | | Silver Maple Leaf, 1 oz | 1988– | Silver | 1.0000 | | American Gold Eagle, 1 oz | 1986– | Gold | 1.0000 | | Krugerrand, 1 oz | 1967– | Gold | 1.0000 | | Canadian Gold Maple Leaf, 1 oz | 1979– | Gold | 1.0000 | | British gold sovereign | 1817– | Gold | 0.2354 | | US $20 Double Eagle (Saint-Gaudens / Liberty) | 1850–1933 | Gold | 0.9675 | | US $10 Eagle | 1838–1933 | Gold | 0.4838 | ## Melt value is a floor, not a price The number this produces is the **intrinsic metal value** — how much pure silver or gold the coin physically contains, multiplied by the current spot price. It is useful as a floor: a common circulated silver coin will not sell for meaningfully less than its metal, because if it did somebody would buy it and melt it. What it is not is what the coin is worth. Three things sit on top of melt value and any of them can dominate it: - **Numismatic premium.** Rarity, date, mint mark and condition. A 1916-D Mercury dime contains about $2 of silver at typical prices and sells for thousands. Melting a scarce date destroys most of its value permanently. - **Dealer spread.** Nobody pays spot. A dealer buys common circulated silver somewhere below melt and sells somewhere above it, and the gap is their margin. For bullion coins the spread is a few percent; for scrap it is wider. - **Bullion premium.** Recognised one-ounce coins — Eagles, Maple Leafs, Krugerrands — trade above melt because they are easy to authenticate and resell. That premium moves with demand and has at times exceeded 30% for silver Eagles. The practical order of operations: calculate melt, then check whether the date and mint mark carry a premium, and only then decide whether you are holding bullion or a coin. ## Working out whether a coin is silver at all For United States coinage the answer is almost entirely a date question, because the Coinage Act of 1965 removed silver from circulating dimes and quarters in one step. *Silver content of circulating US coinage by date. The 1964 cut-off is the single most useful fact in coin sorting.* | Coin | Silver years | Fineness | | --- | --- | --- | | Dime and quarter | Through 1964 | 90% | | Half dollar | Through 1964 | 90% | | Half dollar | 1965–1970 | 40% | | Dollar (Morgan, Peace) | Through 1935 | 90% | | Eisenhower dollar | 1971–1976, collector issues only | 40% | | Nickel | 1942–1945 war nickels, large mint mark over Monticello | 35% | | Everything after 1970 | None in circulation | Copper-nickel clad | Two physical checks help when the date is worn off. Look at the **edge**: a clad coin shows a copper stripe sandwiched between two white layers, and a silver coin is uniformly white all the way through. And listen — dropped on a hard surface, a 90% silver coin rings with a long clear tone while a clad coin gives a dull short clunk. Both are reliable enough to sort a jar quickly. In the United Kingdom the equivalent dates are 1919, when circulating coinage dropped from sterling to 50% silver, and 1946, after which there is none. ## Getting a spot price that means something This calculator asks you to type the spot price rather than fetching one, deliberately. A number that arrives automatically from somewhere is a number nobody checks, and a stale precious-metal price produces a confidently wrong answer. Spot is quoted per **troy ounce**, which is 31.1035 grams — about 10% heavier than the ordinary avoirdupois ounce. Mixing the two is the most common arithmetic error in this whole area. Where to read it: any major financial data provider, the London Bullion Market Association benchmark, or the live quote on a large dealer's site. Note the currency. A US dollar spot price applied to a British sovereign gives a dollar answer, and converting afterwards is a second place to go wrong. Spot also moves. Precious metals can shift several percent in a day, and dealer buy prices lag the move in one direction and lead it in the other. Treat any melt figure as valid for a few hours, not a few weeks. ## Before you sell anything for scrap 1. **Sort by date and mint mark first.** Ten minutes with a date list separates the coins worth melt from the coins worth many times melt. Key dates exist in every US series and they are not rare knowledge — every price guide lists them. 2. **Do not clean anything.** Cleaning is the single fastest way to destroy numismatic value. A hairlined or polished surface is visible to any grader and typically removes half the premium or more. Tarnish on silver is not damage. 3. **Get more than one offer.** Buy prices for the same bag of common silver routinely vary by 10% between dealers in the same town. 4. **Know what percentage of melt you are being offered.** Ask directly: "what percentage of spot is that?" A reputable dealer will answer. For common circulated 90% silver, somewhere in the high eighties to low nineties of spot is a normal buy price. 5. **Be careful with anything that might be an error or a variety.** Doubled dies, off-metal strikes and repunched mint marks can be worth hundreds and are invisible to somebody weighing a bag. Melting United States coinage is legal, with one exception: it has been illegal since 2006 to melt or export cents and five-cent pieces for their metal content, because their copper and nickel content briefly exceeded face value. Silver and gold coinage is not restricted. ## Spotting a fake before you calculate anything Counterfeit bullion and counterfeit key-date coins are both common, and the tests that catch most of them need no equipment beyond a magnet and a scale. **Weight and dimensions.** Every legitimate coin has published specifications to a hundredth of a gram. A cheap 0.01 g jeweller's scale and a caliper catch the majority of fakes, because the counterfeiter cannot match the density of silver or gold with a base metal and still hit both the weight and the diameter. **The magnet slide.** Silver and gold are not magnetic but they are strongly diamagnetic. A neodymium magnet slid down a tilted silver bar visibly slows as if moving through treacle; on a fake it either sticks or slides freely. It is a genuinely useful test and takes seconds. **The ping.** A struck silver coin has a distinctive long high ring. Several phone apps analyse the frequency, and a dull tone is a strong warning sign. **Look at the details.** Cast counterfeits show soft lettering, a seam on the edge, and small pits from air bubbles. Compare the font and the position of the date and mint mark against a genuine example; counterfeit key dates are frequently made by altering the date on a common coin, and a magnified look at the digits shows it. For anything expensive, third-party grading and encapsulation by a recognised service is the answer. It costs money and it is far cheaper than buying a convincing fake. ## Questions people ask about this Which US coins contain silver? Dimes, quarters and half dollars dated 1964 and earlier are 90% silver. Half dollars from 1965 to 1970 are 40%. Morgan and Peace dollars through 1935 are 90%. War nickels from 1942 to 1945, identifiable by a large mint mark over Monticello, are 35%. Everything circulating after 1970 is copper-nickel clad, and you can see the copper stripe on the edge. What is melt value? The intrinsic value of the metal in a coin: its actual silver or gold weight in troy ounces multiplied by the current spot price. It acts as a floor for common coins, because anything selling below melt would simply be bought and melted. It is not what a coin is worth — rarity, date, mint mark and condition sit on top of it and can dwarf it. Should I melt my old silver coins? Sort them by date and mint mark first. Key dates in every US series are worth many times their metal, and melting one destroys that permanently. For genuinely common circulated coins, selling to a dealer at a percentage of melt is normal and reasonable — ask what percentage of spot you are being offered, and get more than one quote, because offers on identical material vary by around ten percent between dealers. How do I tell a silver coin from a clad one without checking the date? Look at the edge. A modern clad coin shows a copper-coloured stripe sandwiched between two white layers; a 90% silver coin is uniformly white all the way through. The sound test also works: dropped on a hard surface, silver rings with a long clear tone while clad gives a short dull clunk. Is a troy ounce the same as an ounce? No. A troy ounce is 31.1035 grams, about ten percent heavier than the ordinary avoirdupois ounce of 28.35 grams. All precious metal spot prices are quoted per troy ounce, and mixing the two units is the single most common arithmetic error in melt calculations. Should I clean a coin before selling it? No, and this is close to an absolute rule. Cleaning leaves hairlines and an unnatural surface that any grader recognises instantly, and it typically removes half or more of a coin's premium. Tarnish is not damage; on silver it is a natural sulphide layer that collectors often prefer. Leave it alone. Is it legal to melt coins? In the United States, yes for silver and gold coinage. It has been illegal since 2006 to melt or export cents and five-cent pieces for their metal content, because their base metal value briefly exceeded face value. Other countries have their own rules — the UK, for instance, restricts defacing current coinage. ## Not sure what the coin even is? Worn dates, foreign issues and unfamiliar mint marks are where melt calculators stop being useful. Photograph both faces and Orvik identifies the issue, the country and the year. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Coin identification](https://orvik.app/collectibles/coin-identification/) - [How to identify coins](https://orvik.app/collectibles/identify-coins/) - [Coin identifier apps](https://orvik.app/collectibles/coin-identifier-app/) - [Scanning coins to identify them](https://orvik.app/collectibles/scan-coins/) - [Stamps worth money](https://orvik.app/collectibles/stamps-worth-money/) - [Stamp identifier](https://orvik.app/collectibles/stamp-identifier/) - [Jewellery hang tag identification](https://orvik.app/collectibles/jewelry-hang-tag-identification/) - [Gemstone identification](https://orvik.app/rocks/gemstone-identification/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What kind of arrowhead did I find?](https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [US Mint — coin specifications](https://www.usmint.gov/learn/coin-and-medal-programs/coin-specifications) - [London Bullion Market Association — precious metal prices](https://www.lbma.org.uk/prices-and-data/precious-metal-prices) - [American Numismatic Association — collecting guidance](https://www.money.org/) - [Royal Mint — historic UK coin specifications](https://www.royalmint.com/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Feather Identification Chart — Match by Size, Pattern and Shape** > Free feather identification key for 26 common North American birds. Filter by size, pattern and shape — plus the law on keeping what you found. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Birds Birds # Which bird did this feather come from? Feather identification runs on three things: **length, pattern, and which part of the bird it came from**. A wing feather is stiff and asymmetric, a tail feather is stiff and symmetric, and a body feather is soft and fluffy at the base. Get the type right first — half the failed identifications are a body feather being matched against pictures of wing feathers. Entries **26** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** **In the United States it is illegal to possess the feathers of almost any native bird.** The Migratory Bird Treaty Act covers over 1,000 species and applies to feathers found on the ground, moulted feathers, and feathers picked up by children. There is no permit for casual collecting. Photograph it, measure it against a coin, and leave it where it is. Eagle feathers carry additional federal protection and severe penalties. Narrow it down Clear all Search birds by name What kind of feather Look at the shaft position and the base. Wing flight feather — stiff, vane wider on one side Tail feather — stiff, vane even on both sides Body feather — soft, fluffy at the base Down — no shaft to speak of Length Under 5 cm 5–10 cm 10–20 cm 20–35 cm Over 35 cm Pattern One colour Barred across A band or spot at the tip Streaked along the shaft Iridescent or metallic Mottled or vermiculated Main colour Brown Grey Black White Blue Red, orange or yellow Where you found it Garden or park Woodland By water Field or roadside A pile of feathers — a kill site Showing all 26 birds 1. ### Wild turkey Big, stiff and boldly barred black and white on the wing; tail feathers are broad, brown, finely barred, with a buff or chestnut band across the tip. Body feathers have a bronze-green iridescent sheen and a black rim. Size Wing 25–40 cm; tail 30–40 cm Where Woodland and field edge across North America. 2. ### Canada goose Plain grey-brown flight feathers with a paler edge and a slightly waxy feel, and a great deal of grey down. By far the most commonly found large feather in a city park. Size Wing 20–30 cm Where Ponds, parks and playing fields across North America and Europe. 3. ### Mallard The give-away is the speculum feather: a patch of iridescent blue-purple bordered with a crisp white bar at both ends. No other common bird produces that combination. Size Wing 10–20 cm Where Ponds and rivers across the northern hemisphere. 4. ### Mourning dove Soft grey-brown, with the outer tail feathers showing a black bar and a broad white tip. The feathers detach at the slightest pull, which is a defence — a predator ends up with a mouthful of feathers and no bird. Size Wing 10–15 cm Where Across North America. Confused with A scatter of dove feathers with clean-cut shafts is a hawk kill; chewed and broken shafts mean a mammal. 5. ### Rock pigeon Grey with a broad dark bar near the tip on many wing feathers, and neck feathers with a green and magenta iridescence. Enormously variable because of domestic breeding — white, chequered and rust forms are all common. Size Wing 12–20 cm Where Cities worldwide. 6. ### American crow Uniformly black with a faint purple gloss in sunlight, and a fanned tip on the outer flight feathers where the vane narrows abruptly. Common raven feathers are the same but noticeably longer, over 30 cm. Size Wing 20–30 cm Where Across North America. 7. ### Blue jay Bright blue barred with black and tipped white — one of the most recognisable feathers in North America. The blue is structural, not pigment: hold it up with light coming through from behind and it goes brown. Size 10–15 cm Where Eastern and central North America. 8. ### Northern cardinal Solid deep red on males, dull olive-brown with red edges on females. The red is carotenoid pigment from the bird's diet, so unlike jay blue it stays red in any light. Size 7–12 cm Where Eastern and central North America. 9. ### Red-tailed hawk Handle with care Tail feathers are brick-red above, often with a single dark band near the tip; wing feathers are broad, brown, and barred dark on a pale ground with a distinctly notched outer web near the tip. Size Wing 25–40 cm; tail 20–25 cm Where Across North America. Risk Raptor feathers are heavily protected. Photograph and leave — possession of hawk, owl and eagle feathers carries the strictest penalties under the MBTA and, for eagles, additional federal law. 10. ### Great horned owl Handle with care Softly mottled grey-brown with fine barring, and — the diagnostic feature — a comb of stiff serrations along the leading edge of the outer wing feathers, which breaks up the airflow and makes the flight silent. Size Wing 25–40 cm Where Across the Americas. Confused with Nothing. The serrated leading edge is unique to owls and can be felt with a fingertip. 11. ### Northern flicker Brown barred black with the shaft and the underside of the vane a bright lemon yellow in the east or salmon red in the west. The coloured shaft is what identifies it. Size 10–16 cm Where Across North America. 12. ### Pileated woodpecker Sooty black with a clean white base to the inner web, and very stiff pointed tail feathers with a sharply worn tip — the tail props the bird against a trunk and takes real wear. Size 15–25 cm Where Mature forest across eastern North America and the Pacific Northwest. 13. ### European starling Glossy black with green and purple iridescence and small buff-white spots at the tips in winter plumage. Body feathers are short, broad and blunt. Size 4–10 cm Where Introduced across North America; native to Eurasia. Risk One of the few species not protected under the MBTA, along with house sparrow and rock pigeon. 14. ### Red-winged blackbird Matt black flight feathers; the shoulder patch feathers are scarlet with a yellow band at the base, and those are unmistakable when you find one. Size 8–13 cm Where Marshes and wet fields across North America. 15. ### American robin Slate-grey wing and tail feathers, often with a small white spot at the tip of the outer tail feathers, and warm brick-orange body feathers from the breast. Size 7–13 cm Where Across North America. 16. ### Ring-necked pheasant Extremely long, narrow, pointed tail feathers, warm buff-brown with strong regularly spaced black bars. Body feathers are coppery with a black crescent and a metallic sheen. Size Tail 25–60 cm Where Introduced across North America and Europe. 17. ### Great blue heron Handle with care Long, broad, plain blue-grey flight feathers, and distinctive powder-down body feathers that disintegrate into a fine waxy dust when rubbed — the bird uses it to clean fish slime off its plumage. Size Wing 25–40 cm Where Wetlands across North America. 18. ### Ring-billed and herring gull Clean white with a pale grey outer vane and, on the outer primaries, a black tip with a small white mirror spot. Juvenile feathers are heavily mottled brown. Size 15–30 cm Where Coasts, lakes and car parks across North America and Europe. 19. ### Wood duck The flank feathers are the famous ones: buff with fine black barring and a bold black-and-white crescent at the tip, used in fly tying for over a century. The speculum is deep iridescent blue. Size 8–15 cm Where Wooded swamps and rivers across North America. 20. ### Barred owl Handle with care Boldly barred brown and white with the same soft velvety texture and serrated leading edge as other owls. Softer and less sharply patterned than a hawk feather of the same size. Size 18–30 cm Where Eastern North America and, as an invader, the Pacific Northwest. 21. ### Common grackle Black with a strong bronze, purple or blue-green iridescence depending on the angle. Tail feathers are long and keeled, so the bird can fold the tail into a V in flight. Size 10–18 cm Where Eastern and central North America. 22. ### Peafowl The eyed train feather needs no key. The eye is structural colour from photonic crystals in the barbules, not pigment, which is why it shifts as you move it. Size Train feathers 100–150 cm Where Farms, parks and estates worldwide as an introduced bird. Risk Not a native species, so not covered by the MBTA. Legal to keep in the US. 23. ### Cedar waxwing Soft silky fawn-grey with a bright yellow band across the tail tip and, on some feathers, a red waxy tip like a drop of sealing wax — an actual pigment deposit, unique among North American birds. Size 5–9 cm Where Across North America. 24. ### Downy and hairy woodpecker Crisp black and white — flight feathers spotted or checked white on black, and stiff pointed black tail feathers with white outer ones. Hairy woodpecker feathers are the same pattern at half again the size. Size 5–12 cm Where Across North America. 25. ### Sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawk Handle with care Slate-grey or brown above with three to five bold dark bands across a paler underside. Very often found as a scattered pile of songbird feathers with these among them, at a plucking post near a feeder. Size 12–25 cm Where Across North America; regular garden visitors at bird feeders. 26. ### Song sparrow, house finch and other small songbirds Small, brown, streaked and, in practice, not identifiable to species from a single feather. Most small brown feathers found in gardens fall into this group and no honest key takes them further. Size 3–8 cm Where Everywhere. Confused with This is the most common outcome of feather identification and it is worth stating plainly rather than forcing a match. Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Work out which feather you have before anything else A bird carries several thousand feathers in at least four structurally different kinds, and matching a body feather against a chart of wing feathers produces nonsense. Sorting them takes one look. - **Wing flight feather (remex).** Stiff, with the shaft distinctly off-centre so one side of the vane is much narrower than the other. That asymmetry is what generates lift, and it is the fastest way to recognise a wing feather. The outermost ones are often notched or emarginated near the tip. - **Tail feather (rectrix).** Also stiff, but with the shaft centred and the vane roughly equal on both sides — except the outermost pair, which are slightly asymmetric. Tail feathers are usually broader and more evenly patterned. - **Body or contour feather.** Smooth and shaped at the tip, fluffy and disorganised at the base, and much softer overall. These carry most of a bird's visible colour and are the hardest to identify. - **Down.** No real shaft, just a tuft of fluff. Almost never identifiable to species. Say which one you have when you ask anyone for help, and photograph both sides — the pattern on the underside is often different and is frequently what settles it. ## The law, which is stricter than most people believe In the United States the **Migratory Bird Treaty Act** makes it illegal to possess the feathers of over 1,000 native species without a federal permit. It applies to feathers found on the ground, moulted feathers and feathers picked up by children on a walk. There is no exception for casual collecting, and none for feathers you did not take from a bird. The unprotected species are the introduced ones: house sparrow, European starling, rock pigeon, and non-native game birds like pheasant and peafowl regulated under state law instead. Everything else — hawks, owls, jays, cardinals, herons, gulls, songbirds — is covered. **Eagle feathers carry additional protection** under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, with penalties up to $100,000 and a year in prison for a first offence. Enrolled members of federally recognised tribes may apply to the National Eagle Repository for feathers for religious use; nobody else may possess them under any circumstances. In the United Kingdom, the Wildlife and Countryside Act protects wild birds and their parts, and in the EU the Birds Directive is equivalent. In practice everywhere: **photograph it, measure it against a coin, and put it back.** A photograph is also a better record than the feather, because it keeps the location and the date. ## A pile of feathers is a story Scattered feathers on the ground are one of the commonest reasons people start identifying feathers, and the pattern of the scatter says who was responsible. *Reading a kill site from the feathers left behind.* | What you see | Likely predator | | --- | --- | | Feathers plucked cleanly, shafts intact and undamaged, in a tight pile on a stump, post or low branch | Hawk. Raptors pluck with the beak and use a regular plucking perch | | Shafts bitten through, feathers sheared off, saliva-matted clumps | Cat, fox or other mammal. Mammals chew rather than pluck | | Feathers widely scattered over several metres with no concentration | Window strike, or a kill taken in flight and carried | | A neat ring of small feathers with nothing else, often overnight | Owl. Owls also leave pellets nearby containing bones and fur | | A pile beside a bird feeder | Sharp-shinned or Cooper's hawk, which specialise in hunting at feeders | If a hawk is killing at your feeder, the choices are to take the feeder down for a week or two — which usually moves the hawk on — or to accept it. Hawks at feeders are the ecosystem working, and the hawk is protected regardless of how you feel about it. ## How feathers get their colour, and why it matters for identification Bird colour comes from two mechanisms, and knowing which one you are looking at is a genuine identification clue. **Pigments** — melanins for black, grey and brown; carotenoids from the diet for red, orange and yellow. Pigment colour is in the feather and looks the same from every angle. A cardinal feather is red in any light. Carotenoid colours are diet-dependent, which is why a poorly fed male cardinal is a duller red and why flamingos fade in captivity without supplements. **Structural colour** — produced by microscopic architecture in the feather barbs scattering specific wavelengths. All blue in birds is structural; there is no blue pigment in any bird feather. This gives a clean test: **hold a blue feather up with light coming through it from behind.** A blue jay feather goes brown, because the structure only works with light reflecting off the front. A red cardinal feather stays red. Iridescence — the shifting greens and purples on a grackle, a starling or a hummingbird — is structural too, produced by thin-film interference in layered melanin granules, which is why the colour changes as you move the feather. Melanin also does structural work: melanin-rich feathers are physically tougher and more resistant to abrasion and bacterial degradation. That is why so many pale birds have black wingtips, from gulls to gannets to pelicans. Those are the parts that wear. ## What a single feather can and cannot tell you The honest limit: many feathers are not identifiable to species by anyone. Small brown streaked feathers from sparrows, wrens, finches and warblers overlap so heavily that professional feather identification laboratories work from microscopic barbule structure and DNA rather than from appearance. The Smithsonian Feather Identification Lab exists precisely because of this. It identifies bird remains from aircraft strikes for the FAA and the US Air Force, and it does the work with a reference collection of hundreds of thousands of specimens plus DNA barcoding — because a smear of feather material from a jet engine cannot be matched by eye. What a single feather does reliably give you is a size class, a group and often a family. Barred and brown at 25 cm with a serrated leading edge is an owl. Bright blue barred with black and tipped white is a jay. Iridescent blue with white bars at both ends is a mallard speculum. Those are real identifications, and they are as far as most feathers go. 26 entries here, covering the birds whose feathers people actually find in North American gardens, woods and shorelines. For anything further, the US Fish and Wildlife Service Feather Atlas is the reference — it has high-resolution scans of the flight feathers of hundreds of North American species and a search tool that filters by size, pattern and colour. ## Questions people ask about this Is it illegal to keep a feather I found? In the United States, yes for almost any native bird. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act covers over 1,000 species and applies to feathers found on the ground and moulted feathers, with no exception for casual collecting. The unprotected species are house sparrow, European starling, rock pigeon and non-native game birds. Eagle feathers carry additional federal protection with penalties up to $100,000. Photograph it and leave it. How do I tell a wing feather from a tail feather? Look at where the shaft runs. On a wing flight feather the shaft is well off-centre, so one side of the vane is much narrower than the other — that asymmetry is what makes lift. On a tail feather the shaft is centred and the vane is roughly equal on both sides. Body feathers are soft with a fluffy disorganised base and no stiffness. What bird has a blue feather with black bars and a white tip? A blue jay, in eastern and central North America. It is one of the most recognisable feathers on the continent. A useful check: hold it up with light coming through from behind and it turns brown, because blue in birds is structural colour produced by the feather's microscopic architecture rather than by any pigment. I found a pile of feathers in my garden. What happened? Look at the shafts. Cleanly plucked feathers with intact undamaged shafts, concentrated in a tight pile on a stump or post, means a hawk — raptors pluck with the beak at a regular perch. Shafts bitten through with sheared, saliva-matted clumps means a cat, fox or other mammal. A pile beside a bird feeder is almost always a sharp-shinned or Cooper's hawk. Why does an owl feather feel different? Owls have a comb of stiff serrations along the leading edge of the outer wing feathers and a velvety pile over the surface, which together break up the turbulence that makes flight audible. You can feel the serrations with a fingertip. It is unique to owls among North American birds and is diagnostic on its own. Can I identify a small brown feather? Usually not, and that is the honest answer rather than a failure. Feathers from sparrows, wrens, finches and warblers overlap so heavily that professional laboratories use microscopic barbule structure and DNA rather than appearance. What you can reliably get from a single feather is a size class and often a family — which for many purposes is the useful part anyway. Are feathers safe to handle? Wild feathers can carry mites, lice and bacteria, and in areas with avian influenza outbreaks the current public health advice is not to handle wild bird feathers or carcasses at all. Since possession is illegal for most species anyway, the photograph-and-leave rule covers both problems. If you do handle one, wash your hands. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows birds down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Feather identification](https://orvik.app/birds/feather-identification/) - [What bird is this?](https://orvik.app/birds/what-bird-is-this/) - [Identify this bird](https://orvik.app/birds/identify-this-bird/) - [Bird recognition apps](https://orvik.app/birds/bird-recognition-app/) - [Apps to identify birds](https://orvik.app/birds/app-to-identify-birds/) - [Owl call identification](https://orvik.app/birds/owl-calls-identification/) - [Animal track identification](https://orvik.app/animals/animal-track-identification/) - [Bird call identification](https://orvik.app/birds/bird-call-identification/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) - [What berry is this, and can you eat it?](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) - [What mushroom is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/) - [What cloud is that?](https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/) - [What shell did I find on the beach?](https://orvik.app/tools/seashell-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [US Fish and Wildlife Service — The Feather Atlas](https://www.fws.gov/lab/featheratlas/) - [USFWS — Migratory Bird Treaty Act protected species](https://www.fws.gov/law/migratory-bird-treaty-act-1918) - [Smithsonian Feather Identification Lab](https://www.si.edu/spotlight/feather-forensics) - [Cornell Lab of Ornithology — All About Birds](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Fossil Identification Chart — Match by Shape, Rock Type and Age** > Free fossil identification key for 26 common fossils. Filter by shape, size and the rock it is in, and find out roughly how old it is and what the animal actually was. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Rocks & minerals Rocks & minerals # What fossil is this? Most fossils people find belong to about twenty groups, and shape sorts them fast: **a coiled spiral, two matching halves, a stack of discs, a segmented shell, a branching structure, a tooth**. The rock matters too — limestone, shale and chalk hold the great majority, and igneous rock holds none at all. Entries **26** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search fossils by name Shape Flat coil or spiral Cone or bullet Two matching halves Discs or a stack of buttons Segmented, with ribs Branching or honeycombed Tooth or bone Plant-shaped A track, burrow or impression Size Under 1 cm 1–5 cm 5–15 cm Over 15 cm Rock it is in Limestone — fizzes in vinegar Shale or mudstone Sandstone Chalk Chert, flint or ironstone Loose — found on a beach or in gravel Age Palaeozoic — 540 to 250 million years Mesozoic — 250 to 66 million years Cenozoic — under 66 million years Showing all 26 fossils 1. ### Ammonite A flat coil with chambers separated by walls, and where the shell has worn away the joins show as intricate fern-like suture lines. Ribs usually run across the coil. Size 1 cm to 2 m Where Worldwide in Jurassic and Cretaceous marine rock. Lyme Regis, Whitby, the Alps, South Dakota. Confused with Nautiloids, whose sutures are simple curves rather than frilled. That suture pattern is the diagnostic character and it is visible on any worn specimen. In the record 411–56 Ma · from the Lochkovian · 94,365 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=14505) 2. ### Nautiloid and orthocone Either coiled or a long straight cone, divided into chambers by simple curved walls. The tube running through the chambers, the siphuncle, is often visible as a line down the middle. Size 2 cm to 3 m Where Palaeozoic limestones worldwide; Morocco produces polished slabs commercially. In the record first recorded 304 Ma, still living · from the Kasimovian · 2,466 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=122460) 3. ### Belemnite A solid bullet-shaped rod of amber to dark brown calcite, often with a hollow cone at the wide end. Broken across, it shows radiating crystal fibres from a central line. Size 3–20 cm Where Jurassic and Cretaceous rock across Europe and North America. Confused with Called thunderbolts and devil's fingers in folklore. It is the internal skeleton of a squid-like animal, not a shell. In the record 323–34 Ma · from the Visean · 2,108 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=15832) 4. ### Trilobite Divided lengthwise into three lobes — hence the name — and crosswise into a head shield, a segmented body and a tail piece. Frequently found rolled into a ball, which is how it defended itself. Size 1–10 cm, rarely to 70 cm Where Cambrian to Permian rock: Utah, New York, Morocco, Wales, the Czech Republic. Confused with Most trilobite fossils are moulted exoskeletons rather than dead animals, which is why complete ones are far scarcer than fragments. In the record 521–252 Ma · from the Fortunian · 55,973 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=19100) 5. unequal size, with a plane of symmetry running through the middle of each shell rather than between them. many have a small hole at the beak where a fleshy stalk emerged."> ### Brachiopod Two shells of **unequal size**, with a plane of symmetry running through the middle of each shell rather than between them. Many have a small hole at the beak where a fleshy stalk emerged. Size 1–8 cm Where Palaeozoic limestone worldwide; enormously abundant in the US Midwest. Confused with Bivalve molluscs, whose two shells are mirror images of each other and equal in size. The symmetry test separates them completely. In the record first recorded 526 Ma, still living · from the Fortunian · 187,697 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=26322) 6. ### Fossil bivalve Two mirror-image shells of equal size joined at a hinge, exactly like a modern clam or oyster. Symmetry runs between the two shells, not through each one. Size 1–20 cm Where Marine sedimentary rock worldwide. In the record first recorded 521 Ma, still living · from the Fortunian · 211,698 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=16005) 7. ### Devil's toenail Gryphaea A thick, heavily curved oyster shell that coils over on itself like a claw, with a small flat lid. Instantly recognisable and the source of its own folklore. Size 3–10 cm Where Jurassic clays of England and the American Midwest. In the record 237–34 Ma · from the Ladinian · 1,214 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=16691) 8. ### Crinoid stem Stacks of small discs, each with a central hole and often a star-shaped or radial pattern on the face, sometimes still joined into a column. Loose discs are the most abundant fossil in many limestones. Size Discs 2–20 mm Where Palaeozoic limestone worldwide; abundant in Indiana, Iowa, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Confused with Called sea lilies, and they are animals rather than plants — echinoderms related to starfish, anchored to the seabed on a stalk. In the record first recorded 505 Ma, still living · from the Stage 4 · 14,526 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=31590) 9. ### Crinoid crown A cup of plates with feathery arms radiating from it, on top of a stem. A complete crown is far rarer and far more valuable than loose stem discs. Size 2–15 cm Where Crawfordsville in Indiana and Le Grand in Iowa produce world-class specimens. In the record first recorded 505 Ma, still living · from the Stage 4 · 14,526 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=31590) 10. ### Horn coral A curved cone shaped like a bull's horn, with radiating vertical partitions visible in the wide open end. A solitary rugose coral that lived on the sea floor. Size 2–15 cm Where Devonian and Carboniferous limestone worldwide. In the record 471–7 Ma · from the Stage 10 · 16,723 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=5113) 11. ### Colonial and honeycomb coral A mass of tightly packed tubes seen end-on as a honeycomb, or as long parallel tubes in section. Petoskey stone, Michigan's state stone, is a polished colonial coral. Size 5–50 cm Where Palaeozoic limestone worldwide; the Great Lakes region and the English Midlands. In the record 477–252 Ma · from the Stage 10 · 11,856 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=81676) 12. ### Bryozoan Delicate lacy nets, fine twigs or fan-shaped meshes covered in minute pores, each pore a separate animal. Often mistaken for coral, but the individual openings are far smaller. Size 5 mm to 5 cm Where Marine sedimentary rock worldwide. In the record first recorded 515 Ma, still living · from the Stage 3 · 30,968 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=24773) 13. ### Fossil sea urchin A dome or heart-shaped body with five bands of tiny paired pores radiating from the top in a flower pattern, and a surface covered in small bumps where the spines attached. Size 2–10 cm Where Cretaceous chalk of England and France; Cenozoic limestone worldwide. In the record first recorded 458 Ma, still living · from the Dapingian · 11,651 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=168786) 14. ### Shark tooth A triangular enamel blade, usually glossy black or grey from mineral replacement, with a distinct root and often serrated edges. Megalodon teeth reach 18 cm and are unmistakable. Size 5 mm to 18 cm Where Coastal plain deposits: the Carolinas, Florida, Maryland, Morocco. Confused with Sharks shed teeth continuously through life — tens of thousands each — which is why they are the commonest vertebrate fossil there is. In the record first recorded 458 Ma, still living · from the Darriwilian · 27,309 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=34422) 15. ### Fossil fish A complete skeleton laid flat in fine-grained rock, with the fin rays and the scale pattern often preserved. Green River fish are quarried commercially and are among the most affordable complete vertebrate fossils. Size 2–50 cm Where The Green River Formation in Wyoming, Solnhofen in Germany, Monte Bolca in Italy. In the record first recorded 439 Ma, still living · from the Rhuddanian · 240,749 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=34881) 16. ### Dinosaur bone Handle with care The internal texture is the identification: bone shows a spongy honeycomb of cells with a denser outer wall, visible on any broken surface. Petrified wood shows growth rings and grain instead. Size Fragments to metres Where The Morrison and Hell Creek formations of the American West, and equivalents worldwide. Risk Collecting vertebrate fossils on US federal land is illegal without a permit under the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act. On private land it requires the owner's permission. In the record first recorded 241 Ma, still living · 37,837 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=52775) 17. ### Petrified wood Rock with the growth rings, bark texture and cell structure of wood preserved in silica, often brilliantly coloured by iron and manganese. Hard enough to scratch glass, and it takes a mirror polish. Size Fragments to whole trunks Where The Petrified Forest in Arizona, Washington State, Madagascar, Argentina. 18. ### Fern and leaf impression A flat black carbon film in the shape of a frond or leaf, splitting cleanly out of shale. Coal spoil heaps are the classic hunting ground and the detail can be extraordinary. Size 1–30 cm Where Coal measures worldwide; Carboniferous shales of Illinois, Pennsylvania and northern England. In the record first recorded 388 Ma, still living · from the Emsian · 19,372 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=196331) 19. ### Lepidodendron bark A regular diamond or scale pattern covering the surface, each diamond a scar where a leaf was attached. A giant clubmoss up to 40 m tall, and one of the main sources of coal. Size 5 cm to metres Where Carboniferous coal measures worldwide. Confused with Frequently reported as fossilised snake or dinosaur skin. The regular geometric diamonds and the shale context give it away. In the record 382–206 Ma · from the Givetian · 313 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=125629) 20. ### Calamites A ribbed cylinder with regular joints across it, like a length of bamboo. A giant horsetail, related to the small ones still growing in ditches today. Size 5–50 cm Where Carboniferous coal measures worldwide. In the record 319–171 Ma · from the Serpukhovian · 349 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=125728) 21. ### Stromatolite Domed or columnar structures with fine concentric internal layers, built by mats of cyanobacteria trapping sediment. Some are 3.5 billion years old and are among the oldest evidence of life on Earth. Size 5 cm to metres Where Precambrian rock worldwide; living examples in Shark Bay, Australia. 22. ### Graptolite Fine saw-blade or tuning-fork marks on dark shale, looking like pencil writing — the name means "written rock". Colonial floating animals, and precise markers for dating rock. Size 1–10 cm Where Ordovician and Silurian black shales of Wales, Scotland, New York and Australia. In the record 505–340 Ma · from the Stage 4 · 8,114 catalogued occurrences [check on PBDB](https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicTaxonInfo?taxon_no=33534) 23. ### Coprolite Fossilised dung: a lumpy irregular mass, often spiral or pinched at one end, sometimes containing bone fragments, scales or plant matter. Difficult to distinguish from a concretion without a section. Size 1–20 cm Where Worldwide. 24. ### Trace fossils and burrows Vertical tubes, U-shaped burrows, ripple marks, trails and footprints. No body is preserved — the fossil is the behaviour, and for sedimentologists that is often more informative than a shell. Size Variable Where Worldwide. 25. ### Amber with inclusions Handle with care Fossilised tree resin, warm to the touch, floating in saturated salt water and picking up paper when rubbed. Insects and plant fragments trapped inside are preserved in three dimensions. Size 1–10 cm Where The Baltic coast, the Dominican Republic, Myanmar. Risk Burmese amber comes from a conflict zone and its trade has serious ethical problems. Several journals now decline papers based on recently acquired Burmese material. 26. ### Concretion — not a fossil A hard rounded or lens-shaped lump that weathers out of softer rock, often with concentric internal layers. The source of most "fossil egg", "dinosaur bone" and "meteorite" reports. Size 1 cm to metres Where Sedimentary rock worldwide. Confused with Some concretions genuinely formed around a fossil, which is why Mazon Creek nodules in Illinois are split open by collectors — but most contain nothing. Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## The rock tells you what can be in it Before looking at the object, look at what it is sitting in. That single observation eliminates most of the possibilities and tells you roughly how old it is. - **Limestone** — the richest fossil rock there is, formed largely from shell and skeletal debris. Expect brachiopods, corals, crinoids, bryozoans, nautiloids. It fizzes in vinegar, which is how you confirm it. - **Shale and mudstone** — fine sediment, so fine detail. Trilobites, graptolites, leaf and fern impressions, complete fish. Splits into flat sheets, and the fossil is usually on a bedding plane. - **Chalk** — a very pure fine limestone. Echinoids, belemnites, sponges, occasional ammonites. - **Sandstone** — higher energy, so mostly robust material and trace fossils. Footprints, burrows, petrified wood, dinosaur bone. - **Coal measures and their spoil heaps** — Carboniferous plants, in extraordinary abundance. - **Igneous and most metamorphic rock** — nothing. Granite, basalt and marble contain no fossils, because either the rock was molten or the recrystallisation destroyed them. The corollary matters as much: a fossil found loose on a beach or in a gravel bar has lost its context. Where it came from is often unknowable, and for anything scientifically interesting the location and the bed are worth more than the specimen. ## Six pairs people mix up *The distinctions that resolve most fossil identification questions.* | Pair | The test | | --- | --- | | Ammonite vs nautiloid | Suture lines where the chamber walls meet the shell: frilled and fern-like in ammonites, simple curves in nautiloids | | Brachiopod vs bivalve | Symmetry. A brachiopod's plane of symmetry runs through the middle of each shell and the two shells differ in size; a bivalve's runs between two mirror-image shells | | Coral vs bryozoan | Aperture size. Coral corallites are millimetres across; bryozoan pores need a lens to see | | Bone vs petrified wood | Internal texture on a broken surface: bone shows a spongy honeycomb with a dense outer wall, wood shows rings and grain | | Fossil vs concretion | Concretions are structureless or concentrically layered inside. If a broken surface shows no biological structure, it is a concretion | | Lepidodendron vs "dinosaur skin" | The regular geometric diamond pattern with a scar in each diamond is a fossil clubmoss trunk. Genuine skin impressions are irregular and very rare | The suture line test deserves emphasis because ammonites are the most-found identifiable fossil in Europe and the sutures are visible on any specimen where the outer shell has worn off. Complex, frilled and repeating means ammonite; smooth arcs mean nautiloid, and nautiloids are much older. ## Collecting legally The rules differ sharply by country, by land ownership and — crucially — by whether the fossil is a vertebrate. **United States.** On federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act of 2009 allows casual collection of reasonable amounts of common invertebrate and plant fossils for personal use on most BLM and Forest Service land, and prohibits collecting vertebrate fossils entirely without a permit. National Parks prohibit all collecting. On private land, fossils belong to the landowner and you need permission. **United Kingdom.** Most coastal fossil collecting is permitted under local codes; the Jurassic Coast has a published Fossil Collecting Code requiring significant finds to be recorded. Sites of Special Scientific Interest have their own restrictions, and hammering in situ is often prohibited even where collecting loose material is not. **Elsewhere.** Many countries — including Italy, Portugal, Brazil, China, Mongolia and Morocco — prohibit export of fossils entirely. Buying a fossil abroad can mean carrying illegally exported material through customs. Two universal rules. **Collect loose material** from scree, beach or spoil rather than hammering a face, which is both safer and less damaging. And **record where it came from** — the locality and the bed, ideally with a photograph in place. A fossil without provenance is an ornament; a fossil with it is data, and a museum can use it. ## Where to find fossils, and how to do it safely Fossils are where sedimentary rock is exposed and actively eroding, which in practice means a small number of settings. - **Coastal cliffs and the beach beneath them.** The sea does the excavation for you. Go on a falling tide after a storm and work the loose material. - **Quarries and road cuts**, with permission. Working quarries frequently allow organised group visits and nothing else. - **Stream beds and gravel bars**, where flowing water concentrates hard material. - **Spoil heaps** from old coal and mineral workings — the classic source of Carboniferous plant fossils. - **Ploughed fields** on the right geology, after rain. Safety is not a formality at cliff sites. Rockfall kills fossil collectors, and it happens without warning: **never work directly beneath a cliff face, never dig into the base of a cliff, and check the tide times before you start**. Being cut off by a rising tide under an unclimbable cliff is the other common way this goes wrong. Wear eye protection if you hammer at all, and a hard hat where there is any overhang. ## When a find matters, and what to do about it Amateur collectors have found a substantial share of important specimens — Mary Anning's ichthyosaur and plesiosaur, the Mazon Creek fauna, most known dinosaur trackways in the UK. What separates a scientifically useful find from a mantelpiece ornament is what happens in the first hour. 1. **Photograph it in place**, with a scale, before touching it. Include a wider shot showing the bed and the surroundings. 2. **Record the location precisely.** GPS coordinates, the bed, the date, the tide state if relevant. 3. **If it looks like vertebrate material — bone, teeth, articulated skeleton — stop and report it.** Excavating a vertebrate fossil badly destroys most of its scientific value, and in the US on federal land it is also illegal. 4. **Contact a museum or a university geology department.** They are consistently interested and consistently helpful, and in the UK the local Finds Liaison Officer or the Jurassic Coast Trust will advise. 26 entries here cover what people actually pick up and ask about. There are hundreds of thousands of described fossil species and a large proportion of any real collection cannot be taken beyond a group without expert help. Local geological societies run field trips and identification evenings, and they are by a wide margin the fastest way to learn a region's fossils. ## How old the rock has to be A fossil identification is only as good as the rock it came out of, and that is a fact you can check before you look at the specimen at all. Every group in this key is matched against the - [Paleobiology Database](https://paleobiodb.org/), which catalogues where and when each has actually been found: **989,814 recorded occurrences** behind the 20 groups below, with a first and last appearance for each. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. *First and last appearance of the 20 fossil groups in this key, from 526 million years ago to the present, built from 989,814 catalogued occurrences. Time runs left to right, oldest first; the green bars are the 11 groups that still have living members, which is why a modern shell, urchin test or coral fragment is the single most common thing brought in as a fossil. Source: the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0, snapshot 2026-09-04.* The oldest group here is Brachiopod, first recorded 526 million years ago, and the best-evidenced is Fossil fish with 240,749 catalogued occurrences. The practical use of the chart is elimination: if the local rock is Cretaceous, anything whose bar has already ended cannot be in it, whatever the shape suggests. Local geological survey maps are free in most countries and will tell you the age of the outcrop you are standing on. Note also the 11groups that still have living members — Nautiloid and orthocone, Brachiopod, Fossil bivalve, Crinoid stem, Crinoid crown, Bryozoan, Fossil sea urchin, Shark tooth, Fossil fish, Dinosaur bone, Fern and leaf impression — because a specimen that looks like one of those is not automatically ancient, and beach-worn modern shell is the single most common thing mistaken for a fossil. ### The reference table First and last appearance in millions of years before present, the named stage at each end, and how many occurrences the database holds. A large occurrence count means the group is common in collections, which is a good proxy for how likely you are to find one. *Geological range and occurrence counts for the 20 fossil groups in this key. Source: the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0, snapshot 2026-09-04. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Group | First (Ma) | Last (Ma) | From | To | Occurrences | Still living | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Brachiopod | 526 | 0 | Fortunian | present | 187,697 | yes | | Trilobite | 521 | 252 | Fortunian | Changhsingian | 55,973 | no | | Fossil bivalve | 521 | 0 | Fortunian | present | 211,698 | yes | | Bryozoan | 515 | 0 | Stage 3 | present | 30,968 | yes | | Crinoid stem | 505 | 0 | Stage 4 | present | 14,526 | yes | | Crinoid crown | 505 | 0 | Stage 4 | present | 14,526 | yes | | Graptolite | 505 | 340 | Stage 4 | Visean | 8,114 | no | | Colonial and honeycomb coral | 477 | 252 | Stage 10 | Changhsingian | 11,856 | no | | Horn coral | 471 | 7 | Stage 10 | Tortonian | 16,723 | no | | Fossil sea urchin | 458 | 0 | Dapingian | present | 11,651 | yes | | Shark tooth | 458 | 0 | Darriwilian | present | 27,309 | yes | | Fossil fish | 439 | 0 | Rhuddanian | present | 240,749 | yes | | Ammonite | 411 | 56 | Lochkovian | Thanetian | 94,365 | no | | Fern and leaf impression | 388 | 0 | Emsian | present | 19,372 | yes | | Lepidodendron bark | 382 | 206 | Givetian | Norian | 313 | no | | Belemnite | 323 | 34 | Visean | Priabonian | 2,108 | no | | Calamites | 319 | 171 | Serpukhovian | Aalenian | 349 | no | | Nautiloid and orthocone | 304 | 0 | Kasimovian | present | 2,466 | yes | | Dinosaur bone | 241 | 0 | — | present | 37,837 | yes | | Devil's toenail | 237 | 34 | Ladinian | Priabonian | 1,214 | no | Free to reuse with a link back to this page. The full snapshot behind every Orvik key is on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page. ## Questions people ask about this How do I know if something is a fossil or just a rock? Look for biological structure: symmetry, repeated segments, chambers, growth rings, a honeycomb texture, or a pattern that repeats regularly. Break or examine a fresh surface. Concretions — the source of most false alarms — are structureless or concentrically layered inside, and if a broken surface shows no biological pattern, that is what you have. What is the difference between an ammonite and a nautiloid? The suture lines, where the internal chamber walls meet the shell. In ammonites they are complex, frilled and fern-like; in nautiloids they are simple smooth curves. The lines are visible whenever the outer shell has worn away, which on beach specimens is most of the time. Nautiloids are also much older, appearing in the Palaeozoic, while ammonites dominate the Mesozoic. Is it legal to collect fossils? It depends on where and what. On US federal land, reasonable amounts of common invertebrate and plant fossils may be collected for personal use, and vertebrate fossils may not be collected at all without a permit; National Parks prohibit everything. Private land needs the owner's permission. In the UK most coastal collecting is permitted under local codes, with recording expected for significant finds. Several countries prohibit fossil export entirely. What are those little discs with holes in the limestone? Crinoid stem segments — sea lilies. Each disc is one plate from a long stalk that anchored a filter-feeding animal to the seabed, and they often show a star or radial pattern on the face. They are among the most abundant fossils in Palaeozoic limestone, and complete crowns with the arms attached are far rarer and far more valuable. How can I tell fossil bone from petrified wood? Look at the internal texture on a broken or cut surface. Bone shows a spongy honeycomb of cells surrounded by a denser outer wall. Petrified wood shows growth rings and a directional grain. Both can be beautifully coloured and both are hard enough to scratch glass, so colour and hardness will not separate them. Where is the best place to look for fossils? Anywhere sedimentary rock is exposed and actively eroding: coastal cliffs and the beach below them, stream beds and gravel bars, road cuts, quarry spoil and old mine heaps, and ploughed fields on the right geology. Falling tide after a storm is the best time on a coast. Igneous and most metamorphic rock contains nothing at all, so granite and basalt country is a waste of a day. I think I found a dinosaur bone. What should I do? Photograph it in place with a scale before touching it, record the location precisely, and contact a museum or university geology department rather than excavating it. Badly removed vertebrate material loses most of its scientific value, and on US federal land collecting it without a permit is illegal. Most suspected dinosaur bones turn out to be concretions, and the internal honeycomb texture is what tells you which you have. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows fossils down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Fossil identifier](https://orvik.app/rocks/fossil-identifier/) - [How to identify rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/identify-rocks/) - [What is this rock?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-this-rock/) - [Limestone: what type of rock is it?](https://orvik.app/rocks/limestone-is-what-type-of-rock/) - [What is sandstone?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-are-sandstone/) - [Gemstone identification](https://orvik.app/rocks/gemstone-identification/) - [Crystal identifier](https://orvik.app/rocks/crystal-identifier/) - [What is a geode?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-a-geode/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [Mohs hardness scale, with a scratch test you can actually do](https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/) - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [US Bureau of Land Management — fossil collecting on public lands](https://www.blm.gov/programs/cultural-heritage-and-paleontology) - [Paleobiology Database](https://paleobiodb.org/) - [Natural History Museum, London — fossil identification](https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover.html) - [Jurassic Coast Trust — West Dorset Fossil Collecting Code](https://jurassiccoast.org/) - [The Paleobiology Database](https://paleobiodb.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Gemstone Identification Chart — Colour, Hardness, Effects** > Free gemstone identification key covering 27 gems and their imitations. Filter by colour, hardness, transparency and optical effect, with simulants named. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Rocks & minerals Rocks & minerals # What gemstone is this? Colour alone identifies almost nothing — ruby, red spinel, garnet and glass all look the same across a room, and for two hundred years the most famous "ruby" in the British crown jewels was a spinel. Filter by **colour plus hardness plus any optical effect**, and check the look-alike line on every entry, because for gemstones the imitation is usually the answer. Entries **27** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search gemstones by name Colour Red or pink Blue Green Yellow, orange or brown Purple Colourless or white Black or dark Multicoloured or banded Hardness Test on an unpolished spot such as the girdle, never a facet. Under 6 — a steel file marks it 6–7 — scratches glass 7.5–8.5 — scratches quartz 9 and above Transparency Transparent Translucent Opaque Optical effect None A star A cat's eye Flashes of colour that move A floating sheen or glow Changes colour under different light Category Natural gemstone Organic Simulant or synthetic Showing all 27 gemstones 1. ### Diamond C — carbon Extreme brilliance and hard, sharply defined facet edges that stay crisp because nothing abrades them. Singly refractive, so facet edges seen through the table are single, not doubled. Size Mohs 10; refractive index 2.42 Where Kimberlite pipes in southern Africa, Russia, Canada and Australia. Confused with Moissanite doubles the facet edges under magnification. Cubic zirconia is denser and has lower thermal conductivity, which is what a jeweller's pen tester measures. The old "scratches glass" test proves nothing — all three do. In the record Mohs 10 · C · isometric · adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 2. ### Ruby Corundum, Al₂O₃ Red corundum, from pinkish to deep pigeon's blood, with a strong red fluorescence under ultraviolet light in Burmese material. Star rubies show a six-rayed star from oriented rutile needles. Size Mohs 9 Where Myanmar, Mozambique, Thailand, Madagascar. Confused with Red spinel, which is softer at 8 and singly refractive; garnet, which is softer still; and glass. The Black Prince's Ruby in the Imperial State Crown is a spinel. In the record Mohs 9 · Al2O3 · trigonal · adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 3. ### Sapphire Corundum, Al₂O₃ Corundum in any colour except red, so there are yellow, pink, green and colourless sapphires as well as blue. Very hard, with a slightly oily lustre and often visible straight colour banding. Size Mohs 9 Where Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Kashmir, Montana, Australia. Confused with Tanzanite, which is much softer at 6 to 7 and shows different colours from different directions. Blue glass and synthetic sapphire are both common; synthetic material is chemically identical and needs a lab to detect. In the record Mohs 9 · Al2O3 · trigonal · adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 4. ### Emerald Handle with care Beryl, Be₃Al₂Si₆O₁₈ Deep green beryl, almost always heavily included — the internal fractures and crystals are called the jardin, the garden, and their absence in a clean stone is a warning rather than a virtue. Size Mohs 7.5–8 Where Colombia, Zambia, Brazil, Afghanistan. Confused with Green glass, synthetic emerald, and doublets glued from two pieces with green cement. Most natural emerald is oil- or resin-treated to fill the fractures, which is normal and disclosed but affects durability and cleaning. Risk Never clean an emerald ultrasonically or with steam. It strips the filling and can crack the stone along an existing fracture. In the record Mohs 7.5–8 · Be3Al2(Si6O18) · hexagonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 5. ### Aquamarine Beryl, Be₃Al₂Si₆O₁₈ Pale sea-blue to blue-green beryl, typically very clean, in large flawless crystals. Colour is usually pale in natural stones; a deep blue aquamarine has almost always been heat-treated. Size Mohs 7.5–8 Where Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Madagascar. Confused with Blue topaz, which is denser and heavier for its size, and blue glass, which contains bubbles. In the record Mohs 7.5–8 · Be3Al2(Si6O18) · hexagonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 6. ### Amethyst Quartz, SiO₂ Purple quartz, often with visible colour zoning in angular bands or a paler zone towards the crystal base. Sold in geodes and clusters everywhere. Size Mohs 7 Where Brazil, Uruguay, Zambia, Russia. Confused with Purple glass and synthetic amethyst, which is chemically identical and cheap. Deep colour fades in prolonged sunlight, which is real and irreversible. In the record Mohs 7 · SiO2 · trigonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 7. ### Citrine Quartz, SiO₂ Yellow to orange-brown quartz. Natural citrine is a pale lemon; almost every deep orange-brown "citrine" on the market is heat-treated amethyst, which is legitimate and should be disclosed. Size Mohs 7 Where Brazil, Bolivia, Madagascar. In the record Mohs 7 · SiO2 · trigonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 8. ### Topaz Handle with care Al₂SiO₄(F,OH)₂ Hard, bright and noticeably heavy for its size, with a slippery slightly soapy feel. Almost all blue topaz on the market is irradiated and heated colourless material. Size Mohs 8 Where Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia. Risk Perfect basal cleavage. Topaz resists scratching beautifully and splits from a single sharp knock, so it needs a protective setting in a ring. In the record Mohs 8 · Al2(SiO4)(F,OH)2 · orthorhombic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 9. ### Garnet X₃Y₂(SiO₄)₃ group A whole family rather than one stone. Deep red almandine is the familiar one; there are also orange spessartine, green tsavorite, brilliant green demantoid and colour-change species. Singly refractive with no cleavage. Size Mohs 6.5–7.5 Where Worldwide; almandine in schist, demantoid in Russia, tsavorite in Kenya. Confused with Ruby, which is much harder and fluoresces red. Garnet is denser than most red stones and sinks fast in heavy liquids, which is how gemmologists separate them. In the record Mohs 6.5–7.5 · X3Z2(SiO4)3 · isometric · vitreous to resinous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 10. ### Peridot Olivine, (Mg,Fe)₂SiO₄ A distinctive oily olive-green with a yellow undertone, and strong double refraction — look through the table with a loupe and the back facet edges appear doubled. Size Mohs 6.5–7 Where Arizona, Pakistan, Myanmar, and in meteorites. Confused with Emerald and green glass. The doubled facet edges are diagnostic and easy to see. In the record Mohs 6.5–7 · (Mg,Fe2+)2SiO4 · orthorhombic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 11. ### Tourmaline Complex borosilicate Comes in more colours than any other gem species, often several in one crystal — watermelon tourmaline is pink-cored and green-rimmed. Rough crystals have a rounded-triangular cross-section with heavy lengthwise striations. Size Mohs 7–7.5 Where Brazil, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Maine, California. In the record Mohs 7 · A(D3)G6(T6O18)(BO3)3X3Z · trigonal [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 12. ### Spinel MgAl₂O₄ Bright, singly refractive and often in octahedral crystals. Historically sold as ruby, and now increasingly valued in its own right for the vivid red and the cobalt blue. Size Mohs 8 Where Myanmar, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Vietnam. Confused with Ruby. Spinel is singly refractive and ruby is doubly refractive — a polariscope or a loupe check for doubled facet edges settles it in seconds. In the record Mohs 7.5–8 · MgAl2O4 · isometric · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 13. ### Tanzanite Handle with care Zoisite, Ca₂Al₃(SiO₄)₃(OH) Violet-blue with strong pleochroism — it shows blue, violet and burgundy from three different directions, which is visible by rotating the stone in the hand. Nearly all material is heat-treated to remove the brown. Size Mohs 6–7 Where One hill in Tanzania and nowhere else on Earth. Risk Soft, with distinct cleavage and sensitivity to sudden temperature change. A poor choice for an everyday ring and unsuited to ultrasonic cleaning. In the record Mohs 6–7 · {Ca2}{Al3}(Si2O7)(SiO4)O(OH) · orthorhombic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 14. ### Opal Handle with care SiO₂·nH₂O Flashes of spectral colour that move as the stone moves — play of colour, produced by diffraction from a regular array of silica spheres. This is not the same as an overall body colour. Size Mohs 5.5–6.5 Where Australia, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil. Confused with Doublets and triplets, thin slices of opal backed with dark material and capped with quartz or glass. Look at the stone from the side: a straight-line junction means an assembled stone. Risk Contains up to 20% water and crazes into a network of fine cracks if dried by heat or low humidity. Never ultrasonic, never steam, never leave in a hot car. In the record Mohs 5.5–6.5 · SiO2·nH2O · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 15. ### Moonstone Orthoclase feldspar A soft blue or white glow that floats across the surface and moves as you tilt the stone — adularescence, caused by light scattering between microscopic layers of two feldspars. Size Mohs 6–6.5 Where Sri Lanka, India, Madagascar. Confused with Opalite, a manufactured glass sold widely as moonstone, which contains bubbles and has a flat orange glow in transmitted light. 16. ### Labradorite Plagioclase feldspar Dull grey until the angle is right, then a broad flash of peacock blue, green or gold across the whole surface — labradorescence, from light interference in internal lamellae. Size Mohs 6–6.5 Where Labrador, Finland, Madagascar. In the record Mohs 6–6.5 · (Ca,Na)[Al(Al,Si)Si2O8] · sub-vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 17. ### Turquoise CuAl₆(PO₄)₄(OH)₈·4H₂O Opaque sky-blue to green, usually with a web of dark host rock called matrix. Porous, so it absorbs oils and changes colour over years of wear. Size Mohs 5–6 Where Iran, the US Southwest, China. Confused with Dyed howlite and magnesite, which are extremely common and can be detected by rubbing an inconspicuous spot with acetone — the dye lifts. Most commercial turquoise is stabilised with resin, which is standard practice. In the record Mohs 5–6 · Cu(Al,Fe3+)6(PO4)4(OH)8·4H2O · triclinic · sub-vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 18. ### Lapis lazuli Lazurite in a rock matrix Deep ultramarine blue flecked with brassy specks of pyrite and often white streaks of calcite. It is a rock rather than a mineral, which is why the composition varies. Size Mohs 5–6 Where Afghanistan, principally the Sar-e-Sang mines, for over 6,000 years. Confused with Dyed jasper sold as lapis, which is uniformly blue with no pyrite. Ground lapis was the source of ultramarine pigment and was once worth more than gold. 19. ### Jade — jadeite and nephrite NaAlSi₂O₆ / Ca₂(Mg,Fe)₅Si₈O₂₂(OH)₂ Two different minerals sold under one name. Both are made of densely interlocked fibrous crystals, which makes jade extraordinarily tough — resistant to breaking rather than to scratching — and gives it a slightly greasy lustre and a solid ring when tapped. Size Mohs 6–7 Where Jadeite from Myanmar; nephrite from China, British Columbia, New Zealand. Confused with Serpentine, aventurine quartz and dyed quartzite are all sold as jade. Dyed jadeite, called B-jade, is bleached and resin-impregnated and degrades over years. 20. ### Agate, jasper and carnelian Chalcedony, SiO₂ Microcrystalline quartz. Agate is banded and translucent, jasper is opaque and patterned, carnelian is translucent orange-red. All are hard enough to scratch glass and all take a high polish. Size Mohs 6.5–7 Where Worldwide; abundant in Brazil, Uruguay, Oregon and Montana. Confused with Dyed agate is everywhere — the vivid blue, purple and green slices sold as bookends and coasters are dyed, and the colour is often obvious in the unnaturally even bands. 21. ### Amber Fossilised tree resin Warm to the touch, very light — it floats in saturated salt water — and it takes a static charge when rubbed, picking up small pieces of paper. Often contains insects or plant fragments. Size Mohs 2–2.5 Where The Baltic coast, the Dominican Republic, Myanmar. Confused with Copal, which is young resin and dissolves in acetone, and plastic, which sinks in salt water and smells of burning plastic under a hot pin rather than of pine. 22. ### Pearl Handle with care Nacre — aragonite and conchiolin The tooth test: draw a pearl gently along the biting edge of a front tooth. A real pearl feels distinctly gritty from the microscopic aragonite platelets; an imitation feels perfectly smooth. Size Mohs 2.5–4.5 Where Cultured in Japan, China, Australia and French Polynesia. Risk Soft, porous and destroyed by perfume, hairspray, vinegar and even sweat. Put pearls on last and wipe them after wearing. 23. ### Alexandrite Chrysoberyl, BeAl₂O₄ Green in daylight and red under incandescent light, because its absorption spectrum happens to sit exactly between the two illuminants. Genuine strong-change material is one of the rarest and most valuable gems there is. Size Mohs 8.5 Where Originally the Urals; now Brazil, Sri Lanka, East Africa. Confused with Colour-change synthetic corundum and synthetic alexandrite are both common. Most "alexandrite" sold cheaply is one of these. In the record Mohs 8.5 · BeAl2O4 · orthorhombic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 24. ### Zircon ZrSiO₄ Very high dispersion and extremely strong double refraction — the doubling of the back facet edges is obvious under a loupe. Heavy for its size. Size Mohs 6–7.5 Where Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Australia. Confused with Entirely unrelated to cubic zirconia despite the name. Zircon is a natural mineral, and the oldest known terrestrial material is a zircon crystal 4.4 billion years old. In the record Mohs 7.5 · Zr(SiO4) · tetragonal · adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 25. ### Moissanite SiC — silicon carbide Very close to diamond in hardness and brilliance, but strongly doubly refractive — look through the table with a loupe and the opposite facet edges are visibly doubled. Dispersion is higher, giving more coloured fire. Size Mohs 9.25 Where Almost all material is laboratory-grown. Confused with Sold both honestly as a diamond alternative and dishonestly as diamond. Old thermal-probe testers read it as diamond; modern combined thermal and electrical testers do not. In the record Mohs 9.5 · SiC · hexagonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 26. ### Cubic zirconia ZrO₂ Denser than diamond, so a CZ of the same apparent size is noticeably heavier. Facet edges soften with wear because it is softer, and older stones look cloudy where a diamond would still be crisp. Size Mohs 8–8.5 Where Entirely laboratory-grown since the 1970s. In the record Mohs 8 · ZrO2 · isometric · sub-adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 27. ### Glass and paste Amorphous silica with additives Rounded rather than crisp facet edges from moulding, gas bubbles visible under a loupe, swirl marks, and warmth — glass reaches skin temperature faster than any crystalline gem. Softer than quartz, so a quartz point scratches it. Size Mohs 5–6 Where Everywhere, in every colour. Confused with Imitates every gem on this list. The bubble check under 10× magnification catches most of it. Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Four tests you can do with no equipment Professional gem identification uses a refractometer, a polariscope, a spectroscope and a specific-gravity balance. Without any of those, four checks still eliminate most imitations. 1. **Look for gas bubbles under 10× magnification.** Round bubbles mean glass or a plastic. Natural stones contain crystals, fractures and needles, but not spherical bubbles. A cheap loupe is the single most useful gemmological purchase there is. 2. **Check for doubling.** Look through the table at the back facet edges with a loupe. If they appear doubled, the stone is strongly doubly refractive — peridot, zircon, moissanite, tourmaline. Diamond, spinel, garnet and glass never double. 3. **Feel the temperature.** Glass and plastic warm to skin temperature quickly; crystalline gems stay cool because they conduct heat away. Amber is the exception among naturals — it feels warm, and that is diagnostic against glass, which feels cool by comparison. 4. **Heft it.** Density varies enormously and the hand is surprisingly good at it. Cubic zirconia is heavier than diamond, topaz is heavier than quartz, and garnet is heavier than almost anything else red. The one test to skip is scratching. It damages the stone, it is unreliable on a faceted gem, and the popular version of it — scratching glass — separates nothing, because everything from quartz upwards does it. ## Optical effects, and what causes each Several gems are identified by a phenomenon rather than by colour, and each has a specific mechanism. *Optical phenomena in gemstones and the structures that produce them.* | Effect | What you see | Cause | Typical gems | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Play of colour | Flashes of spectral colour that shift as the stone moves | Diffraction from a regular array of silica spheres | Opal, and nothing else | | Asterism | A four- or six-rayed star | Reflection from oriented needle inclusions | Star ruby, star sapphire, star garnet | | Chatoyancy | A single bright band like a cat's eye | Parallel fibrous inclusions or channels | Chrysoberyl, tiger's eye, tourmaline | | Adularescence | A soft glow that floats under the surface | Light scattering between microscopic feldspar layers | Moonstone | | Labradorescence | A broad flash of peacock colour at one angle | Interference in internal lamellae | Labradorite, spectrolite | | Colour change | A different colour in daylight and lamplight | An absorption spectrum sitting between the two illuminants | Alexandrite, some garnet and sapphire | | Pleochroism | Different colours from different directions | Direction-dependent absorption in the crystal | Tanzanite, iolite, andalusite | The distinction that trips people up is between play of colour and iridescence. Opal's flashes come from a regular internal structure and move independently of the surface; the rainbow on a soap bubble or an oil film is thin-film interference and is a surface effect. Only opal does the first. ## Treated, synthetic, simulant: three different words These are constantly used interchangeably and they mean quite different things commercially and legally. **Treated** means a natural stone modified after mining — heated, irradiated, oiled, dyed or fracture-filled. Treatment is routine and mostly acceptable: essentially all blue topaz is irradiated, nearly all tanzanite is heated, and most emerald is oiled. It must be disclosed, and it affects both value and care instructions. **Synthetic** means grown in a laboratory with the same chemical composition and crystal structure as the natural stone. A synthetic ruby is a ruby by every physical and chemical test, and separating it from a mined one requires a laboratory looking at growth features. It is a real gem, worth far less, and must be disclosed. **Simulant** means a different material that looks like the gem. Cubic zirconia simulating diamond, glass simulating anything, dyed howlite simulating turquoise. These are cheap and identifiable with basic tests. In the United States the Federal Trade Commission requires all three to be disclosed, and a stone described simply as "ruby" must be natural and untreated beyond normal practice. Where a seller is vague, assume treatment. Where a price is far below the market, assume synthetic or simulant. ## Buying without getting caught - **Above a few hundred, get a laboratory report.** GIA, AGS, IGI and, in Europe, Gübelin and SSEF issue reports naming the species, origin where determinable, and every treatment detected. A seller unwilling to allow independent testing is telling you something. - **Ask three specific questions:** is it natural or laboratory-grown, what treatments has it had, and is the weight the total for the piece or for the main stone. Vague answers are the answer. - **Be suspicious of perfect.** Flawless emerald, uniformly perfect turquoise, and evenly coloured amber with a photogenic insect centred in it are all warnings. Natural material has character because it grew in the ground. - **Treat "certified" as meaningless on its own.** Certificates issued by the seller are marketing. The issuing laboratory is the whole content of the claim. - **Do not buy loose stones on holiday.** Gem scams targeting tourists are a well-established industry in several countries, and the recourse afterwards is nil. ## Wearing and cleaning without damaging the stone Hardness governs scratching, and three other properties govern everything else. **Cleavage.** Topaz, tanzanite, fluorite and diamond all have cleavage planes and can split from a single well-placed knock regardless of hardness. This is why an 8-hardness topaz needs a protective setting in a ring. **Porosity.** Turquoise, pearl, opal, coral and amber absorb liquids. Perfume, hairspray, cleaning products and sweat all damage them, and the rule is to put them on last and wipe them after wearing. **Heat and water sensitivity.** Opal holds up to 20% water and crazes if it dries. Emerald is oil-filled. Pearl is a soft organic material. **Never put opal, emerald, pearl, turquoise, amber, tanzanite or coral in an ultrasonic or steam cleaner.** Warm water, mild soap and a soft brush is the right treatment for nearly everything. Storage matters too: harder stones scratch softer ones in a shared box, so a diamond loose in a jewellery box will mark every other stone in it. Individual soft pouches solve it entirely. 27 entries here cover the gems and imitations that come up in practice. There are several thousand mineral species with gem-quality material, and any collection of unusual cut stones will contain things not on this list. For anything that matters financially, the answer is a laboratory report rather than a chart. ## Hardness, formula and crystal system Colour is the least reliable thing about a mineral and hardness is the most reliable, because hardness is a measurement rather than an impression. Every entry in this key that has a formal mineral name is matched against - [Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/)'s mineral definitions, which gives 20 of the 27 entries a published Mohs range, a chemical formula, a crystal system and a lustre. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. *Published Mohs ranges for the 20 gemstones in this key, softest at the top. A steel knife blade sits at about 5.5, and it splits the list almost in half: 0 of 20 can be scratched by one, the rest cannot. Turquoise is the softest here and Diamond the hardest. Source: Macrostrat mineral definitions, CC BY 4.0, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Read that figure as a sequence of tests rather than a list of facts. A fingernail is about 2.5 on the Mohs scale and will mark 0 of these 20. A steel knife blade is about 5.5 and splits the rest: 0 can be scratched by one and the remainder cannot, which is a single test that removes most of the list. A piece of quartz at 7 will scratch everything below it. Do the test on a fresh surface and on the specimen rather than the crust, and scratch the mineral with the tool — a streak of metal left on the rock looks like a scratch and is not one. Crystal system is the other free character: 5 of these are trigonal, so the habit you can see in a good specimen narrows the field before any test at all. ### The reference table Formula, hardness range, crystal system and lustre for every named mineral in this key, as published. Where a hardness is given as a range, the mineral genuinely varies — usually with the direction of the scratch or the exact composition. *Published mineral properties for the 20 named entries in this key. Source: Macrostrat mineral definitions, CC BY 4.0, snapshot 2026-09-04. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Formula | Mohs | Crystal system | Lustre | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Turquoise | Cu(Al,Fe3+)6(PO4)4(OH)8 · 4H2 | 5–6 | Triclinic | Sub-Vitreous, Resinous, Waxy, Dull, Earthy | | Opal | SiO2 · nH2O | 5.5–6.5 | — | Vitreous, Waxy, Greasy, Dull | | Tanzanite | {Ca2}{Al3}(Si2O7)(SiO4)O(OH) | 6–7 | Orthorhombic | Vitreous | | Labradorite | (Ca,Na)[Al(Al,Si)Si2O8] | 6–6.5 | — | Sub-Vitreous | | Garnet | X3Z2(SiO4)3 | 6.5–7.5 | Isometric | vitreous to resinous | | Peridot | (Mg,Fe2+)2SiO4 | 6.5–7 | Orthorhombic | Vitreous | | Amethyst | SiO2 | 7 | Trigonal | Vitreous | | Citrine | SiO2 | 7 | Trigonal | Vitreous | | Tourmaline | A(D3)G6(T6O18)(BO3)3X Free browser tools for identifying what you found outside: 28 filterable keys and field calculators covering 749 catalogued entries. No account, nothing to install. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/ Free tools # 28 field tools for working out what you just found Every one of them runs in this browser, on this page, with nothing to install and no account to make. Most are **determination keys**: you tell the tool what you can actually see — the number of toes in the print, the streak the rock leaves on a tile, how many petals the flower has — and it narrows 749 catalogued entries down to the handful that fit. Tools **28** Catalogued entries **749** Sign-up **None** Price **Free** ## Plants & trees 7 tools - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats? Look up 73 plants and see what each one does to a dog, a cat or a horse.](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf Arrangement, compound or simple, margin and shape — 43 trees, four questions.](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark Texture, colour and pattern — identify 34 trees with no leaves on them.](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this? Petal count, arrangement and habitat narrow 30 wildflowers.](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this? Growth form, leaf shape and flower narrow 28 succulents.](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [How old is this tree? Wrap a tape round the trunk and get the age the way an arborist does.](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds? One frost date turns into a sowing and transplant calendar for 34 crops.](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) ## Insects & spiders 4 tools - [What caterpillar is this? Colour, hair, size and host plant narrow 34 caterpillars down in seconds.](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this? Markings, web shape and size narrow 31 common spiders down fast.](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this? Shape, colour, size and habitat narrow 28 beetles, pests flagged.](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one? Colour, wingspan and flight time narrow 28 butterflies and moths.](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) ## Animals 4 tools - [What animal made this track? Count toes, check for claws, measure the print — narrows 36 species fast.](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [Whose droppings are these? Shape, size, contents and location narrow 30 animals down to a shortlist.](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see? Pattern, size and region — 28 US snakes, venomous ones flagged.](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [How old is my dog or cat in human years? The veterinary life-stage curve, scaled by adult size. Not times seven.](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) ## Birds 2 tools - [Whose egg is this? Colour, markings, size and nest site narrow 34 birds by their eggs.](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) - [Which bird did this feather come from? Size, pattern and shape narrow 26 birds from a single feather.](https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/) ## Rocks & minerals 5 tools - [What kind of rock is this? Grain size, layering and three kitchen tests narrow 33 common rocks.](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this? Streak, lustre, hardness and cleavage — the real determinative key, for 36 minerals.](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this? Colour, hardness and optical effect — 27 gems, with the fakes named.](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [What fossil is this? Shape, size and host rock narrow 26 common fossils.](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) - [Mohs hardness scale, with a scratch test you can actually do What scratches what, and which household object sits at each step.](https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/) ## Food & foraging 2 tools - [What berry is this, and can you eat it? Colour, growth habit and habitat — 30 wild berries, toxic ones flagged.](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) - [What mushroom is this? Cap, underside, spore print and substrate — 28 fungi, deadly ones flagged.](https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/) ## Sky, coast & ground 2 tools - [What cloud is that? Height, shape and cover name 29 cloud types — and what each one forecasts.](https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/) - [What shell did I find on the beach? Shape, size and which coast — 29 shells people actually pick up.](https://orvik.app/tools/seashell-identifier/) ## Collecting 2 tools - [What kind of arrowhead did I find? Outline, notching and size place 28 North American point types.](https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/) - [What is the silver in this coin worth? Melt value for 22 circulating silver and gold coins at any spot price.](https://orvik.app/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/) ## Why a filter beats a wall of photographs Search "caterpillar identification chart" and you get a page of photographs with names under them. That works if your caterpillar happens to be one of the first dozen shown, and fails completely otherwise, because scanning pictures is a linear search through a space that is not organised the way your observation is. You know the thing was green, about four centimetres, and had a horn on its rear end. A photo grid makes you check that against sixty pictures one at a time. A key inverts it. You state what you observed, and everything that contradicts the observation disappears. Three well-chosen filters usually cut a list of forty candidates to two or three, and at that point the remaining work is comparing your specimen against a short, specific description rather than against a mood board. That is the whole design principle of this section. Each tool asks only for features **a person without equipment can genuinely observe** — colour, count, shape, size against a coin, the substrate it was found on — and never for characters that require a microscope, a spore print left overnight, or a key you would need training to read. ## Everything renders before the JavaScript does The filters are JavaScript, but the data is not. Every entry in every key is written into the page as plain HTML: names, scientific names, sizes, ranges, the diagnostic sentence and the look-alike warning. Turn scripting off and you lose the ability to narrow the list, and nothing else. That matters for three groups of readers — people on locked-down networks, people using a screen reader that gets confused by dynamic filtering, and the search and language-model crawlers that do not execute scripts and would otherwise see an empty page. It also means you can use a key with no signal. Load the page while you still have reception, and the whole catalogue is already in your phone. ## Where the entries come from, and where the limits are Each tool lists its sources at the bottom of its own page, and they are the obvious authorities for the subject: the ASPCA toxic plant database, USDA and Forest Service field keys, state extension services, the Mohs scale and standard determinative mineralogy, the World Meteorological Organization cloud atlas, regional natural history museums. Where two sources disagree, the more conservative reading wins — a key that under-warns is worse than one that over-warns. Three limits are worth stating in the same breath. These keys cover **common species in North America and Europe**, and they say so; a key with forty entries cannot represent a continent with four hundred candidates, so a specimen that matches nothing is more likely to be outside the catalogue than to be exotic. Several groups — fungi, wild berries, spiders, snakes — carry a safety banner because a wrong identification there has consequences that a wrong maple does not, and in those groups the tool is designed to produce a shortlist for an expert rather than a verdict. And where an entry mentions a risk to a person or an animal, the correct next step is a poison centre or a doctor, not a web page. ## How to get a usable answer in about a minute 1. **Measure something.** Almost every key has a size filter, and size is the single most discriminating character available to somebody without a hand lens. Put a coin, a car key or your thumb next to the specimen before you photograph it. 2. **Start with the filter you are most certain about**, not the one at the top. If you are sure about the number of toes and unsure about the colour, set the toes first and look at what survives. 3. **Stop filtering when the list gets to five.** Reading five short descriptions is faster and much more reliable than adding a fourth filter you are guessing at, and guessed filters are how you eliminate the right answer. 4. **Read the "confused with" line.** It is there because the most common identification error in each group is a specific one, and knowing which pair you are choosing between is most of the work. 5. **If nothing matches, remove a filter rather than adding one.** An empty result almost always means one observation was wrong, not that you have found something undescribed. ## Which tool answers which question The catalogue divides into two kinds of thing, and it is worth knowing which you need before you open one. A **determination key** takes an observation and returns a shortlist. You tell it that the print had four toes and claw marks and was six centimetres long, and it removes everything that contradicts you. Keys work on things that exist in discrete kinds — species, minerals, cloud genera, point types — and they are the right tool when the question is "what is this". A **calculator** takes a measurement and returns a number. Trunk circumference to tree age, a frost date to a sowing calendar, spot price to melt value. Calculators work on continuous quantities and they are the right tool when the question is "how much" or "when". They also carry their assumptions in the open: the tree age tool prints its error bars, and the coin tool asks you for the spot price rather than fetching a number nobody will check. Several subjects appear in both forms, deliberately. The rock key names a rock; the Mohs scale tells you what the scratch test you just did actually means. The plant toxicity checker names a species; the seed calendar tells you when to sow one. ## The safety flags are not boilerplate Five of these tools carry a red banner at the top, and each one is there because a wrong answer in that subject has a consequence a wrong maple does not. - **Mushrooms.** The death cap and destroying angel cause around 90 % of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide, they look like ordinary field mushrooms, and the illness appears to resolve on day two before the liver fails on day three. That tool is built to produce a shortlist for an expert and it never authorises eating anything. - **Wild berries.** Colour rules do not work — there are excellent red berries and lethal black ones — and the toxins that matter give no warning taste. - **Snakes.** Most bites happen to people who were handling, killing or moving the animal. The tool is designed to be used from several metres away. - **Caterpillars.** Roughly two dozen North American species sting, and the ones that look softest — the puss caterpillar in particular — are the worst. - **Plants around pets.** The severity column exists because "toxic" is applied identically to a sore mouth and to kidney failure in eighteen hours. Where an entry names a risk to a person or an animal, the correct next step is a poison centre, a vet or a doctor. In the United States that is (800) 222-1222 for people and (888) 426-4435 for animals; in the UK, 111 and your own vet. A web page is a good place to find out what something is and a bad place to decide what to do about it. ## Nothing here sends your input anywhere Every filter, every calculation and every search box on this site runs in your browser on your device. There is no server call when you tick a box, nothing is logged about what you filtered, and no result is transmitted. That is a consequence of how the tools are built rather than a policy statement: the data is already in the page, and filtering it is a few lines of JavaScript operating on the DOM. Two practical benefits follow. The tools work with no signal once the page has loaded, so a key opened at the trailhead still works in the valley. And they keep working if this site ever stops being maintained, because a saved page is a complete copy of the tool. ## What the paid apps charge The other half of this question is what the identification apps in the store cost, and it is harder to find out than it should be: Apple lists in-app purchase names and prices but not the billing period, so a low tier is frequently weekly rather than one-off. We publish [the whole table](https://orvik.app/compare/) — every in-app purchase tier for the major identification apps, read from the App Store and dated — because the single most useful fact in that market is which apps have **nothing inside them to buy at all**. The answer turns out to correlate almost perfectly with who publishes them: the free ones come from universities, public research institutes and non-profits. ## What the app adds A key needs you to describe the thing. Orvik does the opposite: it reads the photograph and proposes the species, then shows the near-misses so you can check the reasoning rather than take the answer on faith. The two work well in sequence — photograph it in the app to get a name, then bring the name back to the relevant key here and confirm it against the diagnostic features. An identification that survives both is one you can act on. Everything on this page stays free and stays in the browser regardless. The tools are not a trial, they do not ask for an email, and none of them sends your input anywhere: the filtering happens on your device, which is why they keep working when the signal does not. --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Leaf Identification Chart — Free Tree Key by Shape & Arrangement** > Free leaf identification key for 43 common North American and European trees. Filter by arrangement, simple or compound, margin and shape. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Plants & trees Plants & trees # Identify a tree by its leaf A botanical key asks four questions in a fixed order, and they matter far more than the leaf outline everyone starts with. **Are the leaves opposite or alternate on the twig? Is each leaf one blade or several leaflets? Is the edge smooth, toothed or lobed?** Answer those three and most trees are already down to a handful. Shape comes last. Entries **43** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search trees by name Arrangement on the twig Look at where leaves attach. Opposite trees are a short list — memorise it. Alternate — staggered Opposite — in pairs Whorled — three or more per node In bundles or clusters Simple or compound A leaflet has no bud at its base; a leaf does. That is how you tell. Simple — one blade Pinnately compound — leaflets in rows Twice compound — feathery Palmately compound — from one point Needles Flat scales Edge of the blade Smooth, no teeth Toothed or serrated Lobed along a central line Lobed from one point, like a hand Wavy Overall shape Oval or elliptical Heart-shaped Long and narrow Triangular Fan or star Mitten or variable Other clues Milky sap when torn Smells when crushed Thorns or spines Silver or white underside Stays green in winter Hairy or fuzzy Showing all 43 trees 1. ### White oak Quercus alba Five to nine deep lobes with rounded tips and no bristles, pale grey-green above and whitish beneath. Rounded lobes place it in the white oak group; bristle tips would make it a red oak. Size Leaf 12–22 cm Where Eastern North America. Confused with Every other oak. The bristle test splits the genus in half and is completely reliable. In the record 47,555 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2879737) 2. [Identifying oaks by leaf](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-oak-tree-by-leaf/) 3. ### Northern red oak Quercus rubra Seven to eleven shallow lobes, each ending in several sharp bristle tips, with sinuses that cut less than halfway to the midrib. Dull green above, paler below. Size Leaf 12–25 cm Where Eastern and central North America; widely planted in Europe. In the record 226,793 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2880539) 4. [Oak leaf identification](https://orvik.app/plants/oak-leaf-identification/) 5. ### Pin oak Quercus palustris Five to seven bristle-tipped lobes with very deep U-shaped sinuses cutting almost to the midrib, giving a skeletal outline. Lower branches droop, which nothing else in the genus does. Size Leaf 8–16 cm Where The eastern US Midwest, and the most planted street oak in Europe. In the record 147,819 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Oct · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8313153) 6. ### Live oak Quercus virginiana An oak that does not look like one: small, leathery, unlobed evergreen leaves with rolled-under edges and a fuzzy grey underside. Acorns are the only obvious clue it is a Quercus. Size Leaf 5–12 cm Where The US coastal South from Virginia to Texas. In the record 9,706 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2878092) 7. ### Sugar maple Acer saccharum Five palmate lobes with smooth-sided sinuses that are U-shaped at the base and no small teeth along the lobe edges. The Canadian flag leaf. Opposite arrangement confirms the genus. Size Leaf 8–15 cm Where Northeastern North America. Confused with Norway maple, whose leaf is wider than long and bleeds milky sap from the cut leaf stalk. Snap the stalk — it is the definitive test. In the record 59,528 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189859) 8. [Maple leaf identification](https://orvik.app/plants/maple-leaf-identification/) 9. ### Red maple Handle with care Acer rubrum Three to five shallow lobes with V-shaped notches between them and irregular teeth along the edges, silvery beneath, on red leaf stalks and red twigs. Size Leaf 6–10 cm Where The most abundant tree in eastern North America. Risk Wilted red maple leaves are lethally toxic to horses. A storm-broken branch in a paddock is an emergency. In the record 133,130 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189883) 10. ### Silver maple Acer saccharinum Five deeply cut lobes with narrow sinuses reaching most of the way to the base and a brilliantly silver-white underside that flips up in the wind before rain. Size Leaf 8–16 cm Where Floodplains across eastern North America; widely planted. In the record 95,335 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189837) 11. ### Norway maple Acer platanoides Broad five-lobed leaf, wider than it is long, with each lobe drawn out into a fine bristle point — and a bead of milky sap at the cut end of the leaf stalk. That sap is the identification. Size Leaf 10–18 cm, wider than long Where Native to Europe; invasive across the northeastern United States. In the record 1,034,483 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from Germany [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189846) 12. ### Boxelder Acer negundo The only maple with compound leaves — three to five coarsely toothed leaflets, opposite on the twig, on green or purple-bloomed twigs. Winged maple seeds confirm it. Size Three to seven leaflets, 5–10 cm each Where Riverbanks and waste ground across North America. Confused with Poison ivy, which is also three leaflets. Poison ivy is alternate and a vine; boxelder is opposite and a tree. In the record 254,110 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189866) 13. ### White ash Fraxinus americana Opposite compound leaves with five to nine stalked leaflets, whitish beneath, on stout twigs with a leaf scar shaped like a smiling crescent under each bud. Size Leaf 20–30 cm, five to nine leaflets Where Eastern North America, though emerald ash borer has killed most mature trees. In the record 17,819 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172327) 14. [How to identify an ash tree](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-an-ash-tree/) 15. ### Shagbark hickory Carya ovata Five leaflets — the top three much larger than the bottom two — with tufts of hair on the teeth, alternate on the twig. The bark peels in long loose strips, which is the faster identification from a distance. Size Leaf 20–35 cm, five leaflets Where Eastern North America. In the record 17,910 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054296) 16. [Identifying hickory trees](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-hickory-tree/) 17. ### Black walnut Juglans nigra A very long compound leaf with 15 to 23 narrow toothed leaflets and a terminal leaflet that is often missing or stunted. Crushed leaves smell sharply of walnut husk and stain fingers. Size Leaf 30–60 cm, 15–23 leaflets Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 39,932 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054357) 18. [How to identify a walnut tree](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-walnut-tree/) 19. ### Paper birch Betula papyrifera Small oval-to-triangular leaves with doubly toothed edges — large teeth with smaller teeth on them — on slender twigs, over chalk-white bark that peels in horizontal papery sheets. Size Leaf 5–10 cm Where Across the boreal and northern United States. In the record 28,894 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from Canada [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5332120) 20. [Birch tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/birch-tree-identification/) 21. ### American beech Fagus grandifolia Neat oval leaves with straight parallel veins running to a small sharp tooth at the end of each one, glossy above. Dead leaves hang on all winter, pale and papery. Size Leaf 6–13 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 90,676 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882274) 22. ### American elm Ulmus americana Doubly toothed oval leaf with a strikingly lopsided base — one side of the blade starts noticeably lower on the stalk than the other. Rough as sandpaper on top. Size Leaf 7–15 cm Where Eastern North America, much reduced by Dutch elm disease. Confused with Hackberry, which shares the asymmetric base but has three main veins radiating from it and warty bark. In the record 45,426 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361872) 23. [Elm tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/elm-tree-identification/) 24. ### Hackberry Celtis occidentalis Lopsided base like an elm, but with three prominent veins fanning out from it and teeth only on the upper two-thirds of the blade. The bark is covered in corky warts. Size Leaf 6–12 cm Where Central and eastern North America. In the record 28,574 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984481) 25. [Hackberry identification](https://orvik.app/plants/hackberry-tree-identification/) 26. ### American sycamore Platanus occidentalis Very large three- to five-lobed leaf, broader than long, with a hollow leaf stalk base that caps the bud. Camouflage-patterned bark flaking to white makes the tree unmistakable in winter. Size Leaf 10–25 cm Where Riverbanks across eastern North America; London plane is the street version. In the record 50,035 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152820) 27. [Sycamore identification](https://orvik.app/plants/sycamore-tree-identification/) 28. ### Tulip tree Liriodendron tulipifera Four lobes and a flat, notched top as if the tip had been cut off with scissors. No other North American tree has that outline, and it is decisive on its own. Size Leaf 8–20 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 77,205 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152861) 29. ### Sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua A five-pointed star with finely toothed edges, smelling resinous when crushed. Alternate arrangement separates it from maples, which are opposite and never star-shaped. Size Leaf 10–18 cm Where The US Southeast, north to Connecticut; planted worldwide. In the record 97,409 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152824) 30. ### American basswood Tilia americana Large heart-shaped leaf with a strongly lopsided base and coarse sharp teeth. Flowers hang from a strap-like pale bract, which is unique among northern trees. Size Leaf 10–20 cm Where Eastern North America; the European lime is its close relative. In the record 59,524 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152042) 31. ### Eastern cottonwood Populus deltoides A broad triangle with coarse curved teeth on a flattened leaf stalk, so the leaves flutter and rattle in the slightest breeze. Size Leaf 7–15 cm Where Riverbanks across central and eastern North America. In the record 36,424 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040232) 32. [Cottonwood identification](https://orvik.app/plants/cottonwood-tree-identification/) 33. ### Quaking aspen Populus tremuloides Small round leaves with fine teeth on a flattened stalk, trembling constantly, over smooth greenish-white bark. Grows in clonal stands where every tree turns colour on the same day. Size Leaf 4–8 cm Where The most widely distributed tree in North America. In the record 61,907 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040215) 34. ### Black willow Salix nigra Long, narrow, finely toothed leaves that taper to a fine point at both ends, often slightly curved, on flexible twigs that snap cleanly at the base. Size Leaf 6–15 cm, very narrow Where Stream and pond margins across North America. In the record 16,544 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5372854) 35. [Willow tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/willow-tree-identification/) 36. ### Black cherry Prunus serotina Glossy narrow leaf with incurved blunt teeth, a pair of small red glands where the blade meets the stalk, and a line of rusty hairs along the midrib underneath. Crushed twigs smell of almonds. Size Leaf 6–14 cm Where Eastern North America; invasive in Europe. In the record 288,858 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3021850) 37. ### Flowering dogwood Cornus florida Opposite oval leaves with smooth edges and veins that curve forward to follow the leaf outline instead of running to the edge. Tear one gently and fine white latex threads stretch across the break. Size Leaf 7–15 cm Where The eastern United States. In the record 42,748 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3082240) 38. [Dogwood identification](https://orvik.app/plants/dogwood-tree-identification/) 39. ### Southern magnolia Magnolia grandiflora Thick, leathery, glossy evergreen leaves with a rusty felt underside and completely smooth edges. Huge cream flowers in early summer. Size Leaf 12–25 cm Where The US Southeast; planted worldwide in mild climates. In the record 19,648 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9605163) 40. [Magnolia species and names](https://orvik.app/plants/magnolia-scientific-name/) 41. ### Northern catalpa Catalpa speciosa Enormous heart-shaped leaves in whorls of three, with smooth edges, followed by long bean-like pods that hang all winter. The pods make it identifiable at a hundred metres. Size Leaf 20–30 cm Where Native to a small midwestern range, planted across North America and Europe. In the record 9,623 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172612) 42. ### Black locust Robinia pseudoacacia Compound leaves of rounded blue-green leaflets with smooth edges, and a pair of short sharp thorns at the base of each leaf stalk. Hanging white pea flowers in May. Size Leaf 20–35 cm, 7–19 leaflets Where Native to the Appalachians, naturalised across North America and Europe. In the record 496,561 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5352251) 43. ### Honey locust Gleditsia triacanthos Feathery twice-compound leaves of many tiny leaflets, and on wild trees vicious branched thorns up to 20 cm long growing straight out of the trunk. Size Leaf 15–20 cm, leaflets 1–3 cm Where Central North America; the thornless cultivar is a standard street tree. In the record 139,443 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2959443) 44. ### Red mulberry Morus rubra The leaves on one tree come in three shapes — unlobed heart, mitten with one lobe, and a three-lobed glove — all coarsely toothed, all bleeding milky sap when torn. Size Leaf 8–18 cm Where Eastern North America; white mulberry is naturalised everywhere. In the record 9,368 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361886) 45. [Mulberry tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/mulberry-tree-identification/) 46. ### Osage orange Maclura pomifera Glossy pointed oval leaves with smooth edges, milky sap, and a stout straight thorn at each node. The grapefruit-sized green brain-like fruit removes all doubt. Size Leaf 7–13 cm Where Native to Texas and Oklahoma, planted as hedgerow across the Midwest. In the record 28,756 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984580) 47. [Identifying Osage orange](https://orvik.app/plants/identifying-osage-orange-trees/) 48. ### Sassafras Sassafras albidum Three leaf shapes on the same twig — plain oval, a mitten with one thumb, and a three-lobed glove — all with smooth edges, and all smelling strongly of root beer when crushed. Size Leaf 8–16 cm Where Eastern North America. Confused with Mulberry has the same shape trio, but its edges are toothed and its sap is milky. Sassafras edges are smooth and the smell is decisive. In the record 62,820 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3034002) 49. ### Eastern redbud Cercis canadensis Almost perfectly heart-shaped leaves with completely smooth edges and a papery texture, on zigzag twigs. Magenta pea flowers burst directly from the bare branches in spring. Size Leaf 7–12 cm Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 64,693 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5353583) 50. ### Horse chestnut and buckeye Handle with care Aesculus species Five to seven large toothed leaflets radiating from a single point like fingers, opposite on the twig. No other common tree has palmately compound leaves. Size Five to seven leaflets, 10–25 cm each Where Europe for horse chestnut; central and eastern North America for buckeyes. Risk The nuts are toxic to dogs, horses and people, and are eaten every autumn by children who mistake them for sweet chestnuts. In the record 429,086 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189801) 51. ### Ginkgo Ginkgo biloba A flat fan with veins that fork repeatedly and never form a network, usually notched in the middle. Every leaf on the tree turns butter yellow and drops within a day or two. Size Leaf 5–8 cm wide Where A Chinese relict, now one of the most planted street trees in the world. In the record 60,681 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Sep · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2687885) 52. ### Eastern white pine Pinus strobus Soft flexible blue-green needles in bundles of five — one for each letter of "white" — with long slender cones. Count the needles per bundle and the pine group follows. Size Needles 7–13 cm Where Northeastern North America. In the record 115,039 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284982) 53. [Pine identification](https://orvik.app/plants/pine-tree-identification-by-bark/) 54. ### Red pine and Scots pine Pinus resinosa, P. sylvestris Needles in bundles of two. Red pine needles are long and snap cleanly when bent; Scots pine needles are short, twisted and blue-green, over orange upper bark. Size Needles 5–16 cm Where Northern North America and northern Eurasia. In the record 12,319 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5285067) 55. ### Norway spruce Picea abies Stiff four-sided needles attached singly to little woody pegs, so a stripped twig feels rough and warty. Roll a needle between finger and thumb — a spruce needle rolls, a fir needle will not. Size Needles 1–2.5 cm Where Native to Europe, planted across northern North America. In the record 1,007,278 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284884) 56. ### Balsam fir Abies balsamea Flat needles with two white stripes underneath, attached by a suction-cup base that leaves a smooth round scar. Cones stand upright on the branch and disintegrate rather than falling whole. Size Needles 1.5–3 cm Where Boreal North America. In the record 39,062 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in February · mostly from Canada [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685383) 57. ### Eastern hemlock Tsuga canadensis Short flat needles of unequal length in two flat rows, each on a tiny stalk, with two white bands beneath — and a row of small needles lying upside down along the top of the twig. Size Needles 1–2 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 64,784 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2687182) 58. ### Eastern redcedar and arborvitae Juniperus virginiana, Thuja occidentalis No needles at all — tiny overlapping scales pressed flat against flattened green sprays, aromatic when crushed. Redcedar carries blue berry-like cones; arborvitae carries small woody ones. Size Sprays 5–15 cm Where Old fields and limestone barrens across eastern North America. In the record 71,990 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684391) 59. [How to identify a cedar](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-cedar-tree/) 60. ### Bald cypress Taxodium distichum Soft feathery needles in two flat rows that turn rust orange and fall in autumn — a deciduous conifer. Woody "knees" rise out of the water around the trunk. Size Needles 1–2 cm in flat sprays Where Southern US swamps and river bottoms. In the record 43,257 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684191) 61. ### Douglas fir Pseudotsuga menziesii Soft flat needles radiating all around the twig from small raised bases, with pointed reddish buds like a beech. The cone settles it: three-pointed bracts stick out between the scales like the back legs and tail of a mouse. Size Needles 2–3.5 cm Where Western North America; planted for timber across Europe. In the record 164,367 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685796) 62. [Identifying Douglas fir](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-douglas-fir/) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Opposite or alternate, first and always Leaf arrangement is the first question in every serious tree key, and it does more work than any other single character, because the trees with opposite leaves are a short and memorable list. In eastern North America the mnemonic is **MAD Cap Horse**: Maple, Ash, Dogwood, Caprifoliaceae (the viburnums, honeysuckles and elderberries) and Horse chestnut. Add catalpa and paulownia, and that is very nearly the whole opposite-leaved tree flora of the region. Everything else — every oak, hickory, birch, beech, elm, cherry, willow, poplar, sycamore, magnolia and locust — is alternate. So a tree with paired leaves has already been narrowed from several hundred candidates to about seven groups, before you have looked at the leaf itself. That is why the filter is at the top of this key. Two cautions. Check arrangement on a strong healthy shoot, not on a stressed twig or a sucker, where it can go irregular. And look for pairs of *buds* rather than pairs of leaves in winter or on a browsed tree — buds keep the arrangement when the leaves have gone. ## Simple or compound: the mistake almost everyone makes A compound leaf looks like a twig with several small leaves on it, and it gets counted as several leaves constantly. The consequence is severe: a walnut counted as simple leaves also appears to be opposite-leaved, and every subsequent step goes wrong. The rule that settles it: **there is a bud in the angle where a leaf joins the twig, and no bud where a leaflet joins the leaf stalk.** Find the bud and you have found where the leaf begins. In autumn there is a second confirmation — the whole compound leaf drops as a unit, stalk and all. Three compound patterns cover the common trees: - **Pinnate** — leaflets in two rows along a central stalk: ash, hickory, walnut, black locust, sumac, boxelder. - **Bipinnate** — that structure repeated, giving a feathery leaf of many tiny leaflets: honey locust, mimosa, Kentucky coffeetree. - **Palmate** — leaflets radiating from one point like fingers: horse chestnut and the buckeyes, and essentially nothing else among common trees. Palmately compound is worth memorising precisely because it is so rare. If leaflets fan out from a single point and the leaves are opposite, you are looking at an *Aesculus*, and you can stop. ## The oak question, answered in one look More people ask about oaks than about any other genus, and the whole of North America's several dozen species split cleanly into two groups on one character. *The white and red oak groups. The bristle character is reliable across the entire genus in North America.* | | White oak group | Red oak group | | --- | --- | --- | | Lobe tips | Rounded, no bristle | Pointed, with a fine bristle at the tip | | Acorn maturity | One season | Two seasons | | Acorn taste | Low tannin, edible after light leaching | Bitter, needs long leaching | | Acorn cup interior | Hairless | Hairy | | Wood | Pores plugged, watertight — barrels | Pores open, not watertight | | Typical members | White, bur, swamp white, chestnut, post oak | Northern red, black, pin, scarlet, shingle, willow oak | Some oaks are not lobed at all — live oak, willow oak and shingle oak have plain unlobed leaves — which is why the acorn is worth picking up. Any tree bearing an acorn is an oak, whatever the leaf looks like. ## The three trees with three leaf shapes Sassafras, mulberry and, less famously, some poplars produce unlobed, one-lobed mitten and two-lobed glove leaves on the same branch. This is the single most common reason a beginner concludes they are looking at three trees. Separating sassafras from mulberry takes two seconds. **Sassafras leaves have smooth edges and smell strongly of root beer** when crushed. **Mulberry leaves are coarsely toothed and bleed milky sap** from a torn stalk. Both are alternate, both grow in the same disturbed ground, and both are commonly misidentified as the other. The general lesson matters more than the two species: **sample several leaves** before you decide on a shape. Leaves from a shaded interior branch are larger, thinner and less deeply lobed than leaves from the sunlit crown of the same tree; juvenile shoots and stump sprouts are often wildly atypical. Take a leaf from a normal branch in reasonable light, and take three of them. ## Conifers: count the needles The evergreen groups are separated by how the needles attach, and each has a test you can do with your fingers. - **Pines** hold needles in bundles wrapped in a papery sheath at the base. Count them: two, three or five. Eastern white pine has five; most hard pines have two or three. - **Spruces** have single, stiff, four-sided needles that *roll* between finger and thumb, attached to small woody pegs that leave a twig rough after the needles fall. - **Firs** have single flat needles that will not roll, attached by a suction-cup base leaving a smooth round scar, usually with two white stripes underneath. Their cones stand upright and fall apart on the tree. - **Hemlocks** have short flat needles of unequal length in two flat rows, each on a tiny stalk, plus a row lying upside down along the top of the twig. - **Douglas fir** is neither a true fir nor a spruce: soft flat needles all round the twig, sharply pointed reddish buds, and a cone with three-pointed bracts sticking out between the scales. - **Junipers, cedars and arborvitae** have no needles at all on mature growth — scales pressed flat against flattened sprays, aromatic when crushed. - **Larch and bald cypress** are conifers that drop their needles. A bare conifer in January is one of these, not a dead tree. The old field mnemonic is worth the ten seconds: spruce is *square* and it *spins*; fir is *flat* and it does not. ## Photographing a leaf so it can actually be identified Most failed identifications are failed photographs. Four shots cover it, and they take a minute. 1. **The whole leaf flat**, front-lit, on a plain background, with a coin or a hand for scale. If it is compound, include the entire leaf down to where it joins the twig. 2. **The underside.** Colour, hairs, and the vein pattern on the back separate several pairs that look identical from above — silver maple and red maple, white oak and swamp white oak. 3. **The twig,** showing at least two nodes so the arrangement is visible, plus buds and leaf scars. 4. **Bark, fruit and the whole tree.** Acorns, samaras, pods, cones and berries frequently settle in one glance what leaves cannot settle at all. And note the location and the setting. A tree in a wet river bottom in Ohio and a tree in dry chaparral in California share no candidate list. Habitat is a filter this key does not have and a botanist uses constantly. ## What is in this key 43 trees: the common natives of eastern and central North America, the conifers of the north and west, and the introduced street trees you are most likely to be standing under in a city on either side of the Atlantic. That covers most of what people photograph and leaves out a great deal — the western hardwoods, the desert and subtropical floras, the willow and hawthorn complexes, and every shrub. Willows, hawthorns, serviceberries and many oaks hybridise freely, and there are species pairs that a professional botanist will not separate from a leaf alone. Where that is true here, the entry names the group rather than pretending to a species. For anything that matters, photograph the leaf, twig, bark and fruit and post it to iNaturalist, where the identification is free and often arrives within a day. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 43 of the 43trees here: **5,418,033 georeferenced records** across the 42 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 21 families, the oldest of them collected in 1983. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded trees in this key hold 57% of all the records between them: Norway maple alone accounts for 1,034,483, while Red mulberry has 9,368. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 39% of these records come from the United States, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 3,943,045 georeferenced records for these 42 trees fall in April–July alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these trees are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in July. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in April–July. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these trees recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 28 of the 42trees here peak outside the warm half of the year — Northern red oak, Douglas fir, Pin oak among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 43 named trees in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Norway maple | [Acer platanoides L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189846) | species | 1,034,483 | 145,657 | Apr–Jul | June | Germany | | Norway spruce | [Picea abies (L.) H.Karst.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284884) | species | 1,007,278 | 91,765 | Jun–Aug | July | Sweden | | Black locust | [Robinia pseudoacacia L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5352251) | species | 496,561 | 137,923 | Apr–Jul | May | France | | Black cherry | [Prunus serotina Ehrh.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3021850) | species | 288,858 | 135,083 | Apr–Jul | May | the Netherlands | | Boxelder | [Acer negundo L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189866) | species | 254,110 | — | Mar–Jun | April | the United States | | Northern red oak | [Quercus rubra L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2880539) | species | 226,793 | 123,423 | May–Aug | November | the United States | | Douglas fir | [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685796) | species | 164,367 | 89,698 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Pin oak | [Quercus palustris Münchh.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8313153) | species | 147,819 | 31,019 | Aug–Oct | December | the United States | | Honey locust | [Gleditsia triacanthos L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2959443) | species | 139,443 | 77,965 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Red maple | [Acer rubrum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189883) | species | 133,130 | 162,550 | Mar–Jul | October | the United States | | Eastern white pine | [Pinus strobus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284982) | species | 115,039 | 140,642 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Sweetgum | [Liquidambar styraciflua L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152824) | species | 97,409 | 116,114 | Mar–Jul | December | the United States | | Silver maple | [Acer saccharinum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189837) | species | 95,335 | 63,212 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | American beech | [Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882274) | species | 90,676 | 123,876 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Tulip tree | [Liriodendron tulipifera L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152861) | species | 77,205 | 105,618 | Apr–Jun | April | the United States | | Eastern redcedar and arborvitae | [Juniperus virginiana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684391) | species | 71,990 | 122,953 | Jan–Jun | February | the United States | | Eastern hemlock | [Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carrière](https://www.gbif.org/species/2687182) | species | 64,784 | 82,747 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Eastern redbud | [Cercis canadensis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5353583) | species | 64,693 | 111,805 | Mar–May | March | the United States | | Sassafras | [Sassafras albidum (Nutt.) Nees](https://www.gbif.org/species/3034002) | species | 62,820 | 75,951 | Apr–Jul | May | the United States | | Quaking aspen | [Populus tremuloides Michx.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040215) | species | 61,907 | 80,099 | Jun–Aug | June | the United States | | Ginkgo | [Ginkgo biloba L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2687885) | species | 60,681 | 46,232 | Jun–Sep | November | the United States | | Sugar maple | [Acer saccharum Marshall](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189859) | species | 59,528 | 116,271 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | American basswood | [Tilia americana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152042) | species | 59,524 | 68,625 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | American sycamore | [Platanus occidentalis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152820) | species | 50,035 | 96,662 | Feb–Jul | February | the United States | | White oak | [Quercus alba L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2879737) | species | 47,555 | 83,064 | Apr–Aug | December | the United States | | American elm | [Ulmus americana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361872) | species | 45,426 | 78,701 | Mar–Jul | March | the United States | | Bald cypress | [Taxodium distichum (L.) Rich.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684191) | species | 43,257 | 64,368 | Apr–Aug | November | the United States | | Flowering dogwood | [Cornus florida L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3082240) | species | 42,748 | 70,421 | Apr–May | April | the United States | | Black walnut | [Juglans nigra L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054357) | species | 39,932 | 85,701 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | Balsam fir | [Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685383) | species | 39,062 | 48,080 | May–Aug | February | Canada | | Eastern cottonwood | [Populus deltoides W.Bartram ex Marshall](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040232) | species | 36,424 | 64,817 | Apr–Jul | April | the United States | | Paper birch | [Betula papyrifera Marshall](https://www.gbif.org/species/5332120) | species | 28,894 | 51,283 | Mar–Jul | February | Canada | | Osage orange | [Maclura pomifera (Raf. ex Sarg.) C.K.Schneid.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984580) | species | 28,756 | 36,925 | Jul–Oct | November | the United States | | Hackberry | [Celtis occidentalis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984481) | species | 28,574 | 47,957 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | Southern magnolia | [Magnolia grandiflora L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/9605163) | species | 19,648 | 68,742 | Jan–May | February | the United States | | Shagbark hickory | [Carya ovata (Mill.) K.Koch](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054296) | species | 17,910 | 41,288 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | White ash | [Fraxinus americana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172327) | species | 17,819 | 66,604 | May–Aug | September | the United States | | Black willow | [Salix nigra Marshall](https://www.gbif.org/species/5372854) | species | 16,544 | 31,183 | Mar–Jun | April | the United States | | Red pine and Scots pine | [Pinus resinosa Aiton](https://www.gbif.org/species/5285067) | species | 12,319 | 26,645 | Apr–Aug | February | the United States | | Live oak | [Quercus virginiana Mill.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2878092) | species | 9,706 | 38,577 | Jan–Jun | December | the United States | | Northern catalpa | [Catalpa speciosa (Warder ex Barney) Warder ex Engelm.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172612) | species | 9,623 | 33,647 | May–Jul | June | the United States | | Red mulberry | [Morus rubra L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361886) | species | 9,368 | 23,880 | Apr–Jun | April | the United States | | Horse chestnut and buckeye | [Aesculus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189801) | genus | 429,086 | 226,651 | Apr–Jun | April | the United Kingdom | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How do I tell if leaves are opposite or alternate? Look at where the leaf stalks meet the twig. If two leaves join at the same point on opposite sides, it is opposite; if they stagger up the twig one at a time, it is alternate. Check a healthy shoot rather than a stressed twig, and use buds instead of leaves in winter. In eastern North America the opposite-leaved trees are essentially maple, ash, dogwood, horse chestnut, catalpa and the viburnum family — everything else is alternate. Is this one leaf or several? Find the bud. There is always a bud in the angle where a true leaf meets the twig, and never one where a leaflet meets the leaf stalk. Compound leaves also drop as a single unit in autumn. Getting this wrong is the most common beginner error, because it makes a walnut or an ash look like a twig full of small opposite leaves. How do I tell a white oak from a red oak? Look at the tips of the lobes. White oak group leaves have rounded lobes with no bristle; red oak group leaves have pointed lobes ending in a fine bristle. The acorns confirm it: white oaks mature in one season and have a hairless cup interior, red oaks take two seasons and have a hairy cup. What tree has leaves shaped like a mitten? Sassafras and mulberry both produce unlobed, mitten and three-lobed leaves on the same branch. Sassafras has smooth leaf edges and smells strongly of root beer when crushed; mulberry has coarsely toothed edges and bleeds milky sap from a torn stalk. Both are alternate and both grow in disturbed ground, so the smell and the sap are what separate them. How do I tell a spruce from a fir from a pine? Pines hold their needles in bundles of two, three or five wrapped in a papery sheath. Spruces and firs have single needles. A spruce needle is four-sided and rolls between your fingers, and leaves a rough peg on the twig; a fir needle is flat, will not roll, has two white stripes underneath and leaves a smooth round scar. Fir cones stand upright and fall apart on the tree; spruce cones hang down and drop whole. Why do leaves on the same tree look different? Sun and shade change leaf size, thickness and lobing considerably, so a leaf from a shaded interior branch can look like a different species from one in the crown. Juvenile shoots, stump sprouts and water sprouts are frequently atypical too. Take three leaves from a normal branch on a healthy part of the tree before you decide. Can an app identify a tree from one leaf photo? Often, and it is much more reliable if you give it more than the leaf. Photograph the leaf flat with something for scale, the underside, a twig showing two nodes so the arrangement is visible, and the bark or any fruit. Then check the suggestion against this key using the arrangement and compound tests, which are the two characters a photograph most often gets wrong. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows trees down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-tree-by-leaf/) - [Tree leaf identification](https://orvik.app/plants/tree-leaf-identification/) - [Identify a plant by leaf shape](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-plant-by-leaf-shape/) - [Oak leaf identification](https://orvik.app/plants/oak-leaf-identification/) - [Maple leaf identification](https://orvik.app/plants/maple-leaf-identification/) - [Identifying a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-tree-by-bark/) - [How to identify a tree](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-tree/) - [Leaf names and parts](https://orvik.app/plants/leaf-names/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [USDA Forest Service — Silvics of North America, Vol. 2: Hardwoods](https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/1548) - [USDA PLANTS Database](https://plants.usda.gov/) - [Arbor Day Foundation — tree identification guide](https://www.arborday.org/trees/whattree/) - [iNaturalist — community identification](https://www.inaturalist.org/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Mineral Identification Chart — Streak, Hardness & Lustre Key** > A working determinative key for 36 common minerals. Filter by streak colour, lustre, hardness and cleavage — the four properties that identify a mineral. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Rocks & minerals Rocks & minerals # Which mineral is this? Minerals are identified by **properties, not appearance**. Quartz comes in a dozen colours and every one of them scratches glass; hematite is silver, red or black and every one of them leaves a red-brown streak. Rub the specimen on an unglazed tile, note the lustre, try a scratch, and look at how it breaks. Those four answers name most minerals you will ever pick up. Entries **36** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search minerals by name Lustre Metallic or not is the first and biggest split in every mineral key. Metallic — looks like metal Glassy Pearly or silky Dull or earthy Greasy or waxy Brilliant, almost diamond-like Streak on unglazed tile The colour of the powder. Rub hard on the back of a bathroom tile. White or none Black or dark grey Red-brown Yellow-brown Green Blue Yellow Hardness Under 2.5 — fingernail scratches it 2.5–3.5 — copper coin scratches it 3.5–5.5 — steel knife scratches it 5.5–7 — it scratches glass Over 7 — it scratches quartz How it breaks Cubes — three directions at right angles Rhombs — three directions, not square Thin flexible sheets Two good directions, stepped faces Curved shell-like fracture Irregular, no flat faces Anything else Fizzes in vinegar Magnetic Very heavy for its size Tastes salty Distinct smell Fluoresces under UV Showing all 36 minerals 1. ### Quartz SiO₂ Glassy, scratches glass and steel easily, breaks with curved shell-like faces and never into flat cleavage planes. Six-sided prisms ending in a point when it has room to grow. Size Hardness 7 Where The second most abundant mineral in the crust; in almost every rock and every gravel bar. Confused with Calcite — which is far softer and fizzes — and glass, which quartz will scratch and which will not scratch quartz. In the record Mohs 7 · SiO2 · trigonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 2. [Quartz identification in detail](https://orvik.app/rocks/quartz-identification/) 3. ### Orthoclase feldspar KAlSi₃O₈ Pink, cream or white blocky crystals that break along two flat directions meeting at right angles, giving stepped rectangular faces that flash in the light. Size Hardness 6 Where The most abundant mineral group in the crust; the pink in granite. Confused with Quartz, which is slightly harder and has no flat cleavage. If it breaks in flat steps, it is feldspar. 4. ### Plagioclase feldspar (Na,Ca)AlSi₃O₈ White to grey feldspar showing fine parallel striations — like the finest possible pinstripe — on one cleavage face. Those twinning lines are diagnostic and orthoclase never has them. Size Hardness 6 Where Basalt, gabbro, diorite and most other igneous rocks. 5. ### Calcite CaCO₃ Fizzes strongly in vinegar, scratches with a copper coin, and breaks into leaning rhombs rather than cubes. Clear crystals show double refraction — text under them appears twice. Size Hardness 3 Where Limestone, marble, cave formations and vein fillings everywhere. In the record Mohs 3 · CaCO3 · trigonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 6. ### Dolomite CaMg(CO₃)₂ A calcite look-alike that will not fizz until powdered, is slightly harder, and often forms rhombs with curved, saddle-shaped faces — a texture calcite never produces. Size Hardness 3.5–4 Where Dolostone and hydrothermal veins. In the record Mohs 3.5–4 · CaMg(CO3)2 · trigonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 7. ### Gypsum CaSO₄·2H₂O Soft enough to scratch with a fingernail, colourless to white, splitting into flexible but not elastic sheets. Does not fizz, does not taste of anything. Size Hardness 2 Where Evaporite beds, desert roses, White Sands. In the record Mohs 2 · CaSO4·2H2O · monoclinic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 8. ### Halite NaCl Perfect cubes, dissolves in water, and tastes of salt. The taste test is standard practice and there is no substitute for it here. Size Hardness 2.5 Where Salt beds, salt domes and dry lakebeds. Confused with Sylvite, which is bitter rather than salty. In the record Mohs 2.5 · NaCl · isometric · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 9. ### Fluorite CaF₂ Cubes in purple, green, blue or yellow, softer than glass, with four cleavage directions that knock the corners off into triangles. Most specimens glow blue-violet under UV — the word fluorescence is named after it. Size Hardness 4 Where Hydrothermal veins: Illinois, Kentucky, Derbyshire, China. In the record Mohs 4 · CaF2 · isometric · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 10. ### Muscovite mica KAl₂(AlSi₃O₁₀)(OH)₂ Peels into thin, clear, elastic sheets that spring back when bent — the elasticity separates mica from every other sheet mineral. Silvery to colourless. Size Hardness 2–2.5 Where Granite, schist and pegmatite worldwide. 11. ### Biotite mica K(Mg,Fe)₃(AlSi₃O₁₀)(OH)₂ The same elastic sheets as muscovite but black to dark brown, and the flakes are translucent brown when held to the light rather than opaque. Size Hardness 2.5–3 Where Granite, gneiss and schist. 12. ### Talc Mg₃Si₄O₁₀(OH)₂ Feels soapy or greasy, marks paper, and a fingernail carves it easily. Pale green, grey or white. It defines the bottom of the Mohs scale. Size Hardness 1 — the softest mineral Where Metamorphosed ultramafic rock: Vermont, Montana, Finland. In the record Mohs 1 · Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 · triclinic · sub-vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 13. ### Graphite C Steel-grey, greasy to the touch, marks paper and your fingers black, and is soft enough to smear with a fingernail. Feels lighter than it looks. Size Hardness 1–2 Where Metamorphosed carbon-rich rocks: Sri Lanka, Madagascar, New York. Confused with Molybdenite, which is very similar but heavier and has a blue tinge to its streak. In the record Mohs 1–2 · C · hexagonal · sub-metallic lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 14. ### Pyrite FeS₂ Brass-yellow metallic cubes with fine parallel striations on each face, hard enough to scratch glass, leaving a greenish-black streak and smelling faintly of sulphur when struck. Size Hardness 6–6.5 Where Sedimentary, igneous and hydrothermal settings worldwide. Confused with Gold, which is far softer, malleable rather than brittle, and leaves a yellow streak. Pyrite shatters when hit; gold flattens. In the record Mohs 6–6.5 · FeS2 · isometric · metallic lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 15. ### Chalcopyrite CuFeS₂ A deeper, more golden brass than pyrite, soft enough for a knife, and often tarnished into peacock blues and purples. Streak is greenish-black. Size Hardness 3.5–4 Where The world's main copper ore, in veins and porphyry deposits. In the record Mohs 3.5–4 · CuFeS2 · tetragonal · metallic lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 16. ### Galena Handle with care PbS Bright silver-grey cubes that break into perfect smaller cubes, astonishingly heavy for their size, and soft enough to mark with a coin. Size Hardness 2.5 Where Lead-zinc districts: Missouri, Oklahoma, the Pennines, Poland. Risk Lead sulphide. Wash your hands after handling and do not grind, cut or lick it. In the record Mohs 2.5 · PbS · isometric · metallic lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 17. ### Sphalerite ZnS Resinous brown to black with six cleavage directions giving a jumbled sparkle, a pale yellow-brown streak, and a rotten-egg smell when scratched. Size Hardness 3.5–4 Where With galena in lead-zinc ore bodies. In the record Mohs 3.5–4 · ZnS · isometric · adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 18. ### Magnetite Fe₃O₄ Black, heavy, scratches glass, black streak, and strongly magnetic — a fridge magnet on a string swings to it. Often as sharp octahedra. Size Hardness 5.5–6.5 Where Igneous and metamorphic rocks; concentrated in black sand on beaches. In the record Mohs 5.5–6.5 · Fe2+Fe23+O4 · isometric · metallic lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 19. ### Hematite Fe₂O₃ Whatever colour the specimen is — silver, black, red or brown — the streak is always the same rusty red-brown. That single property identifies it against everything else. Size Hardness 5–6 Where The world's main iron ore: the Lake Superior ranges, Minas Gerais, Australia. In the record Mohs 5–6 · Fe2O3 · trigonal · metallic lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 20. ### Goethite and limonite FeO(OH) Yellow-brown to almost black, often botryoidal like a cluster of grapes, with a distinctly yellow-brown streak that separates it from hematite's red. Size Hardness 5–5.5 Where Every weathered iron-bearing rock; bog iron; the rust on everything. 21. ### Malachite Cu₂CO₃(OH)₂ Bright green with concentric banding in light and dark green, silky when fibrous, and it fizzes in acid because it is a carbonate. Green streak. Size Hardness 3.5–4 Where Weathered copper deposits: Arizona, Congo, the Urals. In the record Mohs 3.5–4 · Cu2(CO3)(OH)2 · monoclinic · adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 22. ### Azurite Cu₃(CO₃)₂(OH)₂ Deep azure blue with a light blue streak, fizzing in acid. Frequently found grown together with malachite, slowly altering into it. Size Hardness 3.5–4 Where With malachite in weathered copper deposits. In the record Mohs 3.5–4 · Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2 · monoclinic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 23. ### Olivine (Mg,Fe)₂SiO₄ Sugary olive-green grains with a glassy shine, in dark igneous rock, breaking with curved fractures and no cleavage. Size Hardness 6.5–7 Where Basalt, peridotite and mantle xenoliths; gem quality is peridot. In the record Mohs 6.5–7 · (Mg,Fe2+)2SiO4 · orthorhombic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 24. ### Garnet (Mg,Fe,Ca)₃Al₂(SiO₄)₃ Deep red to red-brown balls with twelve rhombic faces, embedded in mica schist, harder than glass and with no cleavage at all. Size Hardness 6.5–7.5 Where Schist, gneiss and river sands worldwide. In the record Mohs 6.5–7.5 · X3Z2(SiO4)3 · isometric · vitreous to resinous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 25. ### Hornblende Ca₂(Mg,Fe,Al)₅(Al,Si)₈O₂₂(OH)₂ Black needle-like or bladed crystals with two cleavage directions meeting at about 60 and 120 degrees. That angle separates the amphiboles from the pyroxenes. Size Hardness 5–6 Where Granite, diorite, amphibolite and schist. Confused with Augite, whose cleavages meet at nearly 90 degrees. Look at the end of a broken crystal. In the record Mohs 6 · (Ca,Na)2–3(Mg,Fe,Al)5(Al,Si)8O22(OH,F)2 [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 26. ### Augite (Ca,Na)(Mg,Fe,Al)(Si,Al)₂O₆ Stubby dark green-black crystals whose two cleavages meet at close to a right angle, giving a squarish cross-section rather than the amphiboles' diamond. Size Hardness 5.5–6 Where Basalt, gabbro and other dark igneous rocks. In the record Mohs 5.5–6 · (Ca,Na)(Mg,Fe2+,Al,Fe3+,Ti)[(Si,Al)2O6] · monoclinic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 27. ### Apatite Ca₅(PO₄)₃(F,Cl,OH) Green, blue or brown hexagonal prisms that a knife will just scratch and that will not scratch glass. Sitting exactly at 5 makes it the calibration point of the scale. Size Hardness 5 — it defines the middle of the Mohs scale Where Igneous rocks, pegmatites and phosphate beds. In the record Mohs 5 · Ca5(PO4,SiO4,SO4)3(OH) · hexagonal [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 28. ### Barite BaSO₄ Colourless to white bladed crystals that are startlingly heavy for a non-metallic mineral — the heft is what identifies it. Soft, with good cleavage in three directions. Size Hardness 3–3.5 Where Hydrothermal veins and desert rose concretions. 29. ### Kyanite Al₂SiO₅ Blue bladed crystals with a unique property — a knife scratches it along the length of the blade and will not scratch it across the width. Nothing else in common collecting does that. Size Hardness 4.5 along the blade, 7 across it Where High-pressure metamorphic rocks: the Appalachians, the Alps. In the record Mohs 5.5–7 · Al2(SiO4)O · triclinic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 30. ### Tourmaline Complex borosilicate Long prisms with a rounded-triangular cross-section and heavy lengthwise striations, black in the common variety and any colour in the gem varieties. Size Hardness 7–7.5 Where Pegmatites: Maine, California, Brazil, Afghanistan. In the record Mohs 7 · A(D3)G6(T6O18)(BO3)3X3Z · trigonal [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 31. ### Beryl Be₃Al₂Si₆O₁₈ Six-sided prisms with flat ends, in green, blue-green, yellow or pink, hard enough to scratch quartz. Crystals grow large — metres, occasionally. Size Hardness 7.5–8 Where Granite pegmatites worldwide; the source of emerald and aquamarine. In the record Mohs 7.5–8 · Be3Al2(Si6O18) · hexagonal · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 32. ### Corundum Al₂O₃ Barrel-shaped or tabular hexagonal crystals that scratch everything except diamond and moissanite, distinctly heavy, often with a satiny sheen across the crystal faces. Size Hardness 9 — second only to diamond Where Metamorphosed alumina-rich rocks; sapphire and ruby are gem corundum. In the record Mohs 9 · Al2O3 · trigonal · adamantine lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 33. ### Native sulphur S Vivid canary yellow, soft, brittle, greasy-looking, and it smells and crumbles when warmed in the hand. Nothing else is that yellow. Size Hardness 1.5–2.5 Where Volcanic fumaroles and salt domes. 34. ### Serpentine Handle with care Mg₃Si₂O₅(OH)₄ Mottled green with a waxy or greasy feel and slippery polished surfaces, sometimes with silky white fibrous veins running through it. Size Hardness 2.5–4 Where Altered ultramafic rocks: California, Quebec, Cyprus. Risk Fibrous chrysotile serpentine is asbestos. Do not cut, grind or crush it dry. 35. ### Chlorite (Mg,Fe)₃(Si,Al)₄O₁₀(OH)₈ Dark green flakes that look like mica but are not elastic: bend one and it stays bent. That single test separates chlorite from biotite. Size Hardness 2–2.5 Where Low-grade metamorphic rocks everywhere. In the record Mohs 2–2.5 · (Mg,Fe)3(Si,Al)4O10(OH)2·(Mg,Fe)3(OH)6 · monoclinic [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 36. ### Epidote Ca₂(Al,Fe)₃(SiO₄)₃(OH) A distinctive yellow-green — the shade is called pistachio and once seen is unmistakable — in slender striated prisms, hard enough to scratch glass. Size Hardness 6–7 Where Metamorphosed and altered igneous rocks worldwide. In the record Mohs 6 · {Ca2}{Al2Fe3+}(Si2O7)(SiO4)O(OH) · monoclinic · vitreous lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) 37. ### Gold Au Malleable rather than brittle: a needle point dents it instead of chipping it. Streak is gold-yellow, colour does not tarnish, and the density is so high a small grain feels wrong in the hand. Size Hardness 2.5–3 Where Quartz veins and placer gravels worldwide. Confused with Pyrite and biotite flakes. Pyrite shatters and streaks black; wet biotite glitters and floats. Gold flattens under a pin and sinks like a stone. In the record Mohs 2.5–3 · Au · isometric · metallic lustre [check on Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Streak is the property that does not lie The single most useful thing you can do to an unknown mineral is rub it hard across the unglazed back of a bathroom tile and look at the powder. Colour varies with trace impurities; the streak is the mineral's true colour with the optical effects removed, and it is almost constant within a species. Hematite is the demonstration case. Specimens can be silver-grey and metallic, dull earthy red, or shiny black — and all three leave the same rusty red-brown streak. Meanwhile the two minerals most commonly mistaken for gold both give themselves away instantly: pyrite streaks greenish-black, gold streaks gold. Two caveats. Minerals harder than the tile — roughly 6.5 and above — will not streak at all; they scratch the tile instead, which is itself an observation and puts the specimen straight into the hard group. And a "white" streak means no useful colour rather than a positive result: most non-metallic minerals give white, so a white streak tells you to move on to lustre and hardness. ## Hardness, done properly Mohs hardness is a scratch ranking, not a measurement, and most people do it wrong in the same two ways: they test a weathered surface, and they mistake a smear of metal for a scratch. **Test on a fresh face.** Weathering softens the outside of nearly everything. **Rub the mark with your thumb before you judge it.** A steel blade drawn across quartz leaves a grey line that looks exactly like a scratch and wipes straight off — that is metal deposited on the mineral, and it means the mineral is harder than the steel. The tools you already have cover the whole useful range: *Everyday scratch references against the Mohs scale.* | Tool | Approx. Mohs | What it tells you | | --- | --- | --- | | Fingernail | 2.5 | Gypsum, talc, graphite, most micas, halite are at or below this | | Copper coin | 3.5 | Calcite and galena scratch; fluorite does not | | Steel knife or nail | 5.5 | Apatite and below scratch; feldspar and quartz do not | | Window glass | 5.5 | The mineral scratching the glass is the informative direction | | Quartz pebble | 7 | Separates topaz, corundum, garnet and beryl from everything softer | | Steel file | 6.5 | Useful upper reference before you reach the gem minerals | Kyanite is worth knowing as the exception that proves the method is real: it is about 4.5 measured along the length of its blades and about 7 measured across them, so a knife scratches it one way and slides off the other. Anisotropic hardness like that is rare and it is diagnostic. ## Cleavage versus fracture How a mineral breaks reflects how its atoms are bonded, so it is a structural property rather than a cosmetic one. **Cleavage** is breakage along flat planes that reappear every time you break it; **fracture** is breakage on irregular or curved surfaces. The distinctive patterns are worth memorising because each one narrows the list to a handful: - **Perfect cubes** — galena and halite. Break a cube of galena and you get smaller cubes. - **Rhombs** — calcite and dolomite. Leaning parallelograms rather than squares. - **Thin elastic sheets** — muscovite and biotite mica. Bend one and it springs back. - **Thin sheets that stay bent** — chlorite, and this is exactly how you separate it from biotite. - **Two directions at 90°** — feldspars and pyroxenes. - **Two directions at 60° and 120°** — amphiboles. The cross-section of a broken hornblende crystal is a flattened diamond, not a square. - **Curved shell-shaped fracture** — quartz, olivine, obsidian. No cleavage at all. Crystal faces and cleavage faces get confused. Crystal faces grew and are often striated, dulled or etched; cleavage faces were made when you broke it and are bright, flat and repeat in parallel sets throughout the specimen. ## The extra tests, and when to reach for them **Vinegar.** A drop on a fresh face separates the carbonates — calcite, malachite, azurite fizz freely, dolomite only when powdered. Five seconds, and it settles a whole mineral class. **A magnet.** Magnetite is strongly magnetic; pyrrhotite is weakly so. Hang the magnet from a thread rather than holding it, so a weak attraction is visible. **Heft.** Compare against a similar-sized piece of quartz. Barite is the classic case — a colourless, non-metallic mineral that is obviously too heavy, which is essentially its identification. **Smell.** Sphalerite gives off hydrogen sulphide when scratched. Pyrite smells of sulphur when struck. Clay minerals smell of earth when breathed on. **Ultraviolet light.** A shortwave UV torch turns a dull box of specimens into a light show and is genuinely diagnostic for some: fluorite glows blue-violet, calcite from some localities glows red, scheelite blue-white, willemite green. Fluorescence varies by locality within a species, so a negative result proves nothing. **Taste.** Legitimate for halite and sylvite and nothing else on this list. Do not taste anything with a metallic lustre, and wash your hands after handling galena. ## Fool's gold, and the other traps **Gold versus pyrite versus mica.** Three tests settle it and none requires equipment. Press a pin or knife point into the grain: gold dents and stays dented, pyrite shatters into powder, mica flakes apart. Streak it: gold leaves gold, pyrite leaves greenish-black. Put it in water and rock the pan: gold sinks immediately and stays put, mica flakes swirl and float away. The colour test people actually rely on — moving into shade — works too: pyrite dulls, gold does not change. **Quartz versus calcite.** Both are common, clear and glassy. Calcite is soft enough for a coin, breaks into rhombs and fizzes; quartz does none of those things. A clear rhomb that makes text look doubled is calcite, always. **Amphibole versus pyroxene.** Both are dark, glassy and prismatic in igneous rock. Look at the end of a broken crystal: about 90 degrees between the cleavages means pyroxene, about 60 and 120 means amphibole. **Rocks presented as minerals.** Granite is not a mineral, it is a mixture of three or four. If a specimen contains obviously different materials — pink blocky, glassy grey, black flakes — you are holding a rock, and the rock key is the right tool. ## Building a working kit and knowing when to stop Everything in this key can be done with a fingernail, a copper coin, a steel knife, a piece of window glass, a white unglazed tile, white vinegar in a dropper, a small magnet on a thread and a 10× hand lens. That kit fits in a pocket, costs less than a takeaway, and resolves the great majority of specimens people bring home. What it will not resolve: the feldspar group beyond the orthoclase and plagioclase split, the garnet and tourmaline series, most clay minerals, and any fine-grained intergrowth. Those need optical work on a thin section, X-ray diffraction, or a specific gravity measurement — and at that point the right move is a local rock and mineral club or a university geology department rather than more staring. 36 entries here, chosen as the rock-forming minerals plus the ores and collector species that actually turn up in a pocket. Mindat lists over 6,000 valid mineral species; almost all of them are microscopic, rare, or both. ## Hardness, formula and crystal system Colour is the least reliable thing about a mineral and hardness is the most reliable, because hardness is a measurement rather than an impression. Every entry in this key that has a formal mineral name is matched against - [Macrostrat](https://macrostrat.org/)'s mineral definitions, which gives 28 of the 36 entries a published Mohs range, a chemical formula, a crystal system and a lustre. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. *Published Mohs ranges for the 28 minerals in this key, softest at the top. A steel knife blade sits at about 5.5, and it splits the list almost in half: 15 of 28 can be scratched by one, the rest cannot. Talc is the softest here and Corundum the hardest. Source: Macrostrat mineral definitions, CC BY 4.0, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Read that figure as a sequence of tests rather than a list of facts. A fingernail is about 2.5 on the Mohs scale and will mark 6 of these 28. A steel knife blade is about 5.5 and splits the rest: 15 can be scratched by one and the remainder cannot, which is a single test that removes most of the list. A piece of quartz at 7 will scratch everything below it. Do the test on a fresh surface and on the specimen rather than the crust, and scratch the mineral with the tool — a streak of metal left on the rock looks like a scratch and is not one. Crystal system is the other free character: 8 of these are isometric, so the habit you can see in a good specimen narrows the field before any test at all. ### The reference table Formula, hardness range, crystal system and lustre for every named mineral in this key, as published. Where a hardness is given as a range, the mineral genuinely varies — usually with the direction of the scratch or the exact composition. *Published mineral properties for the 28 named entries in this key. Source: Macrostrat mineral definitions, CC BY 4.0, snapshot 2026-09-04. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Formula | Mohs | Crystal system | Lustre | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Talc | Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 | 1 | Triclinic | Sub-Vitreous, Resinous, Waxy, Greasy, Pearly | | Graphite | C | 1–2 | Hexagonal | Sub-Metallic | | Gypsum | CaSO4 · 2H2O | 2 | Monoclinic | Vitreous, Sub-Vitreous, Silky, Pearly, Dull | | Chlorite | (Mg,Fe)3(Si,Al)4O10(OH)2 **·**(Mg,Fe)3(OH)6 | 2–2.5 | Monoclinic | — | | Halite | NaCl | 2.5 | Isometric | Vitreous | | Galena | PbS | 2.5 | Isometric | Metallic, Dull | | Gold | Au | 2.5–3 | Isometric | Metallic | | Calcite | CaCO3 | 3 | Trigonal | Vitreous, Sub-Vitreous, Resinous, Waxy, Pearly | | Dolomite | CaMg(CO3)2 | 3.5–4 | Trigonal | Vitreous, Sub-Vitreous, Resinous, Waxy, Pearly | | Chalcopyrite | CuFeS2 | 3.5–4 | Tetragonal | Metallic | | Sphalerite | ZnS | 3.5–4 | Isometric | Adamantine, Resinous | | Malachite | Cu2(CO3)(OH)2 | 3.5–4 | Monoclinic | Adamantine, Vitreous, Silky, Dull, Earthy | | Azurite | Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2 | 3.5–4 | Monoclinic | Vitreous | | Fluorite | CaF2 | 4 | Isometric | Vitreous, Dull | | Hematite | Fe2O3 | 5–6 | Trigonal | Metallic, Sub-Metallic, Dull, Earthy | | Apatite | Ca5(PO4,SiO4,SO4)3(OH) | 5 | Hexagonal | — | | Magnetite | Fe2+Fe2 3+O4 | 5.5–6.5 | Isometric | Metallic, Sub-Metallic | | Augite | (Ca,Na)(Mg,Fe2+,Al,Fe3+,Ti)[(Si,Al)2O6] | 5.5–6 | Monoclinic | Vitreous | | Kyanite | Al2(SiO4)O | 5.5–7 | Triclinic | Vitreous, Sub-Vitreous, Greasy, Pearly | | Pyrite | FeS2 | 6–6.5 | Isometric | Metallic | | Hornblende | (Ca,Na)2–3(Mg,Fe,Al)5(Al,Si)8O22(OH,F)2 | 6 | — | — | | Epidote | {Ca2}{Al2Fe3+}(Si2O7)(SiO4)O(O | 6 | Monoclinic | Vitreous | | Olivine | (Mg,Fe2+)2SiO4 | 6.5–7 | Orthorhombic | Vitreous | | Garnet | X3Z2(SiO4)3 | 6.5–7.5 | Isometric | vitreous to resinous | | Quartz | SiO2 | 7 | Trigonal | Vitreous | | Tourmaline | A(D3)G6(T6O18)(BO3)3X The full Mohs scale with the everyday tools that sit between each step, plus how to run a scratch test without ruining the specimen and why the scale is not proportional. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Rocks & minerals Rocks & minerals # Mohs hardness scale, with a scratch test you can actually do Pick a hardness and see what it scratches, what scratches it, and which household object sits at that level. The scale is **ordinal, not proportional** — the gap from 9 to 10 is bigger than the whole range from 1 to 9 — and that is the fact that makes it useful. Steps **10** Field tools **8** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Hardness Drag to a hardness step and read what it does and does not scratch. Mohs 7 Quartz - Field test **—** - Absolute hardness **—** - Scratches **—** - Scratched by **—** - Everyday equivalent **—** ## The scale, and the tools between the steps *Mohs reference minerals with absolute (Knoop-scaled) hardness, showing how uneven the intervals are. Values follow standard mineralogical references.* | Mohs | Reference mineral | Absolute | In the field | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Talc | 1 | Crumbles under a fingernail; feels soapy | | 2 | Gypsum | 2 | A fingernail (2.5) scratches it | | 3 | Calcite | 9 | A copper coin (3.5) scratches it | | 4 | Fluorite | 21 | A knife scratches it easily | | 5 | Apatite | 48 | A knife scratches it with effort | | 6 | Orthoclase feldspar | 72 | Scratches glass; a steel file (6.5) scratches it | | 7 | Quartz | 100 | Scratches glass and steel easily | | 8 | Topaz | 200 | Scratches quartz | | 9 | Corundum — ruby and sapphire | 400 | Scratches topaz | | 10 | Diamond | 1600 | Scratches everything | ### Common objects as reference points - **Fingernail** — about 2.5 on the Mohs scale - **Copper coin** — about 3.5 on the Mohs scale - **Iron nail** — about 4.5 on the Mohs scale - **Window glass** — about 5.5 on the Mohs scale - **Pocket knife blade** — about 5.5 on the Mohs scale - **Steel file** — about 6.5 on the Mohs scale - **Quartz pebble** — about 7 on the Mohs scale - **Masonry drill bit (tungsten carbide)** — about 8.5 on the Mohs scale ## What the scale actually measures Friedrich Mohs published his scale in 1812 and it has survived unchanged for one reason: it needs nothing. Ten reference minerals, arranged so that each scratches the one below it, and a field geologist with a knife and a coin can place any specimen inside it in seconds. What it measures is **scratch resistance** — resistance to having the surface bonds broken by a point drawn across it. It is not toughness, not strength, and not durability, and conflating those is where almost every misunderstanding of the scale begins. It is also **ordinal, not proportional**. The intervals are not equal and were never intended to be. Measured on an absolute indentation scale, corundum at 9 is roughly four times as hard as topaz at 8, and diamond at 10 is roughly four times corundum again. The gap between 9 and 10 is larger than the gap between 1 and 9. That single fact explains why diamond is in a category of its own rather than one notch above ruby. ## Doing a scratch test without ruining the specimen 1. **Pick an inconspicuous spot on a fresh surface.** Weathered faces are softer than the interior of the same mineral, and a scratch across the display face of a good specimen is permanent. 2. **Press firmly and draw once**, a short stroke of a few millimetres. Repeated scrubbing produces a groove even in hard material and tells you nothing. 3. **Rub the mark with your thumb, then look.** This is the step everyone skips. A steel blade drawn across quartz leaves a grey line that looks exactly like a scratch and wipes straight off — that is metal deposited on the mineral, and it means the mineral is harder than the steel, the opposite of what it looks like. 4. **Confirm with a hand lens.** A real scratch is a continuous groove that catches light along its length. 5. **Work upward.** Start with a fingernail and move up through coin, knife, glass and file until something bites. That brackets the hardness between two values, which is all a scratch test can ever give you. Two properties will mislead you. **Cleavage** can make a mineral flake away under a point, which looks like a soft scratch and is not — a nail drawn across mica or gypsum along the cleavage plane peels a sheet off. And **hardness can be directional**: kyanite is about 4.5 measured along the length of its blades and about 7 measured across them, which is diagnostic for the species and which will look like a contradictory result if you do not know to expect it. ## Hard is not the same as tough Diamond is the hardest natural substance and it will shatter if you hit it with a hammer on the right plane. Jade is only 6 to 7 and it is so tough that it was used for axe heads and adzes for thousands of years. These are different properties and the confusion has practical consequences. *Four properties routinely bundled together as "hardness", and what each actually means.* | Property | Meaning | High example | Low example | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Hardness | Resistance to being scratched | Diamond, corundum | Talc, gypsum | | Toughness | Resistance to breaking or chipping | Jade, nephrite | Diamond, topaz, tanzanite | | Stability | Resistance to heat, light and chemicals | Quartz, corundum | Opal, pearl, amber | | Cleavage | Tendency to split along planes | Mica, fluorite, topaz | Quartz, garnet — none | Two consequences worth carrying around. Topaz is an 8 and has perfect basal cleavage, so a topaz ring survives everyday abrasion beautifully and can split from one sharp knock on a doorframe. Opal is only 5.5 to 6.5 and, more importantly, holds water in its structure, so it crazes with dry heat regardless of how carefully it is protected from scratching. ## The jewellery rule that follows from all this The single most useful number in the whole scale is **7**, because ordinary household dust contains quartz. Anything softer than 7 is being sanded by the air it sits in, slowly, forever. This is why the practical guidance for a stone worn every day — an engagement ring, in particular — is to stay at or above 7, and preferably above 8. Diamond at 10, sapphire and ruby at 9, spinel at 8, and topaz at 8 with the cleavage caveat all qualify. Emerald is nominally 7.5 to 8 but is usually heavily included and frequently oil-treated, which makes it far less durable than the number suggests. Tanzanite at 6 to 7 and opal at 5.5 to 6.5 are genuinely unsuited to daily wear on a hand and are far better in earrings or a pendant, where nothing hits them. The same logic governs stone countertops. Granite is dominated by quartz and feldspar at 6 to 7 and shrugs off knives; marble is calcite at 3 and both scratches and etches on contact with lemon juice or vinegar, which is a chemical reaction rather than an abrasion and cannot be prevented by sealing. Quartzite is a different rock again and is harder than granite. The trade names in a showroom are unreliable, and a scratch test on a sample offcut settles it in ten seconds. ## Testing a suspected gemstone or a diamond Hardness is a useful screening tool for gem identification and a poor final answer. Two rules keep it honest. **Never scratch a faceted stone.** Test on the girdle — the thin unpolished band around the widest part — or better, do not scratch it at all. A visible scratch on a table facet destroys value. **Hardness cannot distinguish a diamond from its two best simulants.** Moissanite is 9.25 and cubic zirconia is 8 to 8.5; both scratch glass effortlessly, so the classic "it scratches glass so it must be a diamond" test proves nothing at all. The properties that do separate them are thermal conductivity, which is what a jeweller's diamond tester measures, and double refraction, which moissanite shows and diamond does not — look through the table at the opposite facet edges under magnification and moissanite doubles them. The reverse test is more useful than the forward one: **anything a steel knife scratches easily is not a diamond, a sapphire, a ruby or a topaz.** That eliminates a great deal quickly. For anything that survives it and matters financially, the answer is a gemmological laboratory rather than a kitchen table. ## Questions people ask about this How do I test hardness at home? Work upward through the tools you already have: fingernail at about 2.5, a copper coin at 3.5, a knife blade or window glass at 5.5, a steel file at 6.5, a quartz pebble at 7. Draw one firm short stroke on a fresh inconspicuous surface, then rub the mark with your thumb before judging it — a steel blade leaves a grey metal smear on hard minerals that looks exactly like a scratch and wipes off. Is a diamond twice as hard as ruby? No — far more than twice. The Mohs scale is ordinal, not proportional, and the intervals are deliberately unequal. On an absolute indentation scale corundum at 9 is roughly four times as hard as topaz at 8, and diamond at 10 is roughly four times corundum again. The single step from 9 to 10 is a larger jump than the whole range from 1 to 9. What hardness does a ring stone need for daily wear? Seven or above, and preferably eight, because ordinary household dust contains quartz at 7 and will slowly abrade anything softer. Diamond, sapphire, ruby and spinel are all comfortably in range. Opal, tanzanite, pearl and turquoise are not, and belong in earrings or a pendant where nothing strikes them. Why is jade tough if it is only 6 or 7? Because hardness and toughness are different properties. Hardness is resistance to scratching; toughness is resistance to breaking. Jade is made of densely interlocked fibrous crystals, which makes it extraordinarily resistant to fracture — it was used for axe heads for millennia. Diamond, by contrast, is the hardest natural material and will cleave from a well-placed blow. Does scratching glass prove it is a diamond? No. Glass is only about 5.5, so quartz, topaz, garnet, moissanite and cubic zirconia all scratch it easily. The test only rules things out — anything a knife scratches is not a diamond. Distinguishing diamond from moissanite needs thermal conductivity or a check for double refraction, and from cubic zirconia needs density or thermal testing. Can hardness vary within one mineral? Yes, and kyanite is the classic demonstration: about 4.5 measured along the length of its blades and about 7 measured across them, because the bonding differs by direction. Diamond is also anisotropic, which is exactly what makes it possible to cut a diamond with another diamond. Weathering also softens the outside of most specimens, which is why the test belongs on a fresh surface. Why does my marble countertop scratch and stain so easily? Marble is recrystallised calcite, hardness 3, so almost anything harder than a fingernail marks it. Worse, calcite reacts with acid, so lemon juice, vinegar and wine etch dull spots into the polish through a chemical reaction that sealing does not prevent. Granite is 6 to 7 and quartzite is harder still. Showroom names are unreliable — take an offcut and try a knife on it. ## Got the hardness but not the mineral? Hardness brackets a specimen; it rarely names it. Photograph the rock and Orvik proposes the species, then check the call against the streak, lustre and cleavage in the mineral key. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [What is the hardest rock?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-the-hardest-rock/) - [How to identify rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/identify-rocks/) - [Quartz identification](https://orvik.app/rocks/quartz-identification/) - [Gemstone identification](https://orvik.app/rocks/gemstone-identification/) - [Crystal identifier](https://orvik.app/rocks/crystal-identifier/) - [How to identify igneous rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/how-to-identify-igneous-rocks/) - [What is this rock?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-this-rock/) - [What is a geode?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-a-geode/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [US Geological Survey — Mohs scale of mineral hardness](https://www.usgs.gov/programs/mineral-resources-program) - [Mindat — hardness and physical properties](https://www.mindat.org/) - [GIA — gemstone durability, hardness, toughness and stability](https://www.gia.edu/gem-encyclopedia) - [Mineralogical Society of America](https://msaweb.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Mushroom Identification Chart — Gills & Spore Print Key** > A cautious mushroom key: filter 28 common North American and European fungi by cap, underside, spore print and substrate. Deadly species flagged first. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Food & foraging Food & foraging # What mushroom is this? This key narrows possibilities. It does not confirm an identification and it never authorises eating anything. Work through it in the order a mycologist does: **what is under the cap, what colour is the spore print, and what is it growing out of**. Anything with white gills and a bag at the base of the stem gets treated as a death cap until an expert says otherwise. Entries **28** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** **Do not eat any wild mushroom identified from a website, an app, or a photograph.** The death cap and the destroying angel are responsible for around 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide, they look like ordinary field mushrooms, and there is no antidote — symptoms clear after a day and the liver fails on the third. If someone has eaten an unknown mushroom, call poison control immediately (US: 800-222-1222) and keep a specimen, even a chewed one. Do not wait for symptoms. Narrow it down Clear all Search mushrooms by name Underside of the cap The first cut in every mushroom key. Gills — thin blades Pores — a sponge of tubes Teeth or spines Blunt wrinkles or false gills Smooth or none Spore print colour Cap on paper, covered, for a few hours. It is the single most useful test there is. White or cream Pink Brown or rust Black or purple-black Not taken / none Stem features A ring or skirt A cup or bag at the base Plain stem No real stem Hollow Growing on Ground in woodland Grass, lawn or pasture Wood, log or stump A living tree Dung or compost Risk Deadly Makes you ill Edible when correctly identified Not toxic, not worth eating Showing all 28 mushrooms 1. ### Death cap Can injure you Amanita phalloides Greenish, olive or yellowish cap with a faint radial sheen, white gills that never darken, a white skirt-like ring, and — the critical feature — a white membranous sac at the base that is usually buried and has to be dug for. Size Cap 5–15 cm Where Europe, and now widespread in California, the Pacific Northwest and the northeastern US under introduced oaks. Confused with Young button stages look exactly like edible field mushrooms and puffballs; the green cap looks like an edible russula or a paddy straw mushroom. Slice any suspected puffball vertically — an outline of a mushroom inside means Amanita. Risk Amatoxins destroy the liver. Half a cap can kill an adult. Symptoms begin 6–24 hours later, appear to resolve on day two, and organ failure follows on day three. Cooking, drying and freezing do nothing. In the record 36,397 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in August · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5240325) 2. [How mushroom identification works](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-mushrooms/) 3. ### Destroying angel Can injure you Amanita bisporigera, A. ocreata, A. virosa Pure white throughout — cap, gills, stem and ring — with a sac at the buried base and a slightly shaggy stem. Elegant, and the most dangerous mushroom in North America. Size Cap 5–12 cm Where Across North America and Europe, under oak and other hardwoods. Confused with Young button stages resemble puffballs and white field mushrooms. Field mushrooms have pink or brown gills and never a basal sac. Risk The same amatoxins as the death cap, and the same delayed course. There is no home test and no antidote. In the record 4,153 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5452051) 4. ### Fly agaric Can injure you Amanita muscaria The storybook mushroom: scarlet to orange cap studded with white warts, white gills, a ring, and a stem base ringed with concentric scaly bands. Size Cap 8–20 cm Where Under birch, pine and spruce across the northern hemisphere. Risk Ibotenic acid and muscimol. Causes delirium, nausea, sedation and confusion rather than organ damage, but hospitalisations are routine and dosage is unpredictable. In the record 316,522 georeferenced records · half of them Oct–Oct · most distinctive in October · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8168319) 5. ### Deadly galerina Can injure you Galerina marginata A small nondescript brown mushroom with a faint ring on a brownish stem, growing in clusters on decaying wood. Rust-brown spore print. Size Cap 2–4 cm Where On rotting conifer and hardwood across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Almost identical to several edible wood-rotting species, including honey fungus and the psilocybin-containing *Psilocybe* species it grows alongside. It has killed people hunting both. Risk Contains the same amatoxins as the death cap in a mushroom the size of a thumbnail. In the record 29,533 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8118872) 6. true sharp-edged gills that run down the stem. the gills glow faintly green in complete darkness."> ### Jack-o'-lantern Handle with care Omphalotus olearius, O. illudens Bright pumpkin-orange throughout, in dense overlapping clumps at the base of a stump, with **true sharp-edged gills that run down the stem**. The gills glow faintly green in complete darkness. Size Cap 5–15 cm Where Eastern North America and southern Europe, at the base of hardwood stumps. Confused with Chanterelle, the classic and frequent error. Chanterelles have blunt forking ridges rather than gills, grow singly from soil, and are never in a clump on wood. Risk Violent vomiting and cramps for several hours. Rarely dangerous, reliably memorable. In the record 2,597 georeferenced records · half of them Oct–Nov · most distinctive in November · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2538088) 7. ### Chanterelle Cantharellus species Egg-yellow, funnel-shaped, with blunt forking ridges running down the stem rather than knife-edged gills, growing singly from soil. Smells of apricot. Size Cap 3–10 cm Where Woodland across North America and Europe, in mycorrhizal association with oak, beech and conifers. Confused with Jack-o'-lantern, which is on wood in clumps with true gills, and the false chanterelle, which has thin crowded true gills and a darker orange centre. 8. completely hollow from cap tip to stem base when sliced lengthwise."> ### Morel Handle with care Morchella species A honeycombed conical cap of pits and ridges, attached to the stem at its base, and — the essential check — **completely hollow from cap tip to stem base when sliced lengthwise**. Size Cap 4–12 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere in spring, often after fire or near dying elms and ash. Confused with False morel (*Gyromitra*), which is brain-like and wrinkled rather than pitted, and is chambered with cottony fibre inside rather than hollow. Slice every one lengthwise. Risk Must be cooked thoroughly. Raw morels cause gastrointestinal illness, and they should not be eaten with alcohol by anyone who has reacted before. In the record 44,728 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Apr · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2594601) 9. ### False morel Can injure you Gyromitra esculenta A reddish-brown irregularly folded brain-like cap, not pitted, and when sliced lengthwise it is chambered and stuffed with cottony fibre rather than hollow. Size Cap 4–10 cm Where Conifer woods across North America and northern Europe, in spring. Risk Gyromitrin metabolises to monomethylhydrazine — rocket fuel. Toxicity varies by population and by individual, the vapour from cooking has poisoned people, and it can be fatal. It is eaten traditionally in parts of Scandinavia and that tradition should not be exported. In the record 14,847 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5258510) 10. ### Field mushroom Handle with care Agaricus campestris White cap, a thin ring, and gills that start bright pink and darken to chocolate brown. The spore print is dark brown, never white, and there is no sac at the base. Size Cap 4–10 cm Where Pasture and lawns across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Destroying angel, which is the same size and colour with white gills and a basal sac. Check gill colour and dig up the base every single time. Risk Some Agaricus species — the yellow-staining mushroom in particular — bruise chrome yellow at the stem base and smell of ink or phenol when cut, and cause severe stomach upset. In the record 17,437 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5243458) 11. ### Shaggy ink cap Handle with care Coprinus comatus A tall white shaggy cylinder like a barrister's wig, standing on a hollow stem with a loose ring, which within a day dissolves itself into black ink from the bottom edge upward. Size Cap 5–15 cm tall Where Lawns, verges and disturbed ground across the northern hemisphere. Risk Edible when young and pure white, and must be cooked within hours. The related common ink cap (*Coprinopsis atramentaria*) causes a violent reaction if alcohol is taken within days of eating it. In the record 148,708 georeferenced records · half of them Oct–Oct · most distinctive in October · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7987658) 12. ### Giant puffball Handle with care Calvatia gigantea A white ball the size of a football with no stem and no gills, pure white and firm like marshmallow all the way through when sliced. Size 20–70 cm across Where Meadows and woodland edge across North America and Europe. Confused with Amanita buttons, which are also white balls. Slicing vertically settles it: a puffball is uniform white throughout, while an Amanita button shows the outline of a cap, gills and stem inside. Risk Edible only while the interior is pure white. Any yellow, olive or brown discolouration means it has begun forming spores and it causes stomach upset. In the record 23,923 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in June · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2536058) 13. ### Honey fungus Handle with care Armillaria species Honey-brown caps with fine dark scales in dense clusters at the base of a living or dead tree, with a whitish ring and a white spore print. Black bootlace-like rhizomorphs under nearby bark. Size Cap 3–12 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere, parasitic on tree roots. Risk Eaten in some regions after thorough cooking, and it makes a substantial minority of people ill regardless. The bigger problem is that deadly galerina grows on the same wood and looks similar. In the record 102,072 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2526021) 14. ### Oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus Shelving fan- or oyster-shaped caps in overlapping tiers on dead hardwood, with gills running right down onto a short off-centre stem or no stem at all. Smells faintly of aniseed. Size Cap 5–20 cm Where On hardwood, especially beech and poplar, across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Various shelf fungi, most harmlessly. The lookalike worth knowing outside North America is the ghost fungus of Australia, which is toxic and bioluminescent. In the record 47,857 georeferenced records · half of them Nov–Jan · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2526530) 15. ### Chicken of the woods Handle with care Laetiporus sulphureus Overlapping shelves of vivid sulphur-yellow and orange with a suede-like surface and tiny yellow pores underneath, no gills, growing straight out of a trunk. Size Brackets 10–40 cm Where On oak and other hardwoods across North America and Europe. Risk Widely eaten, but a substantial minority of people react badly to it, and specimens from eucalyptus, conifers and yew have caused serious illness. Cook thoroughly and try a small amount first. In the record 122,547 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in June · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9072021) 16. ### Hen of the woods Grifola frondosa A large rosette of overlapping grey-brown fronds like ruffled feathers, growing from a branched white stalk at the foot of an oak, with white pores underneath. Called maitake. Size Clusters 20–60 cm Where At the base of oaks across North America, Europe and Japan, in autumn. In the record 23,986 georeferenced records · half of them Oct–Oct · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2540800) 17. ### Porcini and boletes Handle with care Boletus edulis and relatives A stout brown bun-shaped cap over a sponge of white-to-yellow pores, on a fat pale stem with a fine white net near the top. Flesh does not change colour when cut. Size Cap 8–25 cm Where Under conifers and oaks across the northern hemisphere. Confused with The bolete family is large and contains toxic members. The rough rule among foragers: avoid any bolete with red or orange pores, or whose flesh bruises immediately blue — a few good species do bruise blue, but the rule keeps beginners safe. In the record 76,997 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in August · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5954958) 18. ### Lion's mane Hericium erinaceus A white cushion hanging from a tree wound, covered in long soft downward-pointing spines like a mop. There is nothing else it can be confused with. Size 10–30 cm Where On wounds in living hardwoods across North America, Europe and Asia. In the record 11,343 georeferenced records · half of them Oct–Nov · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5248508) 19. ### Turkey tail Trametes versicolor Thin flexible brackets in concentric bands of brown, tan, blue-grey and cream with a velvety surface, and a cream underside with tiny pores. Too tough to eat; used for tea. Size Brackets 3–10 cm Where On dead hardwood worldwide. Confused with False turkey tail, which has a smooth underside with no pores at all. Look underneath. In the record 197,063 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Dec · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2548311) 20. ### Fairy ring champignon Handle with care Marasmius oreades Small tan caps with a low central bump, widely spaced pale gills, and a tough wiry stem that twists without snapping, arranged in an arc or ring on grass. Size Cap 2–5 cm Where Lawns and pasture across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Several toxic small brown lawn mushrooms grow in the same rings, including *Clitocybe* species containing muscarine. This is a genus for experienced foragers only. In the record 45,214 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Oct · most distinctive in July · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2537250) 21. ### Green-spored parasol Can injure you Chlorophyllum molybdites A large white cap with coarse brown scales and a movable ring, in rings on watered lawns. The gills slowly turn dull green with age, and the spore print is green. Size Cap 7–30 cm Where Lawns across the southern and eastern United States, and increasingly northwards. Risk The most commonly eaten poisonous mushroom in North America, because it looks like the edible shaggy parasol and grows on suburban lawns. Causes severe vomiting and diarrhoea, occasionally requiring hospitalisation. The green spore print is the whole test. In the record 17,373 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5243168) 22. ### Sulphur tuft Handle with care Hypholoma fasciculare Dense clusters of sulphur-yellow caps on decaying wood, with gills that start yellow and become olive-green then purple-brown. Intensely bitter. Size Cap 2–6 cm Where On stumps and dead wood across the northern hemisphere. Risk Causes severe gastrointestinal illness. Frequently confused with honey fungus, which grows in the same places. In the record 119,456 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3293632) 23. ### Inky cap and alcohol reaction Handle with care Coprinopsis atramentaria Grey-brown bell-shaped caps in clusters, dissolving into black ink with age. Similar to shaggy ink cap but grey and much smoother. Size Cap 3–7 cm Where Disturbed ground and buried wood across the northern hemisphere. Risk Contains coprine, which blocks alcohol metabolism. Eating it and drinking within three days causes flushing, palpitations and vomiting — the same mechanism as the drug disulfiram. In the record 26,824 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5242740) 24. ### Amanita muscaria buttons and other white eggs Can injure you Amanita species, young A white or pale egg emerging from soil, which is how every Amanita starts and which looks exactly like a small puffball. Slice it vertically: an Amanita button contains the outline of a cap, gills and stem. Size 3–6 cm Where Wherever Amanita species fruit. Risk This is the single most important cut a beginner can make. Every white ball gets sliced from top to bottom before anyone considers eating it. In the record 896,164 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in July · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/6005964) 25. ### Russula Handle with care Russula species Brightly coloured caps — red, green, purple, yellow — with white gills and a white stem, and flesh so brittle the stem snaps cleanly like chalk instead of tearing into fibres. Size Cap 4–15 cm Where Woodland across the northern hemisphere. Confused with The green-capped ones are confused with the death cap, and that is exactly how several fatal poisonings have happened. Russulas have no ring and no basal sac. Risk The genus contains edible and sickening species that are not separable without expert knowledge. Treat as inedible. In the record 1,172,584 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in July · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2551169) 26. ### Blewit Handle with care Lepista nuda Lilac to violet throughout when fresh, fading to tan from the cap centre, with crowded gills and a pale pink spore print. Smells strongly of frozen orange juice. Size Cap 5–12 cm Where Leaf litter and compost across North America and Europe, in late autumn. Confused with Purple *Cortinarius* species, some of which are deadly and which have a rust-brown spore print and a cobwebby veil. The spore print separates them. In the record 37,449 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5242048) 27. ### Cortinarius Can injure you Cortinarius species A cobwebby veil of fine fibres between cap edge and stem in young specimens, leaving a rusty fibrous zone on the stem as spores drop. Rust-brown spore print. Size Cap 3–12 cm Where Woodland across the northern hemisphere; the largest mushroom genus there is. Risk Several species contain orellanine, which destroys the kidneys with a delay of two to three weeks — long enough that patients do not connect the two. Treat the whole genus as off limits. 28. ### Puffball, common Handle with care Lycoperdon perlatum A pear-shaped white ball covered in small conical spines, on a short stalk, which develops a hole at the top and puffs brown spore dust when pressed. Size 3–7 cm Where Woodland floor across the northern hemisphere. Risk Edible only when pure white inside. Once the interior yellows it is spores, and it causes stomach upset. And still slice every one vertically to rule out an Amanita button. In the record 81,767 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5243258) 29. ### Earthball Handle with care Scleroderma citrinum A hard yellow-brown ball with a thick warty rind that is firm rather than soft, and — the test — cut it open and the interior is solid purple-black even when young. Size 3–10 cm Where Woodland across the northern hemisphere. Confused with True puffballs, which are white and soft inside. The black interior is decisive and there is no ambiguity. Risk Causes severe gastrointestinal illness. One of the most common poisonings in Europe because it grows beside edible puffballs. In the record 81,700 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in August · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5239982) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## The four checks that come before anything else Mycologists do not identify from a picture of a cap. They work through a fixed sequence, and the first three steps take longer than looking but eliminate almost everything dangerous. 1. **Dig the whole thing up.** Not cut — dug. The most important diagnostic feature in the entire fungal kingdom is the volva, the membranous sac at the base of an Amanita, and it is usually below ground. A mushroom picked by cutting the stem has thrown that information away. 2. **Look at the underside.** Gills, pores, teeth, blunt ridges or nothing. This is the first branch of every key and it is unambiguous. 3. **Take a spore print.** Cap face down on paper — half white, half black — covered with a bowl, left for two to twelve hours. The colour of the powder is a fixed character that no photograph shows and that settles several dangerous confusions on its own. 4. **Note what it is growing on and with.** Wood, soil, grass, dung, a living tree, and which tree species. Many fungi are restricted to one host, and substrate is treated as a diagnostic character rather than a note. The spore print is the step most often skipped and the one that pays the most. It is the whole difference between a shaggy parasol and the green-spored parasol that sends people to hospital every summer in the American South, and between a blewit and a deadly *Cortinarius*. ## The rules that will get you killed Every one of the following is repeated widely and every one is false. They matter because they are the beliefs that show up in poisoning case reports. *Persistent folk tests for mushroom edibility, and why each fails.* | The claim | Why it is wrong | | --- | --- | | A silver spoon turns black in a poisonous mushroom | No mushroom toxin reacts with silver. Amatoxins are peptides and do nothing to metal | | Poisonous mushrooms taste bad | Death cap survivors consistently report it tasted good. Amatoxins are tasteless | | If animals eat it, people can | Squirrels, slugs and deer eat death caps without harm. Mammalian tolerance varies enormously | | Cooking destroys the poison | Amatoxins are stable to 260 °C, to drying and to freezing. Cooking helps for a few species and does nothing for the fatal ones | | Poisonous mushrooms peel differently, or bruise blue | Neither correlates with toxicity. Several excellent boletes bruise blue instantly | | Mushrooms growing on wood are safe | Deadly galerina grows on rotting wood and contains the same toxin as the death cap | | An app identified it, so it is fine | Image classifiers routinely confuse Amanita species with edible look-alikes, and a false positive here is fatal. Every major mycological society advises against using them for edibility | The one rule that does hold: **if you are not certain, you do not eat it.** There is no partial credit in mycology, and there is no wild mushroom worth the risk of getting it wrong. ## The Amanita problem Around 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide involve amatoxins, and the great majority of those are *Amanita phalloides* and the destroying angels. What makes them so lethal is not potency alone but the shape of the illness. The course runs in three phases. **Six to twenty-four hours** after eating, violent vomiting and diarrhoea begin — long enough after the meal that people blame something else. **On day two the symptoms clear** and the patient feels better; some are discharged from hospital at this point. **On day three to five the liver fails.** Treatment is supportive, silibinin and N-acetylcysteine are used without a strong evidence base, and the definitive treatment is a liver transplant. The consequences for identification practice are specific: - **Dig up every mushroom you intend to identify.** The volva is the character, and it is buried. - **Slice every white ball vertically.** Amanita buttons look exactly like puffballs and the section shows the developing cap and gills inside. - **Treat white gills plus a ring plus a basal sac as a death cap**, full stop, whatever colour the cap is. Death caps range from green to yellow to nearly white. - **If anyone has eaten an unknown mushroom, call poison control at once** and do not wait for symptoms. Keep the specimen, including anything left in the pan or the bin — identification changes the treatment. Death caps are also spreading. They are native to Europe and arrived in North America on the roots of imported ornamental oaks and chestnuts; they are now well established in California, the Pacific Northwest and parts of the Northeast, and the range is still expanding. A regional guide printed thirty years ago may say they are absent from your area and be wrong. ## How to take a spore print Five minutes of work, several hours of waiting, and it is the single most informative thing you can do to an unknown mushroom at home. 1. Cut the stem off flush with the cap. 2. Place the cap gill-side or pore-side down on a sheet of paper that is **half white and half black**, so both pale and dark spores show. 3. Put a drop of water on the cap to keep it moist and cover it with a bowl or glass. 4. Leave it two to twelve hours somewhere still and out of a draught. 5. Lift the cap straight up and read the colour of the powder in daylight. The colours group into a small number of categories that carry a lot of information. **White or cream** covers Amanita, Russula, Lactarius, oyster mushrooms and most wood-rotters. **Pink** means Entoloma or Lepista. **Rust-brown** means Cortinarius, Galerina or Gymnopilus — three genera that between them contain most of the remaining deadly species. **Chocolate brown** means Agaricus. **Black or purple-black** means the ink caps and their relatives. **Green** means *Chlorophyllum molybdites* and effectively nothing else, which is why it is the definitive test for the most-eaten poisonous mushroom in North America. ## Learning to forage properly Every experienced forager learned the same way, and it is not from a book alone. **Join a mycological society.** Most regions of North America and Europe have one, they run identification walks and monthly forays, and members bring specimens for named experts to examine. In the United States the North American Mycological Association lists local clubs; in the UK the British Mycological Society does the same. This is by an enormous margin the fastest and safest way to learn. **Start with the foolproof four.** Most teachers begin with species that have no dangerous look-alikes: chicken of the woods, giant puffball (sliced), morels (sliced) and chanterelles. Learn those completely, including their look-alikes, before adding a fifth. **Keep a specimen of everything you eat.** Set one aside uncooked in the fridge for 48 hours. If anyone becomes ill, that specimen is what allows a hospital to identify the toxin. This is standard practice among serious foragers and it costs nothing. **Never combine identification with any other pursuit.** A substantial share of amatoxin poisonings in North America occur among people hunting psilocybin mushrooms, because *Galerina marginata* grows in the same habitat and looks similar. **Try a small amount first, alone.** Even confirmed edible species make some people ill — chicken of the woods, honey fungus and morels all have well-documented individual reactions. Eat a small cooked portion, wait a day, and do not introduce two new species at once. ## What this key is for 28 entries covering the fungi that come up in questions: the killers, the common sickeners, the well-known edibles, and the pairs that get confused. Estimates of global fungal diversity run into the millions of species, several thousand of which fruit visibly in any temperate region, and no key of this size is a field guide. The specific things this tool is good for: telling you when a mushroom in your garden is worth worrying about with a dog or a child around, telling you which family you are looking at, and telling you which look-alike to check next. The specific thing it is not for is deciding to eat anything. If you want an identification confirmed, photograph the cap top, the underside, the whole stem including the dug-up base and a vertical section, note the tree species nearby, take a spore print, and post it all to a regional mycology group. Mycologists are generous with their time and consistently blunt about when a photograph is not enough — which is itself the most useful thing they teach. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 26 of the 28mushrooms here: **1,483,693 georeferenced records** across the 22 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 20 families, the oldest of them collected in 1996. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded mushrooms in this key hold 61% of all the records between them: Fly agaric alone accounts for 316,522, while Jack-o'-lantern has 2,597. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 23% of these records come from the Netherlands, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 1,455,983 georeferenced records for these 22 mushrooms fall in September–October alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these mushrooms are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in October. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in September–October. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these mushrooms recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 10 of the 22mushrooms here peak outside the warm half of the year — Fly agaric, Turkey tail, Shaggy ink cap among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 26 named mushrooms in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Fly agaric | [Amanita muscaria (L.) Lam.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8168319) | species | 316,522 | 158,146 | Oct–Oct | October | the Netherlands | | Turkey tail | [Trametes versicolor (L.) Lloyd](https://www.gbif.org/species/2548311) | species | 197,063 | 225,658 | Aug–Dec | March | the United States | | Shaggy ink cap | [Coprinus comatus (O.F.Müll.) Pers.](https://www.gbif.org/species/7987658) | species | 148,708 | 84,775 | Oct–Oct | October | the Netherlands | | Chicken of the woods | [Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.) Murrill](https://www.gbif.org/species/9072021) | species | 122,547 | 84,169 | Jul–Sep | June | the Netherlands | | Sulphur tuft | [Hypholoma fasciculare (Huds.) P.Kumm.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3293632) | species | 119,456 | 63,277 | Sep–Oct | November | the United Kingdom | | Puffball, common | [Lycoperdon perlatum Pers.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5243258) | species | 81,767 | 58,270 | Sep–Oct | September | the United Kingdom | | Earthball | [Scleroderma citrinum Pers.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5239982) | species | 81,700 | 39,905 | Jul–Sep | August | the Netherlands | | Porcini and boletes | [Boletus edulis Bull.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5954958) | species | 76,997 | 34,614 | Aug–Sep | August | Sweden | | Oyster mushroom | [Pleurotus ostreatus (Jacq.) P.Kumm.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2526530) | species | 47,857 | 92,997 | Nov–Jan | January | the United States | | Fairy ring champignon | [Marasmius oreades (Bolton) Fr.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2537250) | species | 45,214 | 32,318 | Aug–Oct | July | the Netherlands | | Blewit | [Lepista nuda (Bull.) Cooke](https://www.gbif.org/species/5242048) | species | 37,449 | — | Sep–Oct | November | the United Kingdom | | Death cap | [Amanita phalloides (Vaill. ex Fr.) Link](https://www.gbif.org/species/5240325) | species | 36,397 | 13,622 | Sep–Oct | August | the Netherlands | | Deadly galerina | [Galerina marginata (Batsch) Kühner](https://www.gbif.org/species/8118872) | species | 29,533 | 28,287 | Sep–Oct | December | the United States | | Inky cap and alcohol reaction | [Coprinopsis atramentaria (Bull.) Redhead, Vilgalys & Moncalvo](https://www.gbif.org/species/5242740) | species | 26,824 | — | Sep–Oct | April | the United Kingdom | | Hen of the woods | [Grifola frondosa (Dicks.) Gray](https://www.gbif.org/species/2540800) | species | 23,986 | 15,698 | Oct–Oct | October | the United States | | Giant puffball | [Calvatia gigantea (Batsch) Lloyd](https://www.gbif.org/species/2536058) | species | 23,923 | 22,252 | Sep–Oct | June | the Netherlands | | Field mushroom | [Agaricus campestris L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5243458) | species | 17,437 | 20,882 | Sep–Oct | July | the United Kingdom | | Green-spored parasol | [Chlorophyllum molybdites (G.Mey.) Massee](https://www.gbif.org/species/5243168) | species | 17,373 | 54,932 | Jul–Sep | July | the United States | | False morel | [Gyromitra esculenta Pers. ex Fr.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5258510) | species | 14,847 | 10,254 | Apr–May | April | Sweden | | Lion's mane | [Hericium erinaceus (Bull.) Pers.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5248508) | species | 11,343 | 16,271 | Oct–Nov | December | the United States | | Destroying angel | [Amanita bisporigera G.F.Atk.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5452051) | species | 4,153 | 18,343 | Jun–Aug | July | the United States | | Jack-o'-lantern | [Omphalotus olearius (DC.) Singer](https://www.gbif.org/species/2538088) | species | 2,597 | 3,156 | Oct–Nov | November | Spain | | Russula | [Russula Pers.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2551169) | genus | 1,172,584 | 1,282,167 | Jul–Sep | July | Sweden | | Amanita muscaria buttons and other white eggs | [Amanita Dill. ex Boehm., 1760](https://www.gbif.org/species/6005964) | genus | 896,164 | — | Sep–Oct | July | the Netherlands | | Honey fungus | [Armillaria (Fr.) Staude](https://www.gbif.org/species/2526021) | genus | 102,072 | 159,299 | Sep–Oct | November | the United Kingdom | | Morel | [Morchella Dill. ex Pers.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2594601) | genus | 44,728 | 75,179 | Mar–Apr | April | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this Can an app safely tell me if a mushroom is edible? No, and every major mycological society says so explicitly. Image classifiers confuse Amanita species with edible look-alikes, and the cost of one false positive is a liver transplant. Apps and keys are useful for narrowing possibilities and for learning what to check next; edibility decisions require the whole specimen in hand, a spore print, and in practice a person who knows the local fungi. How do I take a spore print? Cut the stem off flush, place the cap gill-side down on paper that is half white and half black, add a drop of water on top, cover with a bowl, and leave it two to twelve hours out of a draught. Lift the cap straight up and read the powder colour in daylight. It is the single most informative home test there is and it settles several dangerous confusions on its own. Does the silver spoon test work? No. No mushroom toxin reacts with silver — amatoxins are peptides and do nothing to metal. The same goes for every other folk test: poisonous mushrooms do not taste bad, animals eating them proves nothing, and cooking does not destroy amatoxins, which are stable to 260 °C and to drying and freezing. What is the most dangerous mushroom? The death cap, Amanita phalloides, with the destroying angels close behind. Together they cause around 90% of fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. Half a cap can kill an adult, symptoms begin only after 6 to 24 hours, appear to resolve on the second day, and liver failure follows on the third. There is no antidote and the definitive treatment is transplantation. Are mushrooms growing on wood safer than ones on the ground? No. Deadly galerina, Galerina marginata, grows in clusters on rotting wood and contains the same amatoxins as the death cap in a mushroom the size of a thumbnail. Jack-o'-lantern and sulphur tuft also grow on wood and both cause severe illness. Substrate is a useful identification character, not a safety rule. My dog ate a mushroom in the garden. What should I do? Call a vet or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center on (888) 426-4435 immediately, and collect a specimen — ideally the whole thing including the buried base — in a paper bag rather than plastic. Do not wait for symptoms: with amatoxin-containing species the treatable window closes before the animal looks ill. Lawn mushrooms are usually harmless but the exceptions are the ones that matter. How do I tell a chanterelle from a jack-o'-lantern? Look at the underside and at how it grows. A chanterelle has blunt forking ridges that run down the stem and grows singly out of soil; a jack-o'-lantern has true knife-edged gills and grows in dense overlapping clumps on wood or at the base of a stump. Chanterelles smell of apricot. Jack-o'-lanterns cause hours of violent vomiting and are the single most common chanterelle mistake. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows mushrooms down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [How to identify mushrooms](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-mushrooms/) - [How to tell if a berry is poisonous](https://orvik.app/food/how-to-tell-if-a-berry-is-poisonous/) - [Names of poisonous flowers](https://orvik.app/plants/names-of-poisonous-flowers/) - [What plant is this?](https://orvik.app/plants/what-plant-is-this/) - [Free plant identifier apps](https://orvik.app/plants/free-plant-identifier-app/) - [What are these berries?](https://orvik.app/food/what-are-these-berries/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What berry is this, and can you eat it?](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [North American Mycological Association — local clubs and poisoning case registry](https://namyco.org/) - [America's Poison Centers — (800) 222-1222](https://poisonhelp.org/) - [British Mycological Society](https://www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/) - [CDC MMWR — Amanita phalloides poisoning outbreak reports](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Dog & Cat Age Calculator — The Real Curve, Not Times Seven** > Convert a dog's or cat's age into human years using the veterinary life-stage curve, which weights the first two years heavily and then scales by adult size. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Animals Animals # How old is my dog or cat in human years? Multiplying by seven has never been right. The first year of a dog's life is worth about fifteen human years, the second about nine more, and **every year after that depends on how big the dog grew** — four for a chihuahua, seven and a half for a Great Dane. This uses the veterinary life-stage curve instead. Method **AAHA life stages** Size bands **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Animal Dog Cat Adult size Toy — under 9 kg / 20 lb Small — 9–11 kg / 20–25 lb Medium — 11–23 kg / 25–50 lb Large — 23–45 kg / 50–100 lb Giant — over 45 kg / 100 lb Use the weight the dog reached as an adult, not its weight now if it is still growing. Age years months Roughly equivalent to a human of — — - Life stage **—** - Senior from **—** - Epigenetic clock estimate **—** ## Why "multiply by seven" was always wrong The seven-year rule has no scientific origin. It appears to have been a marketing simplification popularised in the 1950s, and its two failures are easy to see. A one-year-old dog can reproduce and has a full adult skeleton — that is not a seven-year-old child. And a Great Dane at eight is geriatric while a chihuahua at eight is middle-aged, which one multiplier cannot express. What veterinary medicine uses instead is a curve with three phases, standardised in the American Animal Hospital Association and American Veterinary Medical Association life-stage guidelines: - **Year one is worth about 15 human years.** Growth, sexual maturity and most neurological development all complete inside it. - **Year two adds about nine more**, bringing a two-year-old dog to roughly 24. - **Every year after that adds four to seven**, depending on adult size — about four for a toy breed and seven and a half for a giant one. Cats follow a similar but tighter curve and do not vary meaningfully by breed: about 15 human years in the first year, 24 by the end of the second, and roughly four per year afterwards. Indoor and outdoor life expectancy differ far more than breed does. ## Size changes everything after year two Among dogs, and unusually among mammals, larger individuals live shorter lives. Across species the relationship runs the other way — elephants outlive mice — but within the domestic dog, selective breeding for size has produced a strong inverse relationship between adult mass and lifespan. The leading explanation is growth rate. Giant breeds reach fifty times their birth weight in the same window in which a toy breed reaches twenty times, and that accelerated growth appears to carry a cost in oxidative damage and early-onset cancer. Great Danes, Irish wolfhounds and mastiffs are considered senior at six; a miniature poodle is not senior until ten or eleven. *Typical lifespan and the age at which a dog is considered senior, by adult size band. Following AAHA canine life stage guidelines.* | Size | Adult weight | Typical lifespan | Senior from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Toy | Under 9 kg | 14–16 years | 10–11 | | Small | 9–11 kg | 13–15 years | 9–10 | | Medium | 11–23 kg | 11–13 years | 8–9 | | Large | 23–45 kg | 10–12 years | 7–8 | | Giant | Over 45 kg | 7–9 years | 5–6 | The practical consequence is a veterinary one rather than a curiosity. Senior wellness screening — bloodwork, blood pressure, urinalysis — is recommended from the age the size band becomes senior, not from a fixed number of years. A seven-year-old mastiff and a twelve-year-old dachshund are at the same point on the curve. ## What the epigenetic clock says A 2020 study at the University of California San Diego took a different route entirely, comparing methylation patterns in dog and human DNA rather than counting years. Methylation marks accumulate on the genome in a predictable way with age and are used to build "epigenetic clocks" that estimate biological rather than chronological age. The dog-to-human mapping the study produced is logarithmic: **human age ≈ 16 × ln(dog age) + 31**. It matches the phase structure above closely at the young end, giving about 31 human years for a one-year-old dog and 42 for a two-year-old, and it converges with the life-stage tables in middle age. Two caveats keep it from replacing the size-banded curve in practice. The study used Labrador retrievers only, so it cannot express the size effect that dominates the second half of a dog's life. And methylation clocks measure a molecular process rather than the functional signs a vet actually treats. The calculator above uses the AAHA life-stage approach for that reason; the log formula is shown alongside because it is genuinely interesting and is what most of the news coverage referred to. ## Estimating age when you do not know it For a rescue or a stray, teeth are the primary evidence and they are surprisingly informative. - **Under 8 weeks:** deciduous teeth erupting; needle-sharp and tiny. - **3 to 7 months:** adult teeth coming in, incisors first, then canines and premolars. - **About 1 year:** a full clean adult set, white, with the cusps on the incisors still sharply pointed. - **2 to 3 years:** the pointed cusps on the lower central incisors begin to wear flat; slight tartar at the back. - **3 to 5 years:** visible tartar, gum recession starting, incisor wear obvious. - **5 to 10 years:** significant wear, tartar and often periodontal disease; the incisors flatten completely. - **10 and over:** heavy wear or missing teeth, and often a cloudy blue haze across the lens. That cloudy haze is worth naming, because owners consistently mistake it for cataracts. **Lenticular sclerosis** is a normal hardening of the lens that begins around six or seven, gives a uniform bluish sheen and does not significantly impair vision. A true cataract is opaque white and blocks light. A vet can distinguish them in seconds with a light. Chewing habits distort all of it — a dog that chews rocks or tennis balls will look years older in the mouth than it is — so a dental estimate on an adult carries an error of a couple of years in either direction. ## What changes as an animal becomes senior The reason to know an animal's equivalent age is that it changes what you look for. Once a dog or cat is in the senior band, several things move from unremarkable to worth a phone call. **Drinking more.** The single most useful thing an owner can notice. Increased thirst and urination are early signs of kidney disease, diabetes and Cushing's, and in cats hyperthyroidism. Measure it once rather than estimating: a normal dog drinks roughly 50 ml per kilogram per day. **Weight change in either direction.** Loss with a normal appetite is a red flag in an older cat — hyperthyroidism and kidney disease both present that way. Gain increases arthritis pain and shortens life in dogs; a landmark Purina lifetime study found that Labradors kept lean lived roughly two years longer than their overfed littermates. **Reluctance to jump, or a change in litter-box habits.** Cats do not limp visibly, and arthritis in cats is both extremely common over ten and drastically under-diagnosed. Stopping jumping onto a favourite surface, or missing a high-sided litter tray, is often the only sign. **Night pacing and disorientation.** Canine and feline cognitive dysfunction are real, treatable to a degree, and easily written off as "just old age". Twice-yearly veterinary visits from the senior threshold are the standard recommendation, and the reason is arithmetic: a year in a senior dog is five to seven human years, so an annual check is the equivalent of a person being seen once every six years. ## Questions people ask about this How old is my dog in human years? The first year counts for about 15 human years and the second adds about nine more, so a two-year-old dog is roughly 24. After that each year adds four to seven depending on adult size — about four for a toy breed and seven and a half for a giant one. The old seven-year rule has no scientific basis and gets both ends of the curve wrong. Why does size matter so much for dogs? Within the domestic dog, larger adult size strongly predicts a shorter life — the opposite of the pattern across mammal species generally. The leading explanation is growth rate: giant breeds reach fifty times their birth weight in the same window a toy breed takes to reach twenty times, and that appears to carry a cost in oxidative damage and early-onset cancer. A Great Dane is senior at six; a miniature poodle is not until ten or eleven. Do cats age differently from dogs? Cats follow a similar curve — about 15 human years in the first year, 24 by the end of the second, four per year afterwards — but with far less variation between breeds. What does matter for cats is indoors versus outdoors: indoor cats commonly live 12 to 18 years, while outdoor cats face traffic, predation and infectious disease and average considerably less. What is the logarithmic dog age formula? A 2020 UC San Diego study compared DNA methylation patterns between dogs and humans and produced human age ≈ 16 × ln(dog age) + 31. It gives 31 human years for a one-year-old dog and 42 for a two-year-old, and converges with the standard life-stage tables in middle age. It was derived from Labrador retrievers only, so it cannot express the size effect that dominates a dog's later years. How can I tell how old a rescue dog is? Teeth are the best available evidence. A full clean white adult set with sharp incisor cusps suggests about a year; flattening cusps and light tartar suggest two to three; heavy tartar, gum recession and worn incisors suggest five or more. A bluish haze across the lens usually appears after about seven. Chewing habits distort all of it, so expect an error of a couple of years on an adult. Is the cloudy blue look in my old dog's eyes a cataract? Usually not. Lenticular sclerosis is a normal hardening of the lens that starts around six or seven, produces a uniform bluish sheen and does not meaningfully impair vision. A true cataract is opaque white and blocks light. A vet can tell them apart in seconds with a light, and it is worth asking rather than assuming. When is a pet officially senior? By size band rather than by a fixed number. Giant dogs are senior from five or six, large from seven or eight, medium from eight or nine, small from nine or ten, and toy from ten or eleven. Cats are generally considered mature at seven and senior at eleven. Twice-yearly veterinary visits are recommended from that point, because a year in a senior animal is five to seven human years. ## Not sure what breed your dog is? Adult size band is what drives the second half of the curve, and for a mixed-breed rescue that is a guess. Photograph the dog and let Orvik name the likely breeds, then use the size band that fits. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [What breed is my dog?](https://orvik.app/animals/what-breed-is-my-dog/) - [Dog breed identifier](https://orvik.app/animals/dog-breed-identifier/) - [What breed is my cat?](https://orvik.app/animals/what-breed-is-my-cat/) - [Puppy breed identifier](https://orvik.app/animals/puppy-breed-identifier/) - [What size collar for a Lab puppy](https://orvik.app/animals/what-size-collar-for-a-lab-puppy/) - [Feeding a Cane Corso puppy](https://orvik.app/animals/what-to-feed-a-cane-corso-puppy/) - [Feeding a Bengal kitten](https://orvik.app/animals/what-should-i-feed-my-bengal-kitten/) - [Identify an animal by picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-animal-by-picture/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [AAHA — Canine Life Stage Guidelines](https://www.aaha.org/aaha-guidelines/life-stage-canine-2019/) - [AAHA/AAFP — Feline Life Stage Guidelines](https://catvets.com/guidelines/practice-guidelines/life-stage-guidelines) - [Wang et al. 2020 — Quantitative Translation of Dog-to-Human Aging by Conserved Methylation (Cell Systems)](https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/fulltext/S2405-4712(20)30203-9) - [AVMA — pet ageing and senior care resources](https://www.avma.org/resources/pet-owners) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Plant Toxicity Checker for Dogs & Cats — Free Lookup Tool** > Look up 73 common house, garden and roadside plants and see whether each is toxic to dogs, cats or horses, how serious it is, and which part carries the poison. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Plants & trees Plants & trees # Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats? Type the plant name, or filter by pet and by how bad the reaction is. Every entry names **the part of the plant that carries the toxin** and **what actually happens** — because "toxic" covers everything from a sore mouth to kidney failure in eighteen hours, and treating those the same is how people either panic over a poinsettia or wait too long with a lily. Entries **73** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** **This is a lookup table, not a diagnosis.** If your animal has already eaten something, call your vet or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center on (888) 426-4435 now and read this afterwards. Take a piece of the plant with you. Narrow it down Clear all Search plants by name Who it affects Pick one or more. Selecting two shows anything matching either. Toxic to dogs Toxic to cats Toxic to horses Listed non-toxic How serious Severity assumes a normal mouthful, not a whole plant. Mouth or stomach upset Needs a vet Can kill No known toxicity Where you found it Houseplant Garden flower Bulb Shrub or tree Vine or groundcover Wild or roadside Kitchen or veg patch Part eaten Leaves Flowers Berries or fruit Seeds or nuts Bulb, tuber or root Sap Showing all 73 plants 1. ### Sago palm Can injure you Cycas revoluta Not a true palm — a cycad with a stout pineapple-like trunk and stiff, spiny, deep-green fronds. The orange-brown seeds at the crown are the most poisonous part and dogs chew them. Where Landscape plant across the US South; sold everywhere as a houseplant and as bonsai. Confused with Real palms (parlor, areca, ponytail) are all non-toxic. The give-away is the woody, scaly trunk and the seed cone. Risk Cycasin causes acute liver failure. Survival rates are poor even with treatment. One or two seeds can kill a dog. In the record 1,291 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Japan [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2683217) 2. ### True lily Can injure you Lilium and Hemerocallis species Easter, tiger, Asiatic, Oriental, Japanese show and day lilies are in a class of their own for cats — every part including the pollen is lethal, and there is a treatment window of roughly 18 hours. Where Cut-flower bouquets are the single most common exposure route indoors. Confused with Peace lily, calla lily and lily of the valley are not true lilies and do something completely different. Check the genus, not the shop label. Risk Cats only: acute kidney failure. Pollen on the fur, two petals, or the vase water are all enough. In the record 300,815 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2752977) 3. [Which "lilies" are actually lilies](https://orvik.app/plants/is-lily-of-the-valley-poisonous-to-dogs/) 4. ### Lily of the valley Can injure you Convallaria majalis Two broad basal leaves and an arching stem of small white bells, followed by orange-red berries. Shade-loving, spreads into dense colonies, smells strongly sweet. Where Shaded borders and old gardens across the northern US, Canada and Europe. Confused with Wild garlic has the same leaf shape but smells of onion when crushed. This is the classic foraging mix-up and it is fatal. Risk Cardiac glycosides. Slow or irregular heart rate, collapse, seizures. In the record 476,918 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7459480) 5. [How deadly lily of the valley really is](https://orvik.app/plants/is-lily-of-the-valley-deadly/) 6. ### Oleander Can injure you Nerium oleander Evergreen shrub with narrow leathery leaves in whorls of three and clusters of pink, white or red five-lobed flowers. Milky sap. Where Highway medians and hedges across the US Sun Belt and the whole Mediterranean. Confused with Nothing safe looks much like it, but hedge trimmings raked into a horse paddock are the classic accident. Risk Cardiac glycosides in every part, including dried clippings and smoke from burning them. In the record 110,514 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3169756) 7. [Oleander toxicity in detail](https://orvik.app/plants/is-oleander-plant-poisonous/) 8. ### Autumn crocus Can injure you Colchicum autumnale Leafless lilac goblets pushing straight out of bare ground in September and October, with the strappy leaves arriving the following spring. Where Lawns, orchards and damp meadows; widely planted in Europe and the northern US. Confused with Spring crocus (Crocus species) is only a mild stomach upset. Season is the fastest test: spring crocus flowers with its leaves, autumn crocus flowers naked. Risk Colchicine. Bloody vomiting and diarrhoea, then multi-organ failure that can start days later. In the record 170,376 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in September · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2739622) 9. ### Yew Can injure you Taxus baccata and T. cuspidata Dark evergreen needles set in two flat rows, flaking red-brown bark, and a soft red berry-like aril that is open at the end like a cup. Where Churchyards, formal hedging and foundation planting throughout the temperate world. Confused with The red aril flesh itself is harmless; the seed inside it is not. Never treat "the bird ate it" as evidence of safety. Risk Taxine alkaloids stop the heart. Horses die from a few mouthfuls of hedge clippings and are often found dead with leaves still in the mouth. In the record 308,901 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284517) 10. ### Castor bean Can injure you Ricinus communis Fast-growing plant to three metres with huge star-shaped leaves, often bronze-red, and spiky red seed capsules holding glossy mottled beans that look like ticks. Where Ornamental bedding in cool climates, a roadside weed across the warm South and the tropics. Confused with The mottled seeds are sold as jewellery beads. Treat any strung "lucky bean" necklace as poison. Risk Ricin. A single well-chewed seed can kill a dog; swallowed whole and intact, seeds often pass through. In the record 94,344 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5380041) 11. ### Foxglove Can injure you Digitalis purpurea A tall one-sided spire of thimble-shaped purple or white flowers, spotted inside, over a rosette of soft grey-green downy leaves. Where Woodland edges, roadside cuttings and cottage borders across Europe and the US Pacific Northwest. Confused with The first-year rosette looks like comfrey and has been eaten in salad by mistake. Foxglove leaf edges are finely toothed; comfrey is not. Risk Digitalis glycosides. Vomiting, then a dangerously slow or erratic heartbeat. In the record 557,582 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5414995) 12. [Foxglove toxicity explained](https://orvik.app/plants/is-foxglove-toxic/) 13. ### Water hemlock Can injure you Cicuta maculata Umbrella of small white flowers, purple-streaked hollow stem, and — the diagnostic feature — a chambered rootstock that oozes yellow oily sap when cut. Where Ditches, stream banks and wet pasture across the whole of North America. Confused with Wild parsnip, elderflower and wild carrot all carry white umbels. Never dig a wild root on flower shape alone. Risk Cicutoxin. Violent seizures within an hour. This is the most poisonous plant in North America. In the record 12,532 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371867) 14. ### Rhododendron and azalea Can injure you Rhododendron species Evergreen or deciduous shrub with leathery oval leaves and trusses of funnel-shaped flowers; the upper petal usually carries a freckled blotch. Where Foundation planting everywhere with acidic soil; wild across Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest. Risk Grayanotoxins. Drooling, vomiting, weakness, then heart rhythm problems. A few leaves matter in a small dog. In the record 706,341 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2883026) 15. ### Cyclamen Can injure you Cyclamen persicum Heart-shaped leaves marbled silver, and swept-back flowers on bare stems that look like small shuttlecocks. Where A supermarket winter houseplant; naturalised outdoors in mild climates. Risk Terpenoid saponins concentrated in the tuber. Heavy vomiting; large tuber doses cause heart rhythm changes and seizures. In the record 10,334 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Mar · most distinctive in February · mostly from Israel [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3169317) 16. ### Kalanchoe Can injure you Kalanchoe blossfeldiana Succulent with thick scallop-edged leaves and dense flat-topped clusters of tiny four-petalled flowers in hot pink, orange or yellow. Where Sold in every garden centre as a gift plant; a garden escape in warm climates. Risk Bufadienolide cardiac glycosides. Usually just vomiting, but large amounts affect the heart. In the record 325 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from Colombia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985944) 17. ### Dieffenbachia Handle with care Dieffenbachia seguine Thick cane with large paddle leaves splashed cream and white down the midrib. Also sold as dumb cane, for what it does to the tongue. Where One of the most common office and household plants in the world. Risk Insoluble calcium oxalate crystals fire into the mouth lining. Intense pain, drooling, and occasionally swelling that blocks the airway. In the record 3,665 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869345) 18. [Why dieffenbachia is called dumb cane](https://orvik.app/plants/dieffenbachia-is-poisonous/) 19. ### Philodendron Handle with care Philodendron species Glossy leaves, heart-shaped in the trailing kinds and deeply cut in the tree kinds, on stems that produce aerial roots at each node. Where Trailing types are the default hanging-basket plant in the US and Europe. Confused with Almost indistinguishable from pothos at a glance. Pothos leaves are thicker and often gold-flecked; philodendron has a papery sheath at each new leaf. Risk Insoluble calcium oxalates: burning mouth, pawing at the face, drooling, vomiting. Rarely dangerous but genuinely painful. In the record 74,611 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Colombia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2861312) 20. ### Pothos Handle with care Epipremnum aureum Trailing vine with waxy heart-shaped leaves marbled or streaked in yellow or white, tolerating near-darkness and neglect. Where The most widely sold houseplant on earth; an invasive climber in Florida and the tropics. Risk Insoluble calcium oxalates. Mouth pain and vomiting; serious cases are rare. In the record 8,105 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2868323) 21. [Pothos and dogs](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-pothos-plant-poisonous-to-dogs/) 22. ### Peace lily Handle with care Spathiphyllum species Glossy dark ribbed leaves rising straight from the soil with a white hooded spathe around a cream spike. Where A standard low-light office plant worldwide. Confused with Constantly confused with true lilies in cat-poisoning panics. Look for the hood-and-spike flower: that is an arum, not a lily. Risk Insoluble calcium oxalates — a burning mouth, not kidney failure. This matters: peace lily is not a true lily. In the record 7,732 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Colombia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869649) 23. [Peace lily vs true lily](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-peace-lily-poisonous/) 24. ### Monstera Handle with care Monstera deliciosa Huge glossy leaves with natural holes and deep splits, on a thick climbing stem hung with cord-like aerial roots. Where The signature houseplant of the last decade; wild in Central American rainforest. Risk Insoluble calcium oxalates. Mouth irritation and drooling. In the record 5,752 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from Australia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2868241) 25. ### ZZ plant Handle with care Zamioculcas zamiifolia Stiff upright stalks of thick, waxy, symmetrical dark-green leaflets growing from a potato-like rhizome. Where Ubiquitous in low-light offices and rental flats. Risk Calcium oxalates. Mouth and stomach irritation; the reputation for extreme toxicity is not supported. In the record 188 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869014) 26. ### Snake plant Handle with care Dracaena trifasciata Upright sword leaves banded in grey-green with a yellow margin, growing in a tight clump. Where Sold everywhere as mother-in-law's tongue. Risk Saponins. Vomiting, drooling and diarrhoea; rarely more than that. In the record 2,951 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/11041822) 27. ### Aloe vera Handle with care Aloe barbadensis Thick grey-green spear leaves with soft white teeth on the edges, in a rosette, oozing clear gel when cut. Where Windowsills everywhere; naturalised in warm dry regions. Risk The yellow latex under the skin contains anthraquinones — vomiting, diarrhoea, lethargy. The clear inner gel is not the problem part. In the record 98 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Apr · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2777729) 28. ### Jade plant Handle with care Crassula ovata Small tree-like succulent with a thick trunk and glossy oval jade-green pads, often edged red in strong light. Where A classic windowsill succulent worldwide. Risk The toxin is still unidentified. Reported effects include vomiting, unsteady walking and a slowed heart rate. In the record 2,321 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5362063) 29. ### Dracaena Handle with care Dracaena marginata and D. fragrans Thin woody canes topped with a fountain of narrow strap leaves, usually edged red or striped cream. Where Sold as dragon tree and corn plant in every garden centre. Risk Saponins. Vomiting — sometimes with blood — plus drooling; cats often show dilated pupils. In the record 15 georeferenced records · half of them Nov–Nov · mostly from PK [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10818704) 30. [Dracaena and cats](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-dracaena-plant-poisonous-to-cats/) 31. ### English ivy Handle with care Hedera helix Evergreen climber with three- to five-lobed leaves on juvenile shoots and plain oval leaves on the flowering wood, clinging by root hairs. Where Walls, woodland and fences across Europe and North America. Risk Triterpenoid saponins, strongest in the leaves rather than the berries. Vomiting, drooling, belly pain. In the record 1,274,719 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8351737) 32. ### Chinese evergreen Handle with care Aglaonema species Broad lance-shaped leaves marbled silver, cream or pink on short stems; tolerates deep shade. Where A standard mall and lobby plant. Risk Insoluble calcium oxalates — mouth pain, drooling, vomiting. In the record 1,617 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from Indonesia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2866350) 33. [Aglaonema names and varieties](https://orvik.app/plants/aglaonema-common-name/) 34. ### Arrowhead plant Handle with care Syngonium podophyllum Young leaves are neat arrowheads, often with a pale centre; mature climbing shoots split into three to five lobes. Where A common hanging-basket plant; invasive in Florida. Risk Calcium oxalates. Burning mouth and vomiting. In the record 6,979 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2867866) 35. ### Schefflera Handle with care Schefflera arboricola Leaflets radiate from one point like the spokes of an umbrella, five to nine per stalk, glossy and often gold-variegated. Where Sold as umbrella plant; a landscape shrub in Florida and Hawaii. Risk Calcium oxalates. Mouth irritation, drooling, vomiting. In the record 328 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Jan · most distinctive in December · mostly from Taiwan [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8322892) 36. ### Caladium and elephant ear Can injure you Caladium, Alocasia and Colocasia species Enormous arrow- or heart-shaped leaves on long stalks, in caladiums painted pink, white and red between the veins. Where Summer bedding across the US South; grown indoors elsewhere. Risk Very high oxalate load. Severe mouth swelling that can make swallowing and breathing difficult. In the record 7,587 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2868340) 37. ### Begonia Handle with care Begonia species Asymmetric leaves — one half of the blade is always larger than the other — with waxy flowers in white, pink or red. Where The most planted bedding genus in the world. Risk Soluble oxalates concentrated in the tubers. Mouth burning and vomiting; kidney damage reported in grazing livestock. In the record 105,694 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2874710) 38. [Begonia varieties and names](https://orvik.app/plants/begonia-common-name/) 39. ### Daffodil Can injure you Narcissus species Yellow or white six-petalled flower with a central trumpet, on a hollow leafless stem over strap leaves. Where Naturalised in lawns and verges throughout the temperate world. Confused with Dogs dig up dormant bulbs in autumn and eat them like onions. Store bulbs where they cannot be reached. Risk Lycorine, most concentrated in the bulb. Severe vomiting, low blood pressure, tremors; bulbs cause the worst cases. In the record 348,109 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Apr · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2858200) 40. [Narcissus: names and species](https://orvik.app/plants/daffodil-latin-name/) 41. ### Tulip and hyacinth Can injure you Tulipa and Hyacinthus species Both grow from a papery-skinned bulb with fleshy strap leaves; tulips carry one cup-shaped flower per stem, hyacinths a dense fragrant spike. Where Spring bedding and forced indoor pots everywhere. Risk Tulipalin A and B, concentrated in the bulb. Heavy drooling, vomiting, diarrhoea; large bulb doses raise heart rate and depress breathing. In the record 101,943 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Apr · most distinctive in April · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2750913) 42. ### Amaryllis Can injure you Hippeastrum species A single thick hollow stem carrying two to six huge trumpet flowers, from a large bulb sitting half out of the compost. Where The standard Christmas gift bulb across Europe and North America. Risk Lycorine and related alkaloids. Vomiting, drooling, low blood pressure, tremors. In the record 4,873 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Nov · most distinctive in November · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2854235) 43. ### Chrysanthemum Handle with care Chrysanthemum species Dense domed heads of many small ray flowers over deeply lobed aromatic leaves that smell sharp when crushed. Where The autumn pot plant of the northern hemisphere. Risk Pyrethrins and sesquiterpene lactones. Vomiting, drooling, wobbliness, and skin inflammation on contact. In the record 18,212 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from Russia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3150746) 44. [Chrysanthemum botany](https://orvik.app/plants/botanical-name-of-chrysanthemum/) 45. ### Hydrangea Handle with care Hydrangea macrophylla Big rounded or flat heads of four-petalled flowers, blue on acid soil and pink on alkaline, over coarse toothed leaves. Where Front gardens across the temperate world. Risk Cyanogenic glycoside amygdalin in the buds and leaves. Vomiting and diarrhoea; genuine cyanide poisoning needs an implausible quantity. In the record 12,798 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from Portugal [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985994) 46. [Hydrangea species and names](https://orvik.app/plants/hydrangea-latin-name/) 47. ### Wisteria Can injure you Wisteria sinensis and W. floribunda Woody twining climber with hanging chains of lilac pea flowers before the leaves, followed by velvety green bean-like pods. Where House fronts and pergolas across Europe, the US and East Asia. Risk Lectin and wisterin in the seed pods. Repeated vomiting, sometimes bloody, and dehydration; a handful of seeds is a vet visit. In the record 5,595 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8149049) 48. [Wisteria seed pods and pets](https://orvik.app/plants/is-wisteria-poisonous/) 49. ### Onion, garlic, leek and chive Can injure you Allium species Hollow round leaves or flat strap leaves that smell unmistakably of onion when crushed, over a bulb or bulblet cluster. Where Kitchen, veg patch, and ornamental alliums in flower borders. Confused with Anaemia from onion appears three to five days after the meal, long after anyone connects it to the food. Risk N-propyl disulphide destroys red blood cells. Cats are far more sensitive than dogs, and cooked, dried and powdered forms are all still toxic. In the record 1,395,158 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9624496) 50. ### Grape and raisin vine Can injure you Vitis vinifera Woody climber with lobed maple-like leaves, curling tendrils, and hanging bunches of round fruit. Where Garden pergolas and vineyards; dried fruit in the kitchen is the more common exposure. Confused with Raisins, sultanas, currants and grape juice are all implicated. Christmas cake and flapjacks poison dogs every December. Risk Tartaric acid causes acute kidney injury in dogs. There is no reliable safe dose — some dogs are unaffected, others fail on a handful. In the record 108,424 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in September · mostly from Portugal [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5372392) 51. ### Nightshade Can injure you Solanum species Star-shaped flowers with a protruding yellow cone of anthers, followed by shiny berries that ripen black or red. Where Waste ground, hedges and veg patches across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Tomato and potato are the same genus. Green potatoes, sprouts and tomato foliage carry the same alkaloid. Risk Solanine. Drooling, vomiting, dilated pupils, weakness, slowed heart. Unripe green berries carry the most. In the record 2,156,584 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2928997) 52. [Nightshade species and risk](https://orvik.app/plants/is-nightshade-poisonous/) 53. ### Milkweed Can injure you Asclepias species Opposite leaves on a stem that bleeds white latex when broken, umbels of small crown-shaped flowers, and warty pods full of silk-tufted seeds. Where Prairie, roadside and pollinator gardens across North America. Risk Cardenolides. Vomiting, weakness, seizures and heart rhythm changes; the narrow-leaved species are the most potent. In the record 518,914 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3170229) 54. [Milkweed and grazing animals](https://orvik.app/plants/is-milkweed-poisonous/) 55. ### Mistletoe Handle with care Phoradendron and Viscum album An evergreen ball of forked green stems and paired leathery leaves growing out of a host tree branch, with sticky white berries. Where On apple, poplar and oak across Europe and North America; cut sprigs indoors at Christmas. Risk Phoratoxin and viscotoxin. Usually vomiting and diarrhoea; large quantities affect blood pressure and heart rate. In the record 68,407 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2889864) 56. [Mistletoe berries and pets](https://orvik.app/plants/is-mistletoe-poisonous/) 57. ### Holly Handle with care Ilex species Glossy dark evergreen leaves with hard spiny margins and clusters of red berries on female plants only. Where Hedges and woodland across Europe and eastern North America. Risk Saponins plus mechanically spiny leaves. Drooling, vomiting, head shaking and lip smacking. In the record 1,043,006 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10792217) 58. ### Poinsettia Handle with care Euphorbia pulcherrima Red, pink or cream "petals" are actually bracts around a cluster of tiny yellow true flowers; stems bleed milky sap. Where The Christmas pot plant of the western world. Confused with Every December it is blamed for poisonings caused by lilies, holly or chocolate. It is the least dangerous plant on this list. Risk Mildly irritating latex only. The plant's deadly reputation traces to a single unverified 1919 report and is wrong. In the record 3,385 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3066465) 59. ### Chinaberry Can injure you Melia azedarach Fast-growing tree with lacy twice-divided leaves, lilac fragrant flowers, and hanging clusters of hard yellow berries that persist bare through winter. Where A weedy street tree across the US South, Australia and southern Europe. Risk Meliatoxins in the fruit. Vomiting, bloody diarrhoea, seizures; a few berries can kill a small dog. In the record 59,079 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5914287) 60. [Chinaberry poisoning](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-chinaberry-tree-poisonous/) 61. ### Virginia creeper Handle with care Parthenocissus quinquefolia Climber with five leaflets radiating from one point, brilliant scarlet in autumn, clinging by adhesive pads and carrying blue-black berries. Where Walls and woodland across eastern North America, widely planted in Europe. Confused with Poison ivy has three leaflets, not five. Counting leaflets settles it. Risk Oxalate crystals in the berries. Mouth pain, vomiting; heavy berry meals have caused kidney damage. In the record 118,892 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3039194) 62. [Virginia creeper berries](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-virginia-creeper-poisonous/) 63. ### Wolfsbane Can injure you Aconitum napellus Tall spire of hooded deep-blue flowers, each shaped like a monk's cowl, over glossy deeply cut palmate leaves. Where Cottage borders and damp mountain meadows in Europe and North America. Risk Aconitine is absorbed through skin as well as gut. Numbness, vomiting, then heart arrhythmia. The root is the most concentrated part. In the record 56,812 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3033665) 64. [Aconite toxicity](https://orvik.app/plants/is-wolfsbane-poisonous/) 65. ### Buckeye and horse chestnut Handle with care Aesculus species Palmate leaves of five to seven leaflets from one point, upright candle-like flower spikes, and a leathery capsule splitting to reveal a glossy brown nut with a pale eye. Where Parks and streets across Europe and North America. Risk Aesculin. Vomiting, diarrhoea, tremors; the whole nut also obstructs a dog's gut mechanically. In the record 429,086 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189801) 66. ### Red maple Can injure you Acer rubrum Three- to five-lobed leaves with shallow sinuses and a silver underside, red leaf stalks, and red twigs and buds in winter. Where The most abundant tree in eastern North America. Confused with Fresh green leaves on the tree are not the hazard. Wilted leaves after a storm or pruning are. Risk Horses only, and only from wilted or dried leaves: gallic acid destroys red blood cells. A storm-broken branch in a paddock is the classic case. In the record 133,130 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189883) 67. [Telling maples apart](https://orvik.app/plants/maple-tree-identification/) 68. ### Black walnut Handle with care Juglans nigra Long leaves of 15 to 23 toothed leaflets, deeply furrowed dark bark, and a green tennis-ball husk that stains hands black. Where Woodland and old farmyards across eastern and central North America. Risk Mouldy hulls carry tremorgenic mycotoxins that cause seizures in dogs; shavings used as horse bedding cause laminitis within hours. In the record 39,932 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054357) 69. [Identifying walnut trees](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-walnut-tree/) 70. ### Yucca Handle with care Yucca species Rosette of rigid sword leaves ending in a needle point, on a woody trunk, with a tall panicle of creamy bells in summer. Where Dry gardens across the US Southwest, and a common indoor cane plant. Risk Steroidal saponins. Vomiting, diarrhoea and drooling; sharp leaf tips also cause eye injuries. In the record 140,277 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2775496) 71. ### Boxwood Handle with care Buxus sempervirens Dense shrub with small opposite oval leaves, glossy above and notched at the tip, giving off a distinctive musty cat-like smell. Where Formal hedging and topiary across Europe and North America. Risk Steroidal alkaloids. Vomiting and diarrhoea; horses eating a hedge can develop respiratory failure. In the record 172,248 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984671) 72. ### Morning glory Handle with care Ipomoea species Twining annual vine with heart-shaped leaves and wide trumpet flowers that open at dawn and collapse by afternoon. Where Fences and trellises worldwide; a serious crop weed in warm regions. Risk Seeds contain lysergic alkaloids. Large amounts cause hallucination, agitation, tremors and diarrhoea. In the record 403,563 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Nov · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2928509) 73. ### Bird of paradise Handle with care Strelitzia reginae Paddle-shaped grey-green leaves on long stalks, with an orange and blue flower emerging sideways from a green boat-shaped bract. Where Frost-free gardens in California, Florida and the Mediterranean; indoors elsewhere. Risk Hydrocyanic-type glycosides in the seeds. Vomiting, drowsiness; the leaves are largely inert. In the record 1,562 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2763116) 74. ### Asparagus fern Handle with care Asparagus densiflorus Not a fern — feathery bright-green needle-like cladodes on wiry arching stems, with small red berries. Where A hanging-basket standard; invasive in Florida, Hawaii and Australia. Risk Sapogenins in the berries cause vomiting and diarrhoea; repeated contact with the foliage causes dermatitis. In the record 1,817 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Australia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2768503) 75. ### Croton Handle with care Codiaeum variegatum Thick leathery leaves splashed and veined in yellow, orange and scarlet, in shapes from strap to corkscrew. Where Indoor colour plant everywhere; a landscape shrub in the tropics. Risk Irritant latex. Mouth burning, vomiting, and skin inflammation on handling. In the record 5,988 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Indonesia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3071476) 76. ### Iris Handle with care Iris species Flat fans of sword leaves and six-part flowers with three upright standards and three drooping falls, often bearded. Where Borders and pond margins throughout the temperate world. Risk Irisin and pentacyclic terpenoids concentrated in the rhizome. Drooling, vomiting, diarrhoea, lethargy. 77. ### Marigold Handle with care Tagetes species Strongly scented pinnate leaves and dense orange or yellow pompons; the smell is what most people notice first. Where The default annual bedding plant worldwide. Risk Mild stomach upset and skin irritation from the foliage. Not a serious poisoning risk. In the record 43,339 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3088468) 78. [Marigold botany](https://orvik.app/plants/botanical-name-of-marigold/) 79. ### Spider plant Chlorophytum comosum Listed non-toxic for dogs and cats. It does contain mild opioid-like compounds that make some cats chew it and then vomit — an upset stomach, not poisoning. Where One of the most widely grown houseplants in the world. In the record 3,275 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Australia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2774846) 80. ### Boston fern Nephrolepis exaltata Non-toxic to dogs, cats and horses. A genuine fern, unlike asparagus fern, which is toxic — check the label. Where Hanging baskets and shaded porches everywhere. In the record 1,584 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2650927) 81. ### Parlor palm and areca palm Chamaedorea elegans, Dypsis lutescens True palms are non-toxic. If you want the palm look in a house with a dog, these are the safe substitutes for sago palm. Where The standard indoor palms in Europe and North America. In the record 714 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2734661) 82. ### Ponytail palm Beaucarnea recurvata Non-toxic. A swollen water-storing base topped with a fountain of thin curling leaves — technically an agave relative, not a palm. Where Sold everywhere as an easy sculptural houseplant. In the record 551 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2768035) 83. ### Calathea and prayer plant Calathea and Maranta species Non-toxic to dogs and cats. The obvious safe replacement when someone wants patterned foliage without oxalates. Where Popular indoor foliage plants worldwide. In the record 9,890 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Costa Rica [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8394666) 84. ### Peperomia Peperomia species Non-toxic across the genus. Thick succulent-ish leaves, often ridged or watermelon-striped, on short stems. Where A large, easy houseplant genus grown all over the world. In the record 130,213 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3086367) 85. ### African violet Saintpaulia ionantha Non-toxic. A flowering windowsill plant that is safe in a house with cats. Where Windowsills across Europe and North America. In the record 76 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · mostly from TZ [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/6365236) 86. ### Moth orchid Phalaenopsis species Non-toxic to dogs and cats. The bark chips in the pot are a bigger hazard than the plant, because dogs swallow them. Where The best-selling flowering houseplant in the world. [Orchid names and species](https://orvik.app/plants/orchid-scientific-name/) 87. ### Christmas cactus Schlumbergera species Non-toxic. Flat segmented stems with scalloped edges and magenta or white flowers at the tips in midwinter. Where A traditional Christmas plant across Europe and North America. 88. ### Haworthia and echeveria Haworthia and Echeveria species Both genera are listed non-toxic — the safe succulents to keep instead of aloe, jade or kalanchoe. Where Sold in every succulent tray in every garden centre. In the record 4,018 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2779529) 89. ### Rose Rosa species Non-toxic to dogs, cats and horses. The thorns cause more vet visits than the chemistry ever will. Where Gardens everywhere. Confused with Rose of Sharon, Christmas rose and desert rose are all unrelated plants, and all three are toxic. In the record 2,436,329 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8395064) 90. [Rose botanical names](https://orvik.app/plants/botanical-name-for-rose/) 91. ### Sunflower Helianthus annuus Non-toxic. Seeds are safe in small amounts, though the shells are indigestible and can pack the gut. Where Gardens and field crops worldwide. In the record 82,286 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9206251) 92. ### Snapdragon, zinnia and petunia Antirrhinum, Zinnia, Petunia All three are listed non-toxic — the reliable backbone of a bedding scheme in a garden a dog uses. Where Summer bedding across the temperate world. In the record 90,021 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172000) 93. ### Basil, rosemary, thyme and sage Ocimum, Salvia rosmarinus, Thymus, Salvia officinalis All non-toxic. A herb window box is safe next to a cat, unlike the chive and garlic end of the same shelf. Where Kitchen gardens and windowsills everywhere. In the record 26,871 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Sep · most distinctive in November · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2874693) 94. ### True bamboo Bambusoideae Genuine bamboo is non-toxic. Two impostors are not: lucky bamboo is a Dracaena, and heavenly bamboo (Nandina) is cyanogenic. Where Screens and containers worldwide. [Bamboo species and names](https://orvik.app/plants/bamboo-latin-name/) 95. ### Catnip and cat grass Nepeta cataria, Avena sativa Non-toxic and actively useful: a cat with something legitimate to chew leaves the oxalate-bearing houseplants alone. Where Sold as seed and as ready-grown pots everywhere. In the record 39,125 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5341499) 96. ### Money tree Pachira aquatica Non-toxic. The braided-trunk plant sold as a good-luck gift, not to be confused with the toxic money plant, which is a pothos. Where Offices and homes worldwide. In the record 3,439 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152235) 97. [Which plant is the money plant](https://orvik.app/plants/botanical-name-of-money-plant/) 98. ### Cast iron plant Aspidistra elatior Non-toxic and close to indestructible: the sensible choice for a dark corner in a house with a chewer. Where A Victorian parlour plant still sold everywhere. In the record 533 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from Japan [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2769937) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Read the severity column before you panic The word "toxic" does most of the damage here. It is applied identically to a peace lily, which makes a cat's mouth hurt for two hours, and to an Easter lily, which destroys the same cat's kidneys overnight. People who have read that both are dangerous learn to discount the warning, and then they discount the one that mattered. Three mechanisms account for nearly every entry above, and they behave completely differently: - **Insoluble calcium oxalates** — philodendron, pothos, peace lily, dieffenbachia, monstera, caladium. Needle-shaped crystals fire into the mouth lining on the first bite. The pain is immediate and self-limiting, which is exactly why the animal stops eating. Serious cases involve swelling of the throat, not organ damage. - **Cardiac glycosides** — oleander, foxglove, lily of the valley, milkweed, kalanchoe. These act on the heart, the effects are dose-dependent rather than immediate, and the animal often looks fine for several hours. Any suspected exposure is a same-day vet call even with no symptoms. - **Organ-specific toxins** — sago palm (liver), true lily in cats (kidney), grape in dogs (kidney), Allium in both (red blood cells). These have treatment windows measured in hours and the damage is done before anything shows. If you remember one thing from this page: **the plants that look mildest for the first six hours are the ones that kill**. A dog vomiting furiously after chewing dieffenbachia is having a much better day than a cat who walked past a bouquet and licked its paws. ## Cats and dogs are not interchangeable Four of the entries in this table are species-specific, and getting them the wrong way round is a common and expensive mistake. *Where the risk depends entirely on which animal ate it. Compiled from ASPCA Animal Poison Control case data and Pet Poison Helpline advisories.* | Plant | Dogs | Cats | Horses | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | True lily (*Lilium*, *Hemerocallis*) | Mild stomach upset | Acute kidney failure, often fatal | Not established | | Grapes and raisins | Acute kidney failure | No confirmed cases | Not established | | Red maple, wilted leaves | No significant risk | No significant risk | Destroys red blood cells; often fatal | | Onion and garlic | Anaemia at higher doses | Anaemia at much lower doses | Anaemia; horses are also sensitive | | Black walnut shavings | Seizures from mouldy hulls | Rarely exposed | Laminitis within hours of bedding contact | The lily case deserves its own sentence, because it is the single most preventable pet poisoning in the developed world. Cut flowers are the usual vector. Pollen brushed onto fur and groomed off is enough. If a bouquet with lilies has been in a house with a cat, the safe assumption is exposure, and the correct action is a vet call the same day rather than watching to see whether the cat looks ill. ## The part matters as much as the plant Filtering by **part eaten** is not a nicety. In several genera the toxin is concentrated so unevenly that "the plant is poisonous" is a misleading summary. Bulbs are the clearest example. Daffodil, tulip, hyacinth and amaryllis all carry many times more alkaloid in the bulb than in the leaves or flowers, and the animals most at risk are dogs who dig. A dog that eats a daffodil flower off a table is usually fine; a dog that unearths a bag of forced bulbs in a shed is an emergency. Store bulbs the way you store slug pellets. Yew inverts the logic. The soft red aril around the seed is the one harmless part of the tree, which is why birds spread it, and the seed inside that aril is lethal. Rhubarb concentrates soluble oxalates in the leaf blade while the stalk is a food crop. Avocado holds most of its persin in the leaves, bark and pit rather than the flesh. Castor bean puts effectively all of its ricin in the seed, and an intact seed swallowed whole frequently passes through undamaged — it is chewing that does the harm. Two practical consequences. First, when you call a vet, say which part and roughly how much; it changes the treatment. Second, keep the specimen. A photograph of the plant, or better a cutting in a bag, is worth more than any description you can give over the phone. ## What actually to do in the first ten minutes 1. **Get the plant material out of the mouth** and rinse the mouth with water if the animal will let you. For oxalate plants this alone shortens the episode considerably. 2. **Do not induce vomiting** unless a vet tells you to. With irritant and caustic plants it doubles the injury, and with a seizing animal it risks aspiration. 3. **Call.** ASPCA Animal Poison Control on (888) 426-4435 or Pet Poison Helpline on (855) 764-7661 in the US; your own vet or the Animal PoisonLine on 01202 509000 in the UK. There is a consultation fee for the US hotlines and it is worth it — they will give your vet a case number and a protocol. 4. **Photograph the plant, then bag a piece.** Include a leaf, a flower and a fruit if there is one. Identification determines whether the animal gets sent home or put on fluids. 5. **Write down the time** and your best estimate of quantity. Decontamination decisions hinge on how long ago it happened. Symptoms that mean go now rather than wait: repeated vomiting, drooling with an inability to swallow, staggering or collapse, seizures, laboured breathing, a distended abdomen, or a heart rate that is obviously very slow or very fast. With the organ toxins — sago, true lily in cats, grape in dogs — an animal with *no* symptoms still needs to be seen, because the treatable window closes before symptoms start. ## Building a garden and a windowsill that are actually safe Removing every plant on the toxic side of this table is neither necessary nor realistic. Most of the mild-severity entries cause a bad hour, and most animals never touch them. Prioritise instead: - **Remove outright:** sago palm, oleander, castor bean, autumn crocus, yew where livestock or a bulb-digging dog can reach it, and true lilies in any house with a cat. These are the entries where a single incident can be terminal. - **Relocate rather than remove:** the oxalate houseplants — pothos, philodendron, dieffenbachia, monstera. Height works. Cats defeat height, so for cats it has to be a room with a closed door. - **Substitute deliberately.** Parlor palm instead of sago. Calathea instead of a spotted philodendron. Haworthia instead of aloe. Christmas cactus instead of kalanchoe. Every safe entry in the filter above was chosen because it fills a specific decorative job that a toxic plant currently does. - **Give the animal something legal to chew.** A pot of cat grass or catnip absorbs most of the behaviour that otherwise lands on the pothos. Outdoors, the highest-yield change is usually not the borders at all but the compost heap and the clipping pile. Wilted yew, oleander and red maple prunings are more dangerous than the growing plant, and horses in particular will eat them off a heap that has been thrown over a paddock fence. ## Limits of this table, stated plainly 73 plants is a working shortlist of what people actually have in the house and on the street, not a complete toxicology reference. The ASPCA database runs to over a thousand species and is the authority; where this page and the ASPCA disagree, follow the ASPCA. Three other limits worth naming. Toxicity is dose-dependent and body-weight-dependent, so nothing here can tell you whether the amount your animal ate matters. Individual sensitivity varies enormously — the grape case is the notorious example, where some dogs eat a punnet with no effect and others fail on a handful. And common names are treacherous: "lily", "bamboo", "money plant", "rose" and "ivy" each cover both safe and dangerous species. Where a plant is worth worrying about, this table gives the scientific name, and that is the name to give a vet. If you are unsure what the plant even is, photograph it and check the identification first — a name you guessed is worse than no name, because it produces confident advice about the wrong species. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 69 of the 73plants here: **3,899,483 georeferenced records** across the 43 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 39 families, the oldest of them collected in 1932. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded plants in this key hold 72% of all the records between them: English ivy alone accounts for 1,274,719, while Dracaena has 15. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 23% of these records come from France, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 3,063,404 georeferenced records for these 43 plants fall in April–July alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these plants are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in June. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in April–July. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these plants recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 28 of the 43plants here peak outside the warm half of the year — English ivy, Boxwood, Red maple among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 69 named plants in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | English ivy | [Hedera helix L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8351737) | species | 1,274,719 | 180,225 | Mar–Jul | February | France | | Foxglove | [Digitalis purpurea L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5414995) | species | 557,582 | 109,968 | May–Jul | June | the United Kingdom | | Lily of the valley | [Convallaria majalis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/7459480) | species | 476,918 | 77,411 | Apr–Jun | May | Sweden | | Yew | [Taxus baccata L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284517) | species | 308,901 | 42,272 | May–Aug | August | the United Kingdom | | Boxwood | [Buxus sempervirens L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984671) | species | 172,248 | 28,104 | Mar–Jun | January | France | | Autumn crocus | [Colchicum autumnale L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2739622) | species | 170,376 | 22,019 | Apr–Jun | September | France | | Red maple | [Acer rubrum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189883) | species | 133,130 | 162,550 | Mar–Jul | October | the United States | | Virginia creeper | [Parthenocissus quinquefolia (L.) Planch.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3039194) | species | 118,892 | 162,515 | Apr–Jun | April | the United States | | Oleander | [Nerium oleander L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3169756) | species | 110,514 | 81,454 | May–Aug | January | Spain | | Grape and raisin vine | [Vitis vinifera L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5372392) | species | 108,424 | 19,323 | Apr–Jul | September | Portugal | | Castor bean | [Ricinus communis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5380041) | species | 94,344 | 81,256 | Jan–Jun | December | the United States | | Sunflower | [Helianthus annuus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/9206251) | species | 82,286 | 85,074 | Jun–Aug | September | the United States | | Chinaberry | [Melia azedarach L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5914287) | species | 59,079 | 55,325 | Jan–May | November | the United States | | Wolfsbane | [Aconitum napellus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3033665) | species | 56,812 | 9,233 | Jul–Aug | August | France | | Black walnut | [Juglans nigra L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054357) | species | 39,932 | 85,701 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | Catnip and cat grass | [Nepeta cataria L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5341499) | species | 39,125 | 27,394 | May–Jul | July | the United States | | Hydrangea | [Hydrangea macrophylla (Thunb.) Ser.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985994) | species | 12,798 | 48,852 | Jun–Aug | July | Portugal | | Water hemlock | [Cicuta maculata L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371867) | species | 12,532 | 20,714 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Cyclamen | [Cyclamen persicum Mill.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3169317) | species | 10,334 | 7,283 | Jan–Mar | February | Israel | | Pothos | [Epipremnum aureum (Linden & André) G.S.Bunting](https://www.gbif.org/species/2868323) | species | 8,105 | 38,545 | Jan–May | December | the United States | | Arrowhead plant | [Syngonium podophyllum Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2867866) | species | 6,979 | 18,319 | Jan–Jun | November | the United States | | Croton | [Codiaeum variegatum (L.) Rumph. ex A.Juss.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3071476) | species | 5,988 | 48,488 | Jan–Jun | November | Indonesia | | Monstera | [Monstera deliciosa Liebm.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2868241) | species | 5,752 | 21,544 | Jan–May | February | Australia | | Wisteria | [Wisteria sinensis (Sims) DC.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8149049) | species | 5,595 | 23,854 | Mar–May | March | the United States | | Dieffenbachia | [Dieffenbachia seguine (Jacq.) Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869345) | species | 3,665 | 12,122 | Jan–Jun | November | Brazil | | Money tree | [Pachira aquatica Aubl.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152235) | species | 3,439 | 6,936 | Jan–Jun | February | Mexico | | Poinsettia | [Euphorbia pulcherrima Willd. ex Klotzsch](https://www.gbif.org/species/3066465) | species | 3,385 | 21,204 | Jan–Jun | December | Mexico | | Spider plant | [Chlorophytum comosum (Thunb.) Jacques](https://www.gbif.org/species/2774846) | species | 3,275 | 19,833 | Jan–Jun | February | Australia | | Snake plant | [Dracaena trifasciata (Prain) Mabb.](https://www.gbif.org/species/11041822) | species | 2,951 | — | Feb–Jun | November | Brazil | | Jade plant | [Crassula ovata (Mill.) Druce](https://www.gbif.org/species/5362063) | species | 2,321 | 28,409 | Mar–Jul | December | South Africa | | Asparagus fern | [Asparagus densiflorus (Kunth) Jessop](https://www.gbif.org/species/2768503) | species | 1,817 | 13,661 | Jan–Jun | November | Australia | | Boston fern | [Nephrolepis exaltata (L.) Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2650927) | species | 1,584 | 11,129 | Jan–Jun | December | the United States | | Bird of paradise | [Strelitzia reginae Banks](https://www.gbif.org/species/2763116) | species | 1,562 | 19,206 | Feb–Jun | November | South Africa | | Sago palm | [Cycas revoluta Thunb.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2683217) | species | 1,291 | 22,917 | Jan–Jun | February | Japan | | Parlor palm and areca palm | [Chamaedorea elegans Mart.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2734661) | species | 714 | 2,861 | Jan–May | February | Mexico | | Ponytail palm | [Beaucarnea recurvata (K.Koch & Fintelm.) Lem.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2768035) | species | 551 | 4,645 | May–Aug | August | Mexico | | Cast iron plant | [Aspidistra elatior Blume](https://www.gbif.org/species/2769937) | species | 533 | 4,505 | Feb–May | February | Japan | | Schefflera | [Schefflera arboricola Hayata, 1916](https://www.gbif.org/species/8322892) | species | 328 | — | Sep–Jan | December | Taiwan | | Kalanchoe | [Kalanchoe blossfeldiana Poelln.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985944) | species | 325 | 27,097 | Jan–Jun | January | Colombia | | ZZ plant | [Zamioculcas zamiifolia (G.Lodd.) Engl.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869014) | species | 188 | 10,149 | Jan–Jun | December | South Africa | | Aloe vera | [Aloe barbadensis Mill.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2777729) | species | 98 | 48,174 | Feb–Apr | — | Mexico | | African violet | [Saintpaulia ionantha H.Wendl.](https://www.gbif.org/species/6365236) | species | 76 | — | Mar–Jul | — | TZ | | Dracaena | [Dracaena marginata Lem.](https://www.gbif.org/species/10818704) | species | 15 | 5,396 | Nov–Nov | — | PK | | Rose | [Rosa L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8395064) | genus | 2,436,329 | 10,017,950 | May–Jul | August | the United Kingdom | | Nightshade | [Solanum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2928997) | genus | 2,156,584 | 829,150 | May–Aug | November | the United Kingdom | | Onion, garlic, leek and chive | [Allium L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/9624496) | genus | 1,395,158 | — | Apr–Jun | April | France | | Holly | [Ilex L.L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/10792217) | genus | 1,043,006 | 403,501 | Mar–Jul | November | the United Kingdom | | Rhododendron and azalea | [Rhododendron L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2883026) | genus | 706,341 | 449,103 | May–Jul | July | the United Kingdom | | Milkweed | [Asclepias L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3170229) | genus | 518,914 | 681,879 | May–Jul | July | the United States | | Buckeye and horse chestnut | [Aesculus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189801) | genus | 429,086 | 226,651 | Apr–Jun | April | the United Kingdom | | Morning glory | [Ipomoea L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2928509) | genus | 403,563 | 415,588 | Jul–Nov | November | the United States | | Daffodil | [Narcissus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2858200) | genus | 348,109 | 154,319 | Mar–Apr | March | the United Kingdom | | True lily | [Lilium Tourn. ex L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2752977) | genus | 300,815 | 186,266 | Jun–Jul | July | France | | Yucca | [Yucca L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2775496) | genus | 140,277 | 280,512 | Jan–May | February | the United States | | Peperomia | [Peperomia Ruiz & Pav.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3086367) | genus | 130,213 | 49,228 | Jan–Jun | February | Brazil | | Begonia | [Begonia L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2874710) | genus | 105,694 | — | Jan–Jun | February | Brazil | | Tulip and hyacinth | [Tulipa L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2750913) | genus | 101,943 | — | Mar–Apr | April | France | | Snapdragon, zinnia and petunia | [Antirrhinum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172000) | genus | 90,021 | — | Mar–Jun | May | Spain | | Philodendron | [Philodendron Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2861312) | genus | 74,611 | 43,357 | Jan–Jun | February | Colombia | | Mistletoe | [Phoradendron Nutt.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2889864) | genus | 68,407 | 50,283 | Jan–May | February | the United States | | Marigold | [Tagetes L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3088468) | genus | 43,339 | 82,823 | Jul–Oct | November | Mexico | | Basil, rosemary, thyme and sage | [Ocimum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2874693) | genus | 26,871 | 48,425 | Apr–Sep | November | Brazil | | Chrysanthemum | [Chrysanthemum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3150746) | genus | 18,212 | — | Jul–Oct | November | Russia | | Calathea and prayer plant | [Calathea G.Mey.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8394666) | genus | 9,890 | 7,244 | Jan–Jun | February | Costa Rica | | Peace lily | [Spathiphyllum Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869649) | genus | 7,732 | 29,186 | Jan–Jun | February | Colombia | | Caladium and elephant ear | [Caladium Vent.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2868340) | genus | 7,587 | 27,698 | Jan–Jun | November | Brazil | | Amaryllis | [Hippeastrum Herb.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2854235) | genus | 4,873 | 28,549 | Aug–Nov | November | Brazil | | Haworthia and echeveria | [Haworthia Duval](https://www.gbif.org/species/2779529) | genus | 4,018 | — | Feb–Jul | February | South Africa | | Chinese evergreen | [Aglaonema Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2866350) | genus | 1,617 | 16,564 | Jan–Jun | December | Indonesia | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this My dog ate a leaf and seems fine. Do I still need to call anyone? For the mild-severity entries — pothos, spider plant, poinsettia, holly — watching at home is reasonable. For anything flagged as "can kill", especially sago palm, true lily in a cat, autumn crocus, oleander or grapes in a dog, call immediately even with no symptoms. Those toxins have a treatment window that closes before the animal looks ill, and by the time symptoms appear the outcome is largely decided. Is a peace lily as dangerous to cats as a real lily? No, and the difference is enormous. Peace lily is an arum: its calcium oxalate crystals cause a painful mouth for an hour or two. True lilies in the genera Lilium and Hemerocallis cause acute kidney failure in cats from tiny exposures including pollen. If a shop label just says "lily", look at the flower — a white hood wrapped around a cream spike is a peace lily, while six separate petals with heavy anthers is a true lily. Which houseplants are genuinely safe with cats? Filter the table to "Listed non-toxic" and "Houseplant". The reliable core is spider plant, Boston fern, parlor and areca palm, ponytail palm, calathea and prayer plant, peperomia, African violet, moth orchid, Christmas cactus, haworthia, cast iron plant and money tree. Adding a pot of cat grass alongside them reduces the chance the cat goes looking for something else to chew. Are poinsettias really deadly? No. The reputation comes from a single unverified report of a child's death in 1919 and has never been supported since. Poinsettia sap is a mild irritant that causes drooling and occasionally vomiting. The genuine December hazards in the same living room are lilies in the bouquet, chocolate, raisins in the cake, and the bulbs forced in a bowl. Does the toxicity change when the plant is dried, wilted or cooked? Sometimes, and not always downwards. Wilted red maple leaves are dangerous to horses while fresh ones are not. Yew and oleander stay lethal in dried clippings. Onion and garlic remain toxic when cooked, dried and powdered — a stock cube counts. Mouldy black walnut hulls are far worse than sound ones. Assume that drying preserves the toxin unless you have a specific reason to think otherwise. How much of a plant does it take to matter? This table deliberately does not print threshold doses, because published lethal doses come from livestock feeding trials and do not transfer to a 4 kg cat or a 40 kg dog with any reliability. The workable rule is the severity column: for the "mouth or stomach upset" entries the amount rarely matters, for the "needs a vet" entries the amount changes the treatment, and for the "can kill" entries any confirmed ingestion is treated as significant. Can I use a photo to identify the plant my pet ate? Yes, and it is the fastest route when you do not know the name. Photograph a whole leaf, the flower, and any fruit or berry against a plain background, then run the identification and cross-check the result against this table using the scientific name rather than the common one. Take the physical cutting to the vet as well — an app narrows the possibilities, a specimen settles them. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows plants down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Is honeysuckle poisonous to dogs?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-honeysuckle-poisonous-to-dogs/) - [Is a pothos plant poisonous to dogs?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-pothos-plant-poisonous-to-dogs/) - [Is lily of the valley poisonous to dogs?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-lily-of-the-valley-poisonous-to-dogs/) - [Is a peace lily poisonous?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-peace-lily-poisonous/) - [Names of poisonous flowers](https://orvik.app/plants/names-of-poisonous-flowers/) - [Is anthurium toxic to dogs?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-anthurium-toxic-to-dogs/) - [Is a dracaena plant poisonous to cats?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-dracaena-plant-poisonous-to-cats/) - [Is oleander poisonous?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-oleander-plant-poisonous/) - [Are cactus plants poisonous?](https://orvik.app/plants/cactus-is-poisonous/) - [Is a chinaberry tree poisonous?](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-chinaberry-tree-poisonous/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [ASPCA — Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants database](https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants) - [ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center — (888) 426-4435](https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control) - [Pet Poison Helpline — poison list](https://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poisons/) - [Merck Veterinary Manual — Overview of Plant Poisoning](https://www.merckvetmanual.com/toxicology/poisonous-plants) - [UC Statewide IPM Program — plant and pest information](https://ipm.ucanr.edu/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Rock Identification Chart — Grain, Hardness & Fizz Test** > Free rock identification key. Answer what you can see and test — grain size, layering, hardness, whether it fizzes in vinegar — and narrow 33 common rocks down. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Rocks & minerals Rocks & minerals # What kind of rock is this? Rock identification is not about colour. It is about **what the rock is made of and how the grains are arranged**, and four tests you can do at a kitchen table settle most of it: look at the grain with a hand lens, try to scratch it with a knife, drop vinegar on it, and see whether it has layers. Set what you know and ignore the rest. Entries **33** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search rocks by name Rock family Leave this blank if you do not know — the other filters will tell you. Igneous — cooled from melt Sedimentary — settled and cemented Metamorphic — cooked and squeezed Grain Use a hand lens or a phone camera at maximum zoom on a broken face. Glassy, no grains at all Too fine to see individual grains Sand-sized grains you can feel Interlocking crystals you can see Pebbles or fragments set in a matrix Full of holes or bubbles Structure Uniform, no direction to it Flat layers or beds Banded or stripey Splits into flat sheets Sparkly, mica visible Fossils visible Scratch test Scratch a fresh face, then rub the powder away to check the mark is real. A fingernail scratches it A copper coin scratches it A steel knife scratches it It scratches glass Other tests Fizzes in vinegar Unusually heavy for its size Unusually light, may float Attracts a magnet Smells of earth when wet Breaks to a sharp curved edge Showing all 33 rocks 1. ### Granite Coarse interlocking crystals in a salt-and-pepper mix of pink or white feldspar, glassy grey quartz and black flecks of mica or hornblende. No layering, no preferred direction. Size Crystals 1–10 mm, sometimes much larger Where The core of every continent; countertops, kerbstones and monuments everywhere. Confused with Gneiss, which has the same minerals but arranged in bands. If the light and dark minerals are stripey rather than random, it is gneiss. [Granite: what type of rock it is](https://orvik.app/rocks/granite-is-what-type-of-rock/) 2. ### Basalt Dark grey to black, heavy, fine-grained and often peppered with small round gas holes. Frequently mildly magnetic because of the magnetite in it. Size Grains under 1 mm Where Ocean floor, Hawaii, Iceland, the Columbia River plateau, the Deccan. Confused with Andesite and diabase. Basalt is the darkest and heaviest of the fine-grained volcanic rocks. [What basalt is and where it forms](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-basalt/) 3. ### Obsidian Handle with care Jet black, brown or mahogany volcanic glass with a bright glassy shine, breaking into curved shell-like faces with edges sharper than a scalpel. Size No grains — it is a glass Where Young rhyolitic volcanoes: Oregon, California, Yellowstone, Iceland, Mexico, Turkey. Confused with Manufactured slag and bottle glass, both common in fields. Slag is bubbly and often coloured blue or green; obsidian is dense and even. Risk Freshly broken edges cut through skin without pressure. Handle it the way you would handle a broken bottle. [Obsidian: how volcanic glass forms](https://orvik.app/rocks/obsidian-what-type-of-rock/) 4. ### Pumice Pale grey or cream, so full of gas bubbles that it floats on water — the only common rock that does. Feels like solid foam and abrades skin. Size Frothy, no visible crystals Where Explosive volcanoes; drifts across oceans in rafts after eruptions. Confused with Scoria, which is the same idea in basalt: dark, heavier, and it sinks. [What pumice is](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-a-pumice/) 5. ### Scoria Dark red-brown to black, heavily bubbled, rough and crunchy, sinking in water. The rust colour comes from iron oxidised while the fragment was still hot. Size Bubbles 1–10 mm Where Cinder cones worldwide; sold by the bag as landscaping lava rock. 6. ### Rhyolite The fine-grained equivalent of granite: pale pink, cream or grey, hard, often with flow banding and scattered larger crystals of quartz or feldspar in a fine matrix. Size Grains under 1 mm, sometimes with larger crystals set in them Where Continental volcanic fields: Yellowstone, the Sierra Nevada, central Europe. 7. ### Andesite Medium grey to purplish, harder to place than basalt or rhyolite because it sits between them, typically speckled with small rectangular white feldspar crystals. Size Grains under 1 mm with visible feldspar laths Where Subduction volcanoes: the Andes, the Cascades, Japan, Indonesia. 8. ### Gabbro Coarse-grained and almost entirely dark: black pyroxene and grey-green plagioclase with essentially no quartz. Distinctly heavier than granite of the same size. Size Crystals 1–10 mm Where Deep intrusions and the lower ocean crust; sold as "black granite". 9. ### Diorite Coarse-grained black and white in roughly equal proportions, with a peppered look and none of granite's pink feldspar or glassy quartz. Size Crystals 1–5 mm Where Continental intrusions worldwide. 10. ### Peridotite Dense, dark green to olive, made almost entirely of sugary olivine grains. Very heavy in the hand relative to its size. Size Crystals 1–5 mm Where The Earth's mantle; exposed in ophiolites and brought up in volcanic bombs. 11. ### Sandstone Feels like fine sandpaper, and grains rub off on your fingers at a broken edge. Usually tan, buff, red or grey with visible bedding, and often with cross-bedding in the layers. Size Grains 0.06–2 mm Where Everywhere sediment has accumulated; the classic building stone of half the world. Confused with Quartzite, its metamorphosed form. Sandstone breaks around the grains and feels gritty; quartzite breaks straight through them and looks glassy on the fracture. [How sandstone forms](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-are-sandstone/) 12. ### Limestone Fizzes vigorously in vinegar or dilute acid, scratches easily with a steel knife, and often contains obvious fossil shells or crinoid discs. Grey, cream or buff. Size Fine to coarse depending on type Where Vast areas of the American Midwest, the UK, southern Europe and the Caribbean. Confused with Dolostone, which fizzes only feebly and only on powdered rock. If it fizzes hard on a solid face, it is limestone. [Limestone: type, formation and uses](https://orvik.app/rocks/limestone-is-what-type-of-rock/) 13. ### Chalk Soft white limestone that marks paper, crumbles under a fingernail and fizzes strongly. Made almost entirely of the plates of microscopic algae. Size Microscopic Where Southern England, northern France, the US Gulf Coast, Kansas. [What chalk is made of](https://orvik.app/rocks/chalk-is-made-of-what/) 14. ### Dolostone Looks like limestone and behaves differently in acid: no reaction on a solid surface, a slow fizz only after you scratch it to powder. Often weathers to a buff or pinkish colour. Size Fine to medium Where Widespread in the American Midwest and the Alps. 15. ### Shale Splits into thin flat sheets along the bedding, is soft enough to scratch with a fingernail, and — the field test everyone uses — smells distinctly of wet earth when you breathe on it. Size Clay-sized, invisible even under a lens Where The most abundant sedimentary rock on Earth. Confused with Slate, its metamorphosed form. Slate rings when tapped, is much harder, and splits at an angle to any original bedding. 16. ### Siltstone and mudstone Fine-grained and dull like shale but breaking into blocks rather than sheets. Siltstone feels faintly gritty when rubbed against a tooth; mudstone does not. Size Silt-sized, gritty between the teeth Where Floodplains and lake beds worldwide. 17. ### Conglomerate Rounded pebbles cemented in a finer matrix — a fossilised gravel bank. The rounding is the point: it means the pebbles travelled in water. Size Clasts over 2 mm, often much larger Where Old riverbeds and alluvial fans worldwide. Confused with Breccia, which has the same idea with angular fragments, meaning they did not travel. 18. ### Breccia Sharp angular fragments locked into a matrix. Angular means the pieces were buried close to where they broke. Size Angular clasts over 2 mm Where Fault zones, scree slopes, impact craters, cave collapses. 19. ### Chert and flint Very hard, waxy or dull, breaking into curved sharp-edged flakes. Scratches glass easily and cannot be scratched by steel. Grey, black, brown or honey-coloured, often with a white weathered rind. Size Microcrystalline Where Nodules in limestone and chalk across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Obsidian, which is glassier and only found near young volcanoes. Chert occurs as nodules and beds inside sedimentary rock. 20. ### Coal Black, dull to bright and glassy, notably light for its size, leaving black marks on your hands. Bituminous coal is dull and layered; anthracite is hard, bright and does not mark. Size Uniform Where Appalachia, the Powder River Basin, northern England, Silesia, Shanxi. 21. ### Rock salt Clear to pink cubic crystals that taste of salt and dissolve in water. The taste test is legitimate here and is what geologists actually do. Size Cubic crystals up to centimetres Where Evaporite basins: Kansas, Michigan, Cheshire, the Dead Sea. 22. ### Gypsum rock So soft a fingernail marks it, white to pink, sometimes as satin-fibrous bands or as clear cleavable plates. Does not fizz, does not taste of salt. Size Fine to bladed crystals Where Evaporite basins; White Sands in New Mexico is a whole dune field of it. 23. ### Travertine and tufa Banded cream and tan calcium carbonate full of holes, fizzing strongly in acid, sometimes with fossilised plant stems moulded in it. Widely used as floor tile. Size Banded, porous Where Hot springs and hard-water streams: Yellowstone, Pamukkale, Tivoli. 24. ### Marble Recrystallised limestone: fizzes in acid, is soft enough for a knife, and has a sugary sparkle on a broken face because the calcite grains have grown together. Fossils are destroyed by the recrystallisation. Size Sugary crystals 0.5–5 mm Where Carrara, Vermont, Georgia, Greece. Confused with Quartzite, which is also pale and massive but scratches glass and does not fizz. One acid drop separates them. 25. ### Quartzite Looks like sandstone until you break it: the fracture cuts straight through the grains rather than around them, giving a glassy sugary surface. Scratches glass and does not shed grains. Size Fused sand grains Where Ancient mountain belts worldwide; forms ridges because it resists erosion. 26. ### Slate Splits into thin flat plates that ring like a tile when tapped, in grey, purple, green or black. Harder than shale and the split direction often cuts across the original bedding at an angle. Size Too fine to see Where Wales, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Spain. 27. ### Phyllite Slate that has gone one grade further: the split surfaces have a silvery silky sheen from mica too fine to resolve, and they are crinkled rather than flat. Size Just below visible Where Mountain belts worldwide. 28. ### Schist Obviously sparkly, splitting along wavy surfaces paved with aligned mica flakes, often studded with garnet or staurolite crystals that grew during metamorphism. Size Visible mica flakes 1–5 mm Where The Appalachians, the Alps, the Scottish Highlands. [Identifying metamorphic rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/how-to-identify-metamorphic-rocks/) 29. ### Gneiss Coarse-grained with the dark and light minerals segregated into alternating bands, sometimes swirled or folded. Unlike schist it does not split easily along the banding. Size Crystals 1–10 mm Where The oldest cores of every continent. Confused with Granite, which has the same minerals randomly arranged. Banding is the whole difference. 30. ### Amphibolite Dark, heavy and dominated by black needle-like hornblende crystals, often with white plagioclase between them and a weak alignment rather than true banding. Size Crystals 1–5 mm Where Metamorphosed basalt in old mountain belts. 31. ### Soapstone Grey-green, and unmistakable by touch: it feels like dry soap and a fingernail carves it. Carvers and woodstove makers use it because it is soft and holds heat. Size Very fine Where Vermont, Virginia, Finland, Brazil. 32. ### Serpentinite Handle with care Mottled dark and light green with a waxy or greasy sheen and polished slippery surfaces, frequently veined with white. California's state rock. Size Fine, often with fibrous veins Where California, Quebec, Cyprus, the Alps. Risk Some serpentinites contain fibrous chrysotile asbestos. Do not saw, grind or crush it dry. 33. ### Hornfels A dense, hard, dark, featureless rock with a splintery fracture, formed where an intrusion baked the surrounding mudstone. Found as an aureole around a granite body. Size Very fine, sugary under a lens Where Contact zones around igneous intrusions. Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Four tests, in the order that actually helps The classic school method — decide igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic first — is the wrong way round for a beginner, because that is the conclusion rather than the observation. Work from what you can measure. 1. **Break it, then look at the fresh face with magnification.** A weathered surface tells you about the weather. Everything in this key refers to a fresh break. A 10× hand lens costs almost nothing; a phone camera at maximum zoom is a workable substitute. 2. **Scratch test.** Fingernail is about 2.5 on the Mohs scale, a copper coin about 3.5, a steel knife or a nail about 5.5, and window glass about 5.5 too. Scratch a fresh face, then rub the powder away with a thumb: soft minerals leave a groove, hard ones leave only a smear of metal. 3. **Acid test.** Put a drop of white vinegar on a fresh face. A vigorous fizz means calcite, so limestone, chalk, marble or travertine. A weak fizz only after you have scratched it to powder means dolomite. No fizz rules out the whole carbonate group in one second. 4. **Heft and magnetism.** Pick up two rocks of similar size and compare. Anything conspicuously heavy is iron-rich or metal-bearing. A fridge magnet on a string picks up magnetite-bearing basalt, magnetite ore and most meteorites. Those four take under a minute together and eliminate most of the catalogue. Colour, which is what everybody reaches for first, eliminates almost nothing: granite is pink, white, grey or black, and limestone is any colour a trace of iron or organic matter chooses to make it. ## The three families, told apart by texture Once you have the texture, the family follows almost automatically. *What the texture is telling you about how the rock formed. Standard determinative sequence used in introductory geology.* | What you see | What it means | Family | | --- | --- | --- | | Interlocking crystals, no gaps, no preferred direction | Crystallised from a melt at depth | Igneous, intrusive | | Fine or glassy, often with gas holes | Cooled fast at or near the surface | Igneous, volcanic | | Separate grains stuck together, flat layers | Deposited by water, wind or ice, then cemented | Sedimentary | | Fossils present | Formed at surface temperatures | Sedimentary, essentially always | | Minerals aligned into bands or splitting planes | Recrystallised under directed pressure | Metamorphic, foliated | | Recrystallised but uniform, no direction | Heated without directed stress, or made of one mineral | Metamorphic, non-foliated — marble, quartzite, hornfels | Two traps live in this table. Fossils are decisive evidence for a sedimentary origin, but their absence proves nothing — most sedimentary rock has none. And "no visible grains" is ambiguous on its own: basalt, shale, chert and hornfels are all fine-grained and belong to three different families. That is why the hardness and acid tests matter, and why the pairs section below is worth reading. ## The five pairs everybody gets wrong ### Granite and gneiss Same minerals, same coarse grain, same hardness. Granite's crystals are randomly oriented; gneiss has them segregated into light and dark bands, often folded. Look at the whole specimen rather than one face. ### Sandstone and quartzite Break both. Sandstone fails around the grains and leaves a gritty surface that sheds sand; quartzite fails through the grains and leaves a glassy fracture. Rubbing a broken edge on your palm settles it in a second. ### Limestone and dolostone A vinegar drop on a solid face: limestone fizzes visibly, dolostone does almost nothing until you powder it with a knife. Dolostone also tends to weather buff-brown while limestone weathers grey. ### Marble and quartzite Both are pale, massive and sugary. Marble is soft — a steel knife bites into it — and fizzes. Quartzite scratches glass and does nothing in acid. ### Shale and slate Shale is soft enough to scratch with a fingernail, breathes out an earthy smell when damp and splits along its original bedding. Slate is hard, rings when tapped, and its splitting plane frequently cuts across the bedding at an angle — which is exactly why it makes roofing. ## Where the rock came from is evidence too A rock found loose in a field has usually travelled, and one found in place has not. That distinction is the difference between a guess and an identification. **Bedrock exposures** — a road cut, a quarry face, a stream bank, a cliff — show the rock where it formed, along with its neighbours and its structures. Identifying from an outcrop is far easier than from a pebble, because you can see whether it is layered, how thick the beds are, and what sits above and below. **Glacial erratics** across the northern US, Canada and northern Europe were carried hundreds of kilometres by ice, which is why a lump of Canadian Shield gneiss turns up in an Illinois cornfield. If you are north of the last glacial limit, a stray boulder tells you nothing about the local geology. **River gravels** mix everything upstream into one bar, rounded and polished so the original textures are hard to read. Break a river pebble before you try to identify it. **Fill, ballast and landscaping stone** is the single most common source of confusing specimens near houses. Railway ballast is usually a hard igneous or metamorphic rock brought from a distant quarry, and bagged landscaping "lava rock" is scoria that may have come from another continent. Checking your local geology takes a minute and dramatically narrows the possibilities. In the United States the Macrostrat map gives the bedrock unit under any point; most national and state geological surveys publish an equivalent. ## A note on what a rock is not Several things that look like rocks are not, and they account for a large share of unresolvable identifications. **Slag** from historic smelting is everywhere in old industrial regions and in fields ploughed near old forges. It is glassy, bubbly, often blue, green or iridescent, sometimes very heavy, and it is the leading candidate whenever someone believes they have found a meteorite. **Concrete and asphalt fragments** weather into convincing conglomerates and breccias. Look for an unnaturally uniform matrix and for crushed rock fragments with saw marks. **Meteorites** are genuinely rare and the overwhelming majority of suspected finds are slag, magnetite, hematite or ironstone concretions. The useful screening characters: a fresh fusion crust, no vesicles, no quartz, a density well above ordinary rock, and — for most types — a magnet response. Then check for the Widmanstätten pattern on a cut and etched face, which cannot be faked by any terrestrial process. **Concretions** — cemented lumps that grew inside sediment — are the source of most "fossil egg" and "dinosaur bone" reports. They are usually spherical or lens-shaped with concentric internal layers and no bone texture. ## What this key covers, and what to do next 33 rock types, chosen as the ones people actually pick up: the common igneous suite, the everyday sedimentary rocks, the standard metamorphic series, and the building and landscaping stones that get confused with all of them. That is close to complete for casual identification in North America and Europe and nowhere near complete as geology — there are hundreds of named rock types, and dozens of ore, evaporite and volcanic varieties are absent. If you get to two candidates and stop, the useful next step is a streak plate and a hand lens rather than more looking. Once the rock is identified, the minerals in it are the more interesting question, and that needs a different key. For anything that might be valuable or unusual, a local rock and mineral club or a university geology department will look at a specimen for free, and they will be far more use than any photograph. Bring a fresh broken face, not a tumbled or weathered one. ## Questions people ask about this How do I identify a rock without any equipment? Four things are enough: break it and look at the fresh face closely, try to scratch it with a fingernail and then a steel knife, drop white vinegar on it and watch for fizzing, and compare its weight against another rock the same size. That sequence sorts most common rocks into a small group. Colour is the least useful character and the one most people start with. What rock fizzes in vinegar? Anything made of calcite: limestone, chalk, marble and travertine all fizz vigorously on a solid face. Dolostone and dolomitic marble fizz only feebly, and only after you scratch the surface to powder. Nothing else in this key reacts, which makes one drop of vinegar the fastest single test in rock identification. Is this rock a meteorite? Almost certainly not — the overwhelming majority of suspected meteorites are smelting slag, magnetite, hematite or ironstone concretions. Screening characters that rule one out quickly: gas bubbles or vesicles, visible quartz, layering, a streak on unglazed porcelain, or ordinary density. Genuine meteorites have a dark fusion crust, are notably dense, usually attract a magnet, and iron ones show a Widmanstätten pattern when a cut face is polished and etched. What is the difference between granite and gneiss? The minerals are the same and the arrangement is not. Granite crystallised from a melt, so its quartz, feldspar and mica are randomly oriented. Gneiss was squeezed and recrystallised, so the light and dark minerals are segregated into alternating bands, often folded. If it is stripey, it is gneiss. How can I tell sandstone from quartzite? Break both and look at the fracture. Sandstone breaks around the sand grains, leaving a gritty surface that sheds sand when rubbed. Quartzite breaks straight through the grains, leaving a glassy, sugary surface that sheds nothing. Quartzite also scratches glass easily, while poorly cemented sandstone will not. Why does my rock have holes in it? If they are rounded and the rock is dark and heavy, they are gas bubbles frozen into a lava flow, which makes it vesicular basalt or scoria. If the rock is pale and light enough to float, it is pumice. If the holes are irregular and the rock fizzes in acid, it is travertine or a weathered limestone where acid groundwater has dissolved parts away. Can I identify a rock from a photograph? Partly. A photograph of a fresh broken face at close range, with something for scale and light coming from the side, gets you the texture and often the family. What a photograph cannot give is hardness, heft or the acid reaction, and those are the tests that separate the pairs people actually confuse. Do the three physical tests first, then photograph. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows rocks down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [How to identify rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/identify-rocks/) - [What is this rock?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-this-rock/) - [How to identify igneous rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/how-to-identify-igneous-rocks/) - [How to identify metamorphic rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/how-to-identify-metamorphic-rocks/) - [What is the hardest rock?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-the-hardest-rock/) - [What is a geode?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-a-geode/) - [Granite: what type of rock is it?](https://orvik.app/rocks/granite-is-what-type-of-rock/) - [Quartz identification](https://orvik.app/rocks/quartz-identification/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) - [Mohs hardness scale, with a scratch test you can actually do](https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [How old is my dog or cat in human years?](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) - [What is the silver in this coin worth?](https://orvik.app/tools/coin-melt-value-calculator/) ## Where the data comes from - [US Geological Survey — rocks and minerals information](https://www.usgs.gov/science/science-explorer/geology) - [Macrostrat — bedrock geology by location](https://macrostrat.org/map) - [Mindat — rock and mineral database](https://www.mindat.org/) - [Geological Society of America — rock classification resources](https://www.geosociety.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Seashell Identification Chart — Match by Shape, Size and Coast** > Free seashell identification key for 29 common shells of the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts. Filter by shape, size, colour and which coast you were on. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/seashell-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Sky, coast & ground Sky, coast & ground # What shell did I find on the beach? Start with the split that organises the whole subject: **one piece or two?** A single coiled or conical shell is a gastropod — a snail. A matching pair, or one half of a pair, is a bivalve. That answer plus the coast you were standing on cuts the list to a handful. Entries **29** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search shells by name Basic form Spiral or coiled Cone or cap-shaped Two halves, fan-shaped Two halves, oval or oblong Flat disc None of these Size Under 2 cm 2–5 cm 5–10 cm Over 10 cm Surface Strong ribs or ridges Smooth Spines or knobs Patterned or zigzagged Pearly inside Holes or a slot Coast Atlantic — New England to Carolina Atlantic — Florida Gulf of Mexico Pacific Northwest Europe Showing all 29 shells 1. ### Atlantic bay scallop Argopecten irradians A fan with 17 to 18 strong rounded ribs and a small square "ear" on each side of the hinge, in mottled grey, orange or purple. The living animal has a row of blue eyes along the mantle edge. Size 5–8 cm Where Eelgrass beds from Massachusetts to Texas. In the record 14,485 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2285856) 2. ### Calico scallop Argopecten gibbus A small deeply cupped scallop mottled in white, pink and maroon in a broken calico pattern, with about 20 ribs. The most abundant shell on many Florida beaches. Size 3–6 cm Where North Carolina to Brazil. In the record 5,660 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2285862) 3. ### Atlantic jingle shell Anomia simplex Thin, translucent, warped and metallic gold, orange or silver, light enough to be almost weightless. The lower valve has a hole where the animal cemented itself to a rock. A handful jingles like coins. Size 2–5 cm Where Nova Scotia to Brazil. In the record 8,675 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5188927) 4. ### Eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica Thick, heavy, irregular and layered, taking the shape of whatever it grew on, chalky grey outside and porcelain white inside with a single purple muscle scar. Size 5–20 cm Where The Gulf of St Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. In the record 15,837 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2286079) 5. ### Blue mussel Mytilus edulis A smooth blue-black wedge pointed at one end, glossy when wet, pearly violet-white inside, usually still attached to others by tough byssal threads. Size 4–10 cm Where Cold rocky coasts of the North Atlantic and Pacific. In the record 232,395 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Oct · most distinctive in September · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8288896) 6. ### Atlantic surf clam Spisula solidissima A large heavy triangular-oval white clam with a smooth chalky exterior and a spoon-shaped pit inside the hinge. The big empty shells used as ashtrays on the northeast coast. Size 12–20 cm Where Nova Scotia to North Carolina. In the record 7,477 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5188982) 7. ### Quahog and hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria Thick, heavy and rounded-triangular with fine concentric growth ridges, dull grey-white outside and often edged deep purple inside. That purple lip was carved into wampum. Size 7–13 cm Where The Gulf of St Lawrence to Florida. In the record 7,142 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2287668) 8. ### Atlantic razor clam Handle with care Ensis directus Long, narrow and slightly curved like an old straight razor, glossy olive-brown with a varnished periostracum. Edges are genuinely sharp. Size 10–25 cm Where The North Atlantic; introduced and abundant in Europe. Risk Broken razor shells cut bare feet on tidal flats. They are the main reason to wear something on a mudflat. In the record 8,784 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2287249) 9. ### Coquina Donax variabilis Tiny wedge-shaped shells in every colour combination there is — pink, yellow, blue, purple, striped, rayed — no two alike. Living animals burrow back into the swash within seconds of a wave. Size 1–2.5 cm Where Virginia to Texas. In the record 5,185 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5189101) 10. ### Angel wing Cyrtopleura costata Pure white, thin, brittle and elongated, with about 26 strongly beaded radiating ribs. Found whole only rarely, because the animal lives a metre deep in mud and the shell breaks on the way out. Size 10–18 cm Where Massachusetts to Brazil. In the record 2,432 georeferenced records · half of them Oct–Feb · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2288749) 11. ### Lettered olive Americoliva sayana A glossy cylindrical shell with a short spire and a long narrow aperture, cream with fine brown zigzag markings that look like handwriting. South Carolina's state shell. Size 5–7 cm Where North Carolina to Texas. In the record 596 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8157902) 12. ### Shark eye moon snail Neverita duplicata A smooth flattened globe, grey-blue with a dark button of callus in the centre of the underside that gives it the eye look. Drills neat countersunk holes in other shells to eat them. Size 4–8 cm Where Massachusetts to Texas. Confused with Any shell you find with a perfect round bevelled hole was killed by one of these. That hole is a moon snail's signature. In the record 18,351 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2300326) 13. left-handed. hold it spire up: the opening is on your left, which almost no other shell does."> ### Lightning whelk Sinistrofulgur perversum A large pear-shaped whelk with knobs on the shoulder and brown lightning-bolt streaks — and it coils **left-handed**. Hold it spire up: the opening is on your left, which almost no other shell does. Size 10–30 cm Where The Gulf of Mexico and southeastern Atlantic. In the record 351 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Apr · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7575028) 14. ### Knobbed whelk Busycon carica Large, pear-shaped, with a crown of blunt knobs around the shoulder and a bright orange interior. Coils right-handed, unlike the lightning whelk. New Jersey and Georgia both use it as a state shell. Size 10–23 cm Where Massachusetts to Florida. In the record 5,164 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2302937) 15. ### Channeled whelk Busycotypus canaliculatus Pear-shaped with a deep square-cut channel spiralling along the suture between the whorls, and no knobs. Often found with a long string of papery egg capsules like a coiled zipper. Size 10–18 cm Where Cape Cod to Florida. In the record 3,101 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2302958) 16. ### Florida fighting conch Strombus alatus A heavy stout conch with a flaring lip and a row of blunt spines on the shoulder, orange to brown. The notch near the front of the aperture is where the animal's eye stalk sticks out. Size 5–10 cm Where North Carolina to Texas. In the record 2,211 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5192685) 17. ### Queen conch Handle with care Aliger gigas Very large with a broad flaring lip and a glossy pink to peach interior. The classic shell held to the ear. Size 15–30 cm Where Florida and the Caribbean. Risk Protected in Florida — it is illegal to take a live queen conch there, and the species is listed under CITES. Empty shells are also restricted in some jurisdictions. In the record 9,027 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in March · mostly from Puerto Rico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10903982) 18. ### Atlantic slipper shell Crepidula fornicata An oval cap with a shelf across half the underside, like a boat with a deck — hence the alternative name of boat shell. Stacks of them grow one on another, and every animal in the stack changes sex as it ages. Size 2–5 cm Where Native to the western Atlantic; invasive in Europe and on the Pacific coast. In the record 81,342 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5192789) 19. ### Limpet Patella and Lottia species A simple ribbed cone with an oval opening and no coil at all. Each limpet grinds a scar into the rock that its shell fits exactly, and returns to it after every feeding trip. Size 2–6 cm Where Rocky shores worldwide. 20. ### Abalone Handle with care Haliotis species A flattened ear-shaped shell with a row of open respiratory holes along one edge and a brilliant iridescent nacre interior. Rough and encrusted outside, spectacular inside. Size 10–25 cm Where The Pacific coast from Alaska to Mexico, and worldwide. Risk Heavily regulated. Taking abalone is banned or tightly licensed on most of the US Pacific coast, and possession rules can apply to empty shells. In the record 1,932,070 georeferenced records · half of them Nov–Nov · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2293068) 21. ### Olympia and Pacific oyster Ostrea lurida, Magallana gigas Heavy, ruffled and irregular with sharp frilled edges, grey-white outside and smooth inside. The introduced Pacific oyster is much larger and more elongated than the native Olympia. Size 5–25 cm Where The Pacific coast of North America. In the record 11,519 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from Canada [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2286067) 22. ### Sand dollar Handle with care Echinarachnius parma, Mellita species A flat white disc with a five-petalled flower pattern on top. It is not a shell at all but the internal skeleton of a burrowing sea urchin, and a living one is purple-brown and covered in fine moving spines. Size 5–10 cm Where Sandy bottoms on all US coasts. Risk A brown, fuzzy or purple sand dollar is alive. Put it back in the water. Only the bleached white ones are dead. In the record 23,218 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in August · mostly from Canada [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2279041) 23. ### Common periwinkle Littorina littorea A small, solid, dark grey-brown spiral with a pointed spire and a thick round opening. The most abundant snail on northern rocky shores. Size 1–3 cm Where Rocky shores of the North Atlantic; introduced to North America. In the record 59,882 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2301117) 24. ### Dog whelk Nucella lapillus A thick ribbed spiral in white, yellow or banded brown, with a short spire and a notched aperture. Colour depends on diet — mussel-eaters are brown, barnacle-eaters white. Size 2–4 cm Where Rocky North Atlantic shores. In the record 46,493 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Sep · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5193449) 25. ### Common cockle Cerastoderma edule A near-circular cream shell with about 24 strong radiating ribs and a deeply cupped profile, so the two halves together make a heart shape seen end-on. Size 3–5 cm Where Sandy shores across northwest Europe. In the record 101,430 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2286583) 26. ### Auger and turret shells Terebridae, Turritellidae Long, slender, sharply pointed spires with many tight whorls — the shape of a screw or a church spire. Augers are smooth and patterned; turret shells are strongly ribbed. Size 3–12 cm Where Warm sandy coasts. In the record 47,732 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685) 27. ### Cowrie Cypraeidae A glossy egg with a long narrow toothed slit along the flat underside and no visible spire at all — the mantle polishes the outside continuously while the animal is alive. Size 1–6 cm Where Warm seas worldwide; small species reach Florida and the Gulf. In the record 373,880 georeferenced records · half of them Nov–Nov · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2675) 28. ### Common whelk and egg case Buccinum undatum A solid ribbed spiral with a pointed spire and a flared opening, in dull cream. The papery mass of hundreds of fused capsules washed up beside it — often called a sea wash ball — is its egg case. Size 6–11 cm Where The North Atlantic. In the record 54,997 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2305073) 29. ### Skate egg case Rajidae Not a shell: a black leathery rectangular purse with a curved horn at each corner. Called a mermaid's purse, and it held a single skate embryo. Empty ones with a split at one end hatched successfully. Size 5–12 cm Where All temperate coasts. In the record 832,834 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Oct · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5877) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## One piece or two The first cut in shell identification is not shape or colour but the animal that built it, and it is visible instantly. **Gastropods** — snails — build one continuous coiled tube, growing at the open end. Anything spiral, conical or cap-shaped is a gastropod, including limpets and abalone, whose coil is flattened almost out of existence. **Bivalves** — clams, mussels, oysters, scallops — build two hinged halves. On a beach you almost always find one half, so learn to recognise the **hinge**: a straight edge with interlocking teeth and, on many species, a scar where the closing muscle attached. That hinge edge tells you it is half of a pair even when the pair is long separated. Two things on a beach are commonly called shells and are neither. A **sand dollar** is the internal skeleton of a burrowing sea urchin. A **mermaid's purse** is the leathery egg case of a skate. Both are worth knowing because both prompt the same question every summer. Once you have the group, the useful characters are the ribs, the shape of the aperture and the size — and the coast, which for most species is more restrictive than anything about the shell itself. ## The stories a shell carries Beachcombing gets considerably more interesting once you can read what happened to a shell before it reached you. **A neat round countersunk hole** near the hinge or shoulder means a moon snail or a drilling whelk ate the animal. The predator rasps a hole with its radula and softens it with acid, and the bevelled edge is diagnostic. Shells with these holes are the commonest kind on many Atlantic beaches, and each one is a record of a predation event. **A chipped and broken aperture** usually means a crab attacked it and failed, or succeeded. Repaired scars running across the growth lines show an attack the animal survived. **Fine branching white tubes cemented to the outside** are serpulid worms; small volcano-shaped cones are barnacles; a lacy crust is a bryozoan colony. All of these settled while the shell was still on the seabed, and heavy encrustation means it lay there a long time. **A worn, chalky, rounded shell with the colour gone** has been rolled in surf for a long time, possibly years. A glossy shell with sharp edges arrived recently. This is why the best shelling is after a storm at low tide — the storm delivers material that has not yet been ground down. **Left-handed coiling** is worth knowing because it is rare. Hold a spiral shell with the spire up and the opening facing you: if the aperture is on the right, the shell is dextral, like almost every gastropod on Earth. The lightning whelk of the Gulf coast is one of the few common left-handed shells, and it is instantly recognisable once you know to look. ## When to leave it, and what the rules are The most important question on a beach is whether the animal is still in it. *Checking whether a shell is occupied before you pocket it.* | Shell | Alive if… | Do | | --- | --- | --- | | Spiral shells | A hard door, the operculum, seals the opening; or legs and eyes emerge; or it smells | Return it to the water where you found it | | Any spiral shell | It moves in your hand — a hermit crab is inside | Put it straight back. Hermit crabs are limited by shell supply | | Bivalves | The two halves are still joined and closed | Return it. A joined pair usually means the animal is inside | | Sand dollar | Brown, purple, or fuzzy with fine spines | Return it to the water. Only bleached white ones are dead | | Starfish and urchins | Any movement of tube feet or spines | Return it | The legal position varies far more than most people expect. Several US states and many national and state parks prohibit collecting live shells and some prohibit collecting empty ones. Sanibel Island in Florida — the most famous shelling beach in North America — banned live shelling outright in 1995. Queen conch is protected in Florida and listed under CITES, abalone is tightly regulated on the Pacific coast, and taking any shell from a National Park is generally prohibited. Look up the local rule before you fill a bucket. Beyond the law there is a straightforward ecological argument. Empty shells are habitat: hermit crabs need them, small fish and octopus shelter in them, and they break down into the calcium carbonate that beaches and reefs are made of. A study on the Spanish coast found a 30-year decline in shell abundance tracking tourist numbers, with measurable effects on the organisms that depend on them. Photographing a shell and leaving it is not sentimentality. ## Finding better shells Shelling rewards timing far more than effort. - **Go at low tide, ideally a spring tide.** The lowest tides of the month expose ground that is usually underwater, and the tide tables are free. - **Go the morning after a storm or a strong onshore blow.** This is the single biggest factor. Winter storms on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts deliver material that has been on the seabed for years. - **Work the wrack line**, the ribbon of seaweed and debris left at high water, and then the swash zone where waves are actively sorting material by density. - **Look for the sorted patches.** Beaches sort by size and weight, so shells collect in specific places — behind a groyne, at the inside of a curve, at the ends of a beach. Once you find the patch, work it rather than walking. - **Look down-drift of a hard structure.** Jetties, groynes and rock outcrops trap material moving along the coast. To clean what you keep: soak in a 50:50 mix of water and household bleach for a few hours to remove organic residue, rinse well, dry, and rub with a little mineral oil to restore the colour that drying takes out. Do not boil delicate shells — thermal shock cracks them — and do not bleach anything with a natural periostracum you want to keep, because bleach strips it. ## What this key covers 29 entries covering the shells people actually pick up on North American and northwest European beaches, plus the two things on the strandline that are not shells at all. There are over 100,000 described mollusc species and any Florida beach can produce several hundred, so a key this size is a starting point rather than a field guide. Two limits are worth stating. Many families — augers, turret shells, cowries, tellins, arks — contain dozens of similar species separable only by fine sculpture, and this key names the family where that is true. And beach wear removes exactly the characters identification depends on: a rolled and bleached shell may not be identifiable by anyone. For a genuinely good identification, photograph the shell from three angles — aperture facing you, the back, and the hinge or underside — with a ruler in frame, and note the beach and the date. Regional shell clubs, museum malacology departments and iNaturalist all identify submissions, and the location is what makes it possible. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 28 of the 29shells here: **725,754 georeferenced records** across the 24 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 23 families, the oldest of them collected in 1877. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded shells in this key hold 73% of all the records between them: Blue mussel alone accounts for 232,395, while Lightning whelk has 351. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 22% of these records come from the Netherlands, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 688,837 georeferenced records for these 24 shells fall in April–August alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these shells are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in September. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in April–August. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these shells recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 13 of the 24shells here peak outside the warm half of the year — Common cockle, Atlantic slipper shell, Common whelk and egg case among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 28 named shells in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Blue mussel | [Mytilus edulis Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/8288896) | species | 232,395 | 35,916 | Aug–Oct | September | Sweden | | Common cockle | [Cerastoderma edule](https://www.gbif.org/species/2286583) | species | 101,430 | 6,636 | Mar–Aug | January | the Netherlands | | Atlantic slipper shell | [Crepidula fornicata](https://www.gbif.org/species/5192789) | species | 81,342 | 15,927 | Feb–Jul | December | the Netherlands | | Common periwinkle | [Littorina littorea](https://www.gbif.org/species/2301117) | species | 59,882 | 22,402 | May–Aug | July | the United Kingdom | | Common whelk and egg case | [Buccinum undatum Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2305073) | species | 54,997 | 8,734 | Apr–Aug | February | the United Kingdom | | Dog whelk | [Nucella lapillus](https://www.gbif.org/species/5193449) | species | 46,493 | 10,166 | Jun–Sep | July | the United Kingdom | | Sand dollar | [Echinarachnius parma](https://www.gbif.org/species/2279041) | species | 23,218 | 1,985 | Aug–Sep | August | Canada | | Shark eye moon snail | [Neverita duplicata](https://www.gbif.org/species/2300326) | species | 18,351 | 8,137 | Jan–Jun | December | the United States | | Eastern oyster | [Crassostrea virginica](https://www.gbif.org/species/2286079) | species | 15,837 | 18,265 | Jan–Jun | April | the United States | | Atlantic bay scallop | [Argopecten irradians](https://www.gbif.org/species/2285856) | species | 14,485 | 7,341 | Feb–Jul | December | the United States | | Olympia and Pacific oyster | [Ostrea lurida P.P.Carpenter, 1864](https://www.gbif.org/species/2286067) | species | 11,519 | 1,248 | May–Jun | June | Canada | | Queen conch | [Aliger gigas](https://www.gbif.org/species/10903982) | species | 9,027 | 4,681 | May–Aug | March | Puerto Rico | | Atlantic razor clam | [Ensis directus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2287249) | species | 8,784 | 6,823 | Feb–Jun | February | the Netherlands | | Atlantic jingle shell | [Anomia simplex d'Orbigny, 1853](https://www.gbif.org/species/5188927) | species | 8,675 | 5,611 | Jan–May | May | the United States | | Atlantic surf clam | [Spisula solidissima](https://www.gbif.org/species/5188982) | species | 7,477 | 7,976 | Apr–Aug | April | the United States | | Quahog and hard clam | [Mercenaria mercenaria](https://www.gbif.org/species/2287668) | species | 7,142 | 10,372 | Mar–Jul | April | the United States | | Calico scallop | [Argopecten gibbus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2285862) | species | 5,660 | 4,504 | Jan–Jun | December | the United States | | Coquina | [Donax variabilis Say, 1822](https://www.gbif.org/species/5189101) | species | 5,185 | 5,984 | Mar–Jul | December | the United States | | Knobbed whelk | [Busycon carica](https://www.gbif.org/species/2302937) | species | 5,164 | 6,701 | Mar–Jul | December | the United States | | Channeled whelk | [Busycotypus canaliculatus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2302958) | species | 3,101 | 3,558 | Apr–Aug | December | the United States | | Angel wing | [Cyrtopleura costata](https://www.gbif.org/species/2288749) | species | 2,432 | 2,427 | Oct–Feb | December | the United States | | Florida fighting conch | [Strombus alatus Gmelin, 1791](https://www.gbif.org/species/5192685) | species | 2,211 | 5,327 | Feb–Jun | April | the United States | | Lettered olive | [Americoliva sayana](https://www.gbif.org/species/8157902) | species | 596 | — | Feb–May | February | the United States | | Lightning whelk | [Sinistrofulgur perversum](https://www.gbif.org/species/7575028) | species | 351 | 91 | Jan–Apr | — | the United States | | Abalone | [Haliotis Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2293068) | genus | 1,932,070 | 30,877 | Nov–Nov | November | the United States | | Skate egg case | [Rajidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/5877) | family | 832,834 | 20,082 | Jul–Oct | March | the United States | | Cowrie | [Cypraeidae](https://www.gbif.org/species/2675) | family | 373,880 | 54,178 | Nov–Nov | November | the United States | | Auger and turret shells | [Terebridae](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685) | family | 47,732 | 8,122 | Jan–Jun | February | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How do I know if a shell is still alive? For spiral shells, look for a hard door — the operculum — sealing the opening, or for legs and eyes emerging, or any movement, which usually means a hermit crab. For bivalves, two halves still joined and closed almost always means the animal is inside. A sand dollar that is brown, purple or fuzzy with fine spines is alive; only bleached white ones are dead. Anything alive goes back in the water. Is it legal to take shells from the beach? It depends entirely on where you are. Many US states restrict or ban taking live shells, and collecting in National Parks is generally prohibited. Sanibel Island in Florida banned live shelling in 1995. Queen conch is protected in Florida and listed under CITES, and abalone is tightly regulated on the Pacific coast. Check the local rule before collecting, and be aware that some rules cover empty shells too. What made the perfect round hole in my shell? A predatory snail, most often a moon snail or a drilling whelk. It rasps a hole with its radula while softening the shell with acid, then eats the animal inside. The hole is neatly circular and countersunk — bevelled wider on the outside — which is what distinguishes it from damage. Every shell with one of these holes is a record of a predation event. Is a sand dollar a shell? No. It is the internal skeleton, called a test, of a burrowing sea urchin. In life it is covered in short moving spines and is brown or purple; the flat white disc with the five-petalled pattern is what is left after the animal dies and the spines fall off. The petal pattern is where its tube feet emerged. What is the black leathery thing with horns at the corners? A skate egg case, commonly called a mermaid's purse. Each one held a single embryo, and the horns anchored it to seaweed or the seabed. If one end is split open, it hatched successfully. In the UK, the Shark Trust runs a recording programme that uses public finds to map where skates and rays breed. When is the best time to find shells? Low tide on the morning after a storm or a strong onshore wind, ideally on a spring tide when the water pulls back furthest. Storms lift material off the seabed that has been there for years. Work the wrack line and the swash zone, and look for the places where a beach naturally sorts material — behind groynes, at the inside of curves and at the ends of a beach. How do I clean seashells? Soak them for a few hours in a half-and-half mix of water and household bleach to remove organic residue, rinse thoroughly, dry, and rub in a little mineral oil to restore the colour that drying dulls. Do not boil thin or delicate shells, because thermal shock cracks them, and do not bleach anything whose brown outer skin you want to keep — bleach strips it away. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows shells down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Photo identifier tools](https://orvik.app/nature/photo-identifier/) - [Identify an animal by picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-animal-by-picture/) - [How to identify rocks](https://orvik.app/rocks/identify-rocks/) - [Fossil identifier](https://orvik.app/rocks/fossil-identifier/) - [Photo recognition apps](https://orvik.app/nature/photo-recognition-app/) - [What is this rock?](https://orvik.app/rocks/what-is-this-rock/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What cloud is that?](https://orvik.app/tools/cloud-identifier/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) - [Which bird did this feather come from?](https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/) - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) - [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — invertebrate zoology](https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/invertebrate-zoology) - [Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum, Sanibel](https://www.shellmuseum.org/) - [NOAA — beachcombing and coastal collecting guidance](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/) - [Marine Conservation Society — UK shore identification](https://www.mcsuk.org/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/seashell-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Seed Starting Calculator — Sowing Dates From Your Last Frost** > Enter your last frost date and get indoor sowing and transplant dates for 34 vegetables and flowers, with the crops that should never be started indoors marked. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Plants & trees Plants & trees # When do I start these seeds? Every sowing instruction on every seed packet is written relative to one number: **your average last spring frost**. Put that date in and this turns it into a calendar — when to sow each crop indoors, and when it goes in the ground. Crops that resent transplanting are marked as direct-sow only. Crops **34** Input **One frost date** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** My average last spring frost Look it up from a national weather service table, or ask a local grower. The zone estimate below is a fallback. No idea? Estimate from a USDA zone — pick a zone — Zone 3 Zone 4 Zone 5 Zone 6 Zone 7 Zone 8 Zone 9 Zone 10 Rough only. Zones describe winter cold, not spring timing. Frost-free from Add your frost date Half of years will see a later frost than the average date, so keep fleece to hand for anything tender for another two weeks. ## Your sowing calendar *Sowing and planting-out dates derived from the frost date above. Weeks-before-frost figures follow standard extension-service guidance.* | Crop | Sow indoors | Plant out or direct sow | Note | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Tomato | 6 wk before frost | 2 wk after frost | Set out only once nights stay above 10 °C | | Pepper and chilli | 8 wk before frost | 2 wk after frost | Needs 25 °C soil to germinate | | Aubergine / eggplant | 8 wk before frost | 2 wk after frost | The most heat-demanding of the three | | Tomatillo | 6 wk before frost | 1 wk after frost | Plant two — it will not set fruit alone | | Basil | 5 wk before frost | 2 wk after frost | Cold below 10 °C blackens the leaves | | Broccoli | 6 wk before frost | 3 wk before frost | Transplants tolerate light frost | | Cabbage | 6 wk before frost | 3 wk before frost | | | Cauliflower | 6 wk before frost | 2 wk before frost | Any check to growth causes buttoning | | Brussels sprouts | 6 wk before frost | 2 wk before frost | Long season — sow for an autumn harvest | | Kale | 5 wk before frost | 3 wk before frost | Sweeter after frost | | Lettuce | 4 wk before frost | 3 wk before frost | Bolts once nights stay warm | | Celery | 10 wk before frost | 1 wk before frost | Very slow to germinate | | Onion from seed | 10 wk before frost | 4 wk before frost | Match the day-length type to your latitude | | Leek | 10 wk before frost | 3 wk before frost | | | Cucumber | 3 wk before frost | 1 wk after frost | Dislikes root disturbance — use pots | | Squash and courgette | 3 wk before frost | 1 wk after frost | Grows so fast that direct sowing often catches up | | Pumpkin | 3 wk before frost | 1 wk after frost | | | Melon | 3 wk before frost | 2 wk after frost | Needs warm soil and a long season | | Sweetcorn | Direct sow only | 1 wk after frost | Direct sow; plant in a block, not a row | | Bean, bush and pole | Direct sow only | 1 wk after frost | Rots in cold wet soil | | Pea | Direct sow only | 5 wk before frost | Sow as soon as the soil can be worked | | Carrot | Direct sow only | 3 wk before frost | Never transplants well | | Beetroot | Direct sow only | 3 wk before frost | | | Radish | Direct sow only | 4 wk before frost | Ready in about four weeks | | Spinach | Direct sow only | 5 wk before frost | Bolts in heat | | Turnip | Direct sow only | 4 wk before frost | | | Parsnip | Direct sow only | 3 wk before frost | Slow and erratic; use fresh seed | | Potato | Direct sow only | 2 wk before frost | Plant chitted seed potatoes | | Garlic | Direct sow only | 26 wk after frost | Plant in autumn, about six months after last frost | | Sunflower | Direct sow only | At last frost | | | Zinnia | 4 wk before frost | 1 wk after frost | | | Marigold | 6 wk before frost | At last frost | | | Cosmos | 4 wk before frost | At last frost | Direct sowing works just as well | | Sweet pea | 6 wk before frost | 4 wk before frost | Autumn sowing gives the strongest plants | ## The last frost date is the only input that matters Every sowing instruction on every seed packet is written relative to one number: the average date of the last spring frost where you are. "Start indoors six to eight weeks before last frost" is meaningless without it and completely determinate with it. Three ways to get yours, in descending order of reliability: - **Your national weather service.** In the United States, NOAA publishes freeze and frost probability tables by station, and most state extension services republish them by county. In the UK the Met Office publishes equivalent averages. - **A local grower.** An allotment neighbour, a farmers' market stallholder or a garden club will give you a date that already accounts for the valley you are in. This is often better than the official figure. - **The zone estimate** in the table below, which is a starting point and nothing more. Two things worth understanding about the number itself. It is an **average**, which means roughly half of years will have a later frost than the date, and published tables usually give a 50% probability date and a 10% probability date — the second is the safe one for anything frost-tender. And it is a **regional** figure: a low-lying garden where cold air pools can run two weeks behind a slope half a mile away, and a city centre can run two weeks ahead of its own suburbs. ## Hardiness zone is not a planting date The USDA plant hardiness zone is the single most misused number in gardening. It describes **average annual extreme minimum winter temperature**, in 5.5 °C bands, and it exists to answer one question: will this perennial survive the winter here? It says nothing about when spring arrives, how long the growing season is, or how hot the summer gets. Seattle and Oklahoma City are both around zone 7 or 8 and share almost no growing conditions. That is why the calculator asks for a frost date, and why the zone table below is offered only as a rough starting estimate for people who have no better figure. *Very approximate average last-frost dates by USDA zone. Local variation is large — use a county figure where you can get one.* | Zone | Typical last frost | Rough growing season | | --- | --- | --- | | 3 | Late May | 90–110 days | | 4 | Mid May | 110–130 days | | 5 | Early May | 130–160 days | | 6 | Mid April | 160–180 days | | 7 | Early April | 180–210 days | | 8 | Mid March | 210–240 days | | 9 | Mid February | 250–300 days | | 10 | Late January or none | 300+ days | ## Starting too early is worse than starting late The commonest mistake in seed starting is enthusiasm in February. A tomato sown ten weeks before last frost rather than six spends four extra weeks in a pot on a windowsill, and the result is a tall, pale, weak-stemmed plant that transplants badly and fruits later than one sown a month after it. The mechanism is light, not warmth. A south-facing windowsill in March delivers a small fraction of the light a seedling gets outdoors, and a plant grown short of light stretches for it — long internodes, thin stems, pale leaves. Once a seedling is leggy it does not recover; you start again. Four things fix nearly all of it: - **Light close and long.** A cheap LED shop light held 5 to 10 cm above the leaves, for 14 to 16 hours a day, outperforms any windowsill. Raise it as the plants grow. - **Warm to germinate, cool to grow.** Most seeds want 20 to 25 °C in the compost to sprout and then noticeably cooler air to grow stocky. A heat mat under the tray and a cool room after emergence is the standard combination. - **Air movement.** A small fan on low for a few hours a day thickens stems and largely prevents damping off, the fungal collapse that kills seedlings at soil level overnight. - **Water from below and let the surface dry.** Constantly wet compost is what damping off needs. ## Hardening off, which is not optional A seedling raised indoors has thin cuticles, soft tissue and no experience of ultraviolet light or wind. Moved straight outside it can be scorched white in an afternoon or snapped off at the stem. The transition takes seven to ten days and there is no shortcut. 1. **Days 1–2:** one to two hours outdoors in full shade, sheltered from wind, then back inside. 2. **Days 3–4:** three to four hours, with an hour of morning sun. 3. **Days 5–6:** most of the day out, with several hours of direct sun. 4. **Days 7–8:** all day out, in overnight only if frost threatens. 5. **Days 9–10:** out overnight, then plant — ideally on a still overcast evening rather than a bright morning. Reduce watering slightly during the process and stop feeding. A slightly checked plant hardens faster than a lush one. And bring everything in if a late frost is forecast, whatever day of the schedule you are on. ## Which crops should never be started indoors The calculator marks these direct-sow only, and the reason is root architecture rather than tradition. **Root crops** — carrots, parsnips, beetroot, radish, turnip — form a taproot that forks permanently if it is disturbed. A transplanted carrot is a forked carrot. Sow them where they are to grow, thin ruthlessly, and accept that thinning is the price of a straight root. **Beans, peas and sweetcorn** germinate fast and grow so quickly in warm soil that a direct-sown plant overtakes a transplanted one within a fortnight. They also resent root disturbance. There is nothing to gain. **Cucurbits** — cucumber, squash, melon, pumpkin — sit in between. They dislike disturbance but benefit from a head start in short-season regions. If you start them indoors, do it three weeks before last frost at most, in a large individual pot or a soil block, and plant out without breaking the root ball. The general principle worth carrying: **the value of starting indoors is a head start on a long-season crop, and the cost is root disturbance.** Tomatoes, peppers and aubergines need 8 to 12 weeks of warmth to fruit and will not manage it from a direct sowing in most of the temperate world, so the trade is worth it. Radishes are ready in four weeks and it never is. ## Reading the calendar this produces The output above gives two dates per crop: when to sow, and when it goes in the ground. Three habits make it work in practice. **Work backwards from the transplant date, not forwards from today.** The transplant date is fixed by the weather; the sowing date is derived from it. Anyone who sows first and then waits for the weather ends up with leggy plants. **Stagger a succession.** Sowing all your lettuce on one day produces a glut and then nothing. Sow a short row every two to three weeks through the season for lettuce, radish, beans, spinach and carrots. **Label everything as you sow it.** Every seedling in the brassica family looks identical for the first three weeks, and tomato varieties are indistinguishable until they fruit. Write the variety and the date on the label; the date is what tells you whether a slow tray is behind or normal. Finally, keep a record of what actually happened — the real last frost, what bolted, what never got going. Two seasons of your own notes beat every published table, because they describe your garden rather than your region. ## Questions people ask about this How do I find my last frost date? Look up a NOAA or national weather service freeze-probability table for a station near you, or ask a local allotment holder or garden club. Published tables usually give both a 50% and a 10% probability date; use the 10% one for anything frost-tender. Local topography matters more than most people expect — a frost pocket at the bottom of a slope can run two weeks behind a garden half a mile away. Is my hardiness zone the same as my planting date? No, and this is the most common confusion in gardening. The USDA hardiness zone describes average annual extreme minimum winter temperature and exists to tell you whether a perennial will survive the winter. It says nothing about when spring arrives or how long the growing season is. Seattle and Oklahoma City share a zone and share almost no growing conditions. What happens if I start seeds too early? You get leggy seedlings — tall, pale and weak-stemmed — because a windowsill in late winter provides a fraction of the light a plant needs, and it stretches looking for more. Leggy seedlings transplant badly and often crop later than plants sown weeks after them. If it has already happened, start again rather than trying to rescue them. Do I really have to harden seedlings off? Yes. Indoor-raised plants have thin cuticles and no exposure to ultraviolet light or wind, and moving them straight outdoors can scorch the leaves white in an afternoon or snap the stems. The transition takes seven to ten days, starting with one to two hours in full shade and building to a full day and then a night outdoors before planting. Which vegetables should I not start indoors? Root crops — carrots, parsnips, beetroot, radish, turnip — because the taproot forks permanently if disturbed. Beans, peas and sweetcorn germinate and grow so fast in warm soil that direct sowing overtakes transplants within a fortnight. Cucurbits are borderline: start them at most three weeks early, in individual pots, and plant without breaking the root ball. How deep should I sow seed? The general rule is two to three times the seed's own width. Very fine seed — lettuce, celery, snapdragon, foxglove — needs light to germinate and should be pressed onto the surface and not covered at all. The seed packet overrides the rule, and reading it takes five seconds. Why are my seedlings collapsing at soil level? Damping off, a fungal disease that thrives in wet compost, still air and low light. It is close to unstoppable once it starts, so the response is prevention: water from below and let the surface dry between waterings, run a small fan for a few hours a day, sow thinly so air can move between plants, and use clean containers and fresh compost. ## Not sure what came up in the seed tray? Brassica seedlings all look identical for three weeks and weeds arrive looking like crops. Photograph a seedling and Orvik will tell you whether to pot it on or pull it out. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [What plant is this?](https://orvik.app/plants/what-plant-is-this/) - [Apps that diagnose plant problems](https://orvik.app/plants/app-to-diagnose-plants/) - [Plant disease identification](https://orvik.app/plants/plant-disease-identification/) - [Types of weeds with names](https://orvik.app/plants/types-of-weeds-with-names/) - [Apps to identify weeds](https://orvik.app/plants/app-to-identify-weeds/) - [Vegetable identification](https://orvik.app/food/vegetable-identification/) - [Identify a plant by leaf shape](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-plant-by-leaf-shape/) - [Free plant diagnosis apps](https://orvik.app/plants/free-plant-diagnosis-app/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [NOAA NCEI — freeze and frost probability data](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/) - [USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map](https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/) - [University of Minnesota Extension — starting seeds indoors](https://extension.umn.edu/planting-and-growing-guides/starting-seeds-indoors) - [RHS — growing vegetables from seed](https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own/vegetables) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Snake Identification Chart — Venomous or Harmless?** > Free snake identification key for 28 North American snakes. Filter by pattern, size and region, with every venomous species flagged beside its look-alikes. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Animals Animals # What snake did I just see? Of roughly 150 snake species in the United States, about 22 are venomous, and they belong to just four groups: **rattlesnakes, copperheads, cottonmouths and coral snakes**. Everything else on this list is harmless. Filter by pattern and region — those two together settle most sightings without anyone needing to get close. Entries **28** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** **Identify from a distance and leave it alone.** Most bites happen to people who were handling, killing or moving a snake, and a severed head can still envenomate by reflex for up to an hour. If someone is bitten: get away from the snake, keep the limb still and below heart level, remove rings and watches, and go to hospital. **Do not** cut, suck, apply ice, use a tourniquet or take alcohol — every one of those makes the outcome worse. A photograph from a safe distance helps the hospital; a captured snake does not. Narrow it down Clear all Search snakes by name Pattern Plain, one colour Stripes running lengthwise Blotches or saddles down the back Rings or bands around the body Diamonds Hourglass or dumbbell crossbands Speckled or checkered Venom Venomous Harmless Adult length Under 50 cm / 20 in 50–100 cm / 20–40 in 1–1.5 m / 40–60 in Over 1.5 m / 5 ft Where you are Northeast Southeast Midwest Southwest West and Pacific Habitat In or beside water Woodland or leaf litter Field, prairie or desert Garden, garage or under something Rocky slope or ledge Showing all 28 snakes 1. ### Copperhead Can injure you Agkistrodon contortrix Tan to pinkish with dark crossbands shaped like an hourglass — wide on the sides, pinched narrow across the spine. Viewed from directly above, the bands look like a row of Hershey's Kisses. Size 60–90 cm Where Massachusetts to Florida, west to Texas and Nebraska. Confused with Northern water snake, eastern milk snake and juvenile rat snake. On all of those the dark markings are wide at the spine and narrow at the sides — the exact reverse of a copperhead. Risk Accounts for more venomous snakebites than any other US species, and the fewest deaths. Bites are painful and destroy local tissue; antivenom is often not needed but assessment always is. In the record 23,082 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9215881) 2. ### Cottonmouth Can injure you Agkistrodon piscivorus Heavy-bodied, dark olive to almost black with faded bands, and a broad dark stripe through the eye. Gapes to show a startlingly white mouth lining when threatened, and swims with its whole body riding on the surface. Size 75–120 cm Where The southeastern US coastal plain, north to Virginia and west to Texas. Confused with Harmless water snakes, which swim with only the head above water and flee rather than stand their ground. Risk Venom is cytotoxic and destroys tissue. It is also the species most often misidentified — most "cottonmouths" reported outside the range map are harmless water snakes. In the record 20,525 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9105722) 3. ### Timber rattlesnake Can injure you Crotalus horridus Heavy-bodied, yellow, grey or near-black with dark V-shaped crossbands and a solid black tail ending in a rattle. Often lies motionless in leaf litter for hours. Size 90–150 cm Where The eastern US from New England to Texas. Risk Long fangs and a large venom yield. Generally reluctant to strike and frequently does not rattle before it does. In the record 12,293 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444468) 4. ### Eastern diamondback rattlesnake Can injure you Crotalus adamanteus The largest venomous snake in North America: bold dark diamonds outlined in cream on a brown-olive ground, and two pale diagonal stripes across the side of the face. Size 1.2–1.8 m, exceptionally 2.4 m Where The coastal plain from North Carolina to Louisiana. Risk The most dangerous snake in the United States by venom yield and body size. Give it a very wide berth. In the record 4,259 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Sep · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444432) 5. ### Western diamondback rattlesnake Can injure you Crotalus atrox Dusty grey-brown with faint diamonds and — the diagnostic feature — a tail ringed in equal black and white bands like a coach whip, immediately before the rattle. Size 90–150 cm Where Texas and Oklahoma west to Arizona and southern California. Confused with Mojave rattlesnake, whose white tail bands are noticeably wider than the black ones and whose venom is far more dangerous. Risk Responsible for the most snakebite fatalities in the US. Stands its ground and rattles loudly. In the record 28,016 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444356) 6. behind the corner of the mouth."> ### Mojave rattlesnake Can injure you Crotalus scutulatus Looks like a small western diamondback, but the white tail bands are distinctly wider than the black ones, and a pale stripe runs behind the eye to *behind* the corner of the mouth. Size 60–110 cm Where The Mojave and Sonoran deserts of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and west Texas. Risk Some populations carry a potent neurotoxin in addition to the usual tissue-destroying venom, and symptoms can be delayed. Any suspected Mojave bite is a hospital emergency regardless of how the wound looks. In the record 8,048 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444480) 7. ### Prairie rattlesnake Can injure you Crotalus viridis Greenish-grey to light brown with dark oval blotches edged in white down the back, and two pale stripes on the side of the face. The default rattlesnake across the plains. Size 90–115 cm Where The Great Plains from Canada to Mexico, and the Rockies. In the record 15,687 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8945077) 8. ### Western rattlesnake Can injure you Crotalus oreganus Brown to olive with dark blotches that become bands towards the tail, and a rattle. The only venomous snake across most of the Pacific states. Size 75–115 cm Where California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada. In the record 30,556 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444446) 9. ### Sidewinder Can injure you Crotalus cerastes Small, sand-coloured, with raised horn-like scales over each eye, and it moves sideways in loops leaving a J-shaped track in the sand. Nothing else does either. Size 45–75 cm Where The deserts of southeastern California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. Risk Venomous but small; bites are painful and rarely life-threatening in a healthy adult. In the record 8,565 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444360) 10. ### Pygmy rattlesnake Can injure you Sistrurus miliarius Small and grey with a row of dark blotches and an orange stripe down the spine. The rattle is so tiny it sounds like an insect, and often goes unheard entirely. Size 35–60 cm Where The southeastern US from North Carolina to Texas. Risk Small venom yield, but bites cause severe local tissue damage and are frequently underestimated. In the record 5,531 georeferenced records · half of them May–Sep · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444222) 11. ### Massasauga Can injure you Sistrurus catenatus Stout, grey with large chocolate-brown blotches, in wet grassland. Federally threatened and rarely seen; a small rattle that is easy to miss. Size 45–75 cm Where Wet prairie and fen from Ontario and New York west to Iowa and Missouri. Risk Protected across most of its range. Report a sighting to a state wildlife agency rather than moving the animal. In the record 4,175 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from Canada [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9223124) 12. ### Eastern coral snake Can injure you Micrurus fulvius Slender, glossy, with complete rings of red, yellow and black all the way around the body, a blunt black snout, and red rings touching yellow rings. Size 60–75 cm Where Florida and the coastal plain west to Louisiana. Confused with Scarlet kingsnake and scarlet snake, on which red touches black. In the United States only: red touches yellow, kill a fellow; red touches black, friend of Jack. The rhyme fails in Latin America. Risk A neurotoxin, unlike every other US venomous snake. Symptoms can be delayed 12 hours or more and then progress to respiratory failure. Any suspected coral snake bite is an emergency even with no pain and no visible wound. In the record 2,060 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9173089) 13. wide at the spine and narrow at the sides — the reverse of a copperhead — becoming almost uniformly dark with age. swims with only its head above water."> ### Northern water snake Nerodia sipedon Heavy-bodied and dark brown with crossbands that are **wide at the spine and narrow at the sides** — the reverse of a copperhead — becoming almost uniformly dark with age. Swims with only its head above water. Size 60–120 cm Where The eastern and central United States. Confused with Killed constantly as a cottonmouth or copperhead. A round pupil, a narrow head and a body that flees rather than gapes are all it takes to tell. In the record 72,882 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5223334) 14. ### Common garter snake Thamnophis sirtalis Three pale lengthwise stripes — one down the spine, one on each side — over a dark checkered ground. The default garden snake across the continent. Size 45–90 cm Where The most widely distributed snake in North America. In the record 169,200 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2457522) 15. ### Eastern ratsnake Pantherophis alleghaniensis Long, glossy and near-black as an adult with a white chin and throat, climbing walls and trees easily. Its cross-section is loaf-shaped — flat belly, angled sides — rather than round. Size 1.2–1.8 m Where The eastern United States. Confused with Juveniles are grey with dark blotches and are mistaken for copperheads every summer. The blotches are wide at the spine, not pinched. In the record 41,026 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7453543) 16. ### Corn snake Pantherophis guttatus Orange to rust with bold red saddles outlined in black, a spear-point mark on the head, and a black-and-white chequerboard belly — the belly is diagnostic and no venomous species has it. Size 75–120 cm Where The southeastern United States. In the record 10,069 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2455615) 17. ### Eastern milk snake Lampropeltis triangulum Grey with red-brown blotches edged in black and a pale Y or V on the back of the head. Found under boards, in barns and in basements, which is where the copperhead confusion starts. Size 60–90 cm Where The eastern and central United States. In the record 21,945 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5224503) 18. ### Eastern kingsnake Lampropeltis getula Glossy black with narrow cream chain-link bands. It eats other snakes, including copperheads and rattlesnakes, and is largely immune to their venom. Size 90–120 cm Where The eastern and southeastern United States. In the record 9,460 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9799308) 19. red touching black. a harmless mimic of the coral snake."> ### Scarlet kingsnake Lampropeltis elapsoides Red, black and yellow bands with a red snout and, crucially, **red touching black**. A harmless mimic of the coral snake. Size 35–50 cm Where The southeastern United States. In the record 1,234 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7794320) 20. ### Black racer Coluber constrictor Uniform satin black with a white chin, slender and very fast, holding its head up off the ground as it moves. Where a ratsnake climbs, a racer runs. Size 90–150 cm Where Most of the United States. In the record 48,933 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/6161776) 21. ### Coachwhip Masticophis flagellum Very long and whip-thin, dark at the head fading to tan at the tail, with scales that look braided like a whip. Extremely fast in open ground. Size 1.2–1.8 m Where The southern United States. In the record 19,174 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8433585) 22. ### Gopher snake and bullsnake Pituophis catenifer Big, tan with dark brown saddles, and an impressive bluff: it flattens its head into a triangle, hisses loudly and vibrates its tail in dry leaves to sound exactly like a rattlesnake. It has no rattle. Size 1.2–1.8 m Where Western and central North America. Confused with The single most-killed harmless snake in the American West, precisely because the bluff works. Look for the absence of a rattle and for a round pupil. In the record 64,677 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2453826) 23. ### Eastern hognose snake Heterodon platirhinos Stout with an upturned shovel-like snout. When cornered it flattens its neck like a cobra, hisses, strikes with its mouth closed, and if that fails rolls over and plays dead with its tongue hanging out. Size 50–90 cm Where The eastern United States. In the record 11,733 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5223730) 24. ### Ring-necked snake Diadophis punctatus Small, slate grey with a bright yellow or orange ring around the neck and a vivid orange belly it shows by curling its tail when alarmed. Found under logs, rocks and paving. Size 25–40 cm Where Most of the United States. In the record 44,522 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8763701) 25. ### DeKay's brown snake Storeria dekayi Tiny, plain grey-brown with a pale stripe down the back edged with small dark dots. Common in gardens, compost heaps and city parks and almost always mistaken for a baby of something else. Size 23–33 cm Where The eastern and central United States, including dense cities. In the record 49,081 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9056579) 26. ### Rough green snake Opheodrys aestivus Slender, uniform bright leaf-green above and pale yellow below, moving through shrubs and vines. Eats insects and is entirely harmless. Size 55–80 cm Where The southeastern United States. In the record 18,637 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8984671) 27. ### Eastern indigo snake Drymarchon couperi The longest native snake in the United States: glossy blue-black with an orange-red chin and throat, thick-bodied and diurnal. Size 1.5–2.4 m Where Southern Georgia and Florida. Risk Federally threatened. Killing or harassing one is a federal offence. In the record 145 georeferenced records · half of them Nov–Mar · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2452317) 28. ### Common watersnake of the West Thamnophis and Nerodia species Striped or blotched snakes swimming in western waters are garter and water snakes — there is no cottonmouth west of central Texas, so any snake in water in California, Oregon or Arizona is harmless. Size 50–110 cm Where Streams and ponds of the western United States. In the record 329,102 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2457825) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## The four venomous groups, and nothing else Learning twenty-two venomous species is unnecessary. Learning four groups is enough, and each has a feature visible from several metres away. - **Rattlesnakes** — a rattle. Sixteen species in the US, all with the same terminal segment. A snake with a rattle is a rattlesnake; a snake without one is not, however hard it vibrates its tail in leaf litter. - **Copperhead** — hourglass crossbands, pinched narrow across the spine and wide at the sides, on a tan or pink ground. Only in the East and Midwest. - **Cottonmouth** — heavy, dark, thick-necked, in water, in the southeastern coastal plain. Gapes to show a white mouth. - **Coral snake** — complete rings of red, yellow and black with red touching yellow, and a black snout. Southeast and, as separate species, Arizona and Texas. Region does more filtering than any physical character. There are no venomous snakes at all in Alaska, Hawaii or Maine. There is one venomous species — the western rattlesnake — across most of the Pacific Northwest and northern California. There is no cottonmouth west of central Texas, so a snake swimming in a Californian creek is harmless, full stop. ## The rules you were taught that do not work Several widely repeated tests are unreliable, and two of them require standing close enough to be bitten. **Triangular head.** The most repeated and the most misleading. Water snakes, hognose snakes and gopher snakes all flatten their heads into a triangle when threatened, which is precisely when you are looking at them. Meanwhile the coral snake — the most dangerous venomous snake in the country by venom type — has a narrow head no wider than its neck. **Vertical pupils.** True of pit vipers and false of coral snakes, which have round pupils. It also requires you to be close enough to see a pupil, in good light, on a moving animal. Do not use it. **Tail rattling.** Many harmless snakes vibrate their tails when alarmed, and in dry leaves a gopher snake or a ratsnake produces a convincing buzz. The sound is not the evidence; the rattle is. **Aggression.** Snakes do not chase people. What is nearly always happening is that the snake is trying to reach cover and the person is standing between it and the cover. Step sideways and it goes past you. The rhyme that *does* work, and only in the United States: **red touches yellow, kill a fellow; red touches black, friend of Jack**. It separates the eastern coral snake from the scarlet kingsnake and scarlet snake reliably within US borders. It fails completely in Central and South America, where coral snakes come in patterns the rhyme does not describe. ## The confusions that get harmless snakes killed *The three misidentifications behind most snake killings in the United States, and the character that separates each pair.* | Mistaken for | Usually is | The test | | --- | --- | --- | | Copperhead | Northern water snake, juvenile ratsnake, eastern milk snake, corn snake | Copperhead bands are *pinched narrow across the spine*; on every look-alike the dark marks are widest at the spine | | Cottonmouth | Northern or banded water snake | Cottonmouth swims with the whole body on the surface and gapes white; a water snake swims with only its head up and flees. Also check the range map — most reports are outside it | | Rattlesnake | Gopher snake, bullsnake, ratsnake, hognose | Look for an actual rattle. Tail-buzzing in leaves is a bluff several harmless species perform well | | Coral snake | Scarlet kingsnake, scarlet snake | Red touching yellow is coral; red touching black is harmless. Coral snakes also have a black snout, the mimics a red one | Killing snakes is also counterproductive on its own terms. A single ratsnake or kingsnake removes a large number of rodents a year, and kingsnakes specifically eat copperheads and rattlesnakes and are resistant to their venom. Removing the harmless snakes from a property reliably increases both the rodent population and, in time, the venomous snake population. It is often illegal too. Several species on this list are federally or state protected — eastern indigo snake, massasauga, timber rattlesnake in several northeastern states — and in many jurisdictions killing any non-venomous native snake is an offence. ## If somebody is bitten The current medical guidance is short, and most of it is a list of things not to do. 1. **Move away from the snake.** A second bite is a real risk, and a severed head retains a bite reflex for up to an hour. 2. **Call emergency services and get to hospital.** Antivenom is the treatment and it is only available there. 3. **Keep the person calm and still**, with the bitten limb immobilised and roughly at or below heart level. 4. **Remove rings, watches and tight clothing** immediately — swelling can be dramatic and fast. 5. **Mark the leading edge of the swelling with a pen and write the time.** This is genuinely useful to the treating team. 6. **Photograph the snake only if it can be done safely from a distance.** Do not catch or kill it; identification is helpful but not required, since US antivenom covers all pit vipers. **Do not:** cut the wound, attempt to suck out venom, use a suction device, apply a tourniquet or constriction band, ice the limb, give alcohol or caffeine, or give aspirin or ibuprofen. Every one of these is either useless or actively harmful, and the field literature is unambiguous about it. About a quarter of pit viper bites are dry, with no venom injected, but that cannot be determined outside a hospital. Coral snake bites deserve particular caution: the neurotoxin can produce little pain and no local swelling, and symptoms may not appear for twelve hours or more before progressing rapidly to respiratory failure. A suspected coral snake bite goes to hospital regardless of how well the person feels. ## Keeping snakes out of a garden Snakes come for food and shelter, and both are manageable without touching a single snake. - **Remove the rodents.** Secure feed bins, clear spilled bird seed, and compost in a closed bin. Rodents are why the snake is there. - **Remove the shelter.** Woodpiles stacked on the ground, sheets of plywood, rock piles, dense ground cover against a foundation and long grass are all daytime retreats. Raise the woodpile and clear a strip. - **Seal the gaps.** Anything a mouse fits through, a snake fits through. Foundation gaps, dryer vents and gaps under garage doors are the usual routes. - **Ignore the repellents.** Mothballs, sulphur, ultrasonic devices and lime have all been tested and none works. Mothballs used outdoors are also illegal in the United States under their label instructions, and they poison children and pets. - **Never use glue traps outdoors.** They catch birds, lizards and non-target snakes, and the animals die slowly. If a snake is inside a building, open an exterior door and leave the room; most will leave on their own within a few hours. If it needs moving and it might be venomous, call a local wildlife removal service or a state wildlife agency. Many areas have volunteer snake relocators who will do it for free, precisely because they would rather the snake was moved than killed. ## What this key covers 28 entries: every venomous group in the United States and the harmless species most likely to be confused with them, plus the common garden and woodland snakes people photograph. That is a fraction of the roughly 150 US species — the fossorial snakes, the many *Thamnophis* forms, the regional endemics of Texas and the Southwest, and the whole Mexican fauna are absent. Two limits worth naming. Juveniles frequently look nothing like adults: ratsnakes, racers and cottonmouths are all patterned as young and plain as adults, and a bright yellow tail tip on a young cottonmouth or copperhead is a lure for frogs. And melanistic individuals — all-black forms of normally patterned species — occur regularly in garter snakes, ratsnakes and timber rattlesnakes. For an identification that matters, photograph from a safe distance and post it to a regional snake identification group on iNaturalist or Facebook, where herpetologists routinely answer within minutes. Include your county. Location narrows the candidates faster than any photograph. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 28 of the 28snakes here: **745,515 georeferenced records** across the 27 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 3 families, the oldest of them collected in 1930. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded snakes in this key hold 54% of all the records between them: Common garter snake alone accounts for 169,200, while Eastern indigo snake has 145. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 87% of these records come from the United States, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 716,424 georeferenced records for these 27 snakes fall in March–June alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these snakes are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in June. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in March–June. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these snakes recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 15 of the 27snakes here peak outside the warm half of the year — DeKay's brown snake, Black racer, Ring-necked snake among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 28 named snakes in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Common garter snake | [Thamnophis sirtalis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2457522) | species | 169,200 | 207,688 | Mar–Jun | August | the United States | | Northern water snake | [Nerodia sipedon](https://www.gbif.org/species/5223334) | species | 72,882 | 97,127 | Apr–Jun | May | the United States | | Gopher snake and bullsnake | [Pituophis catenifer](https://www.gbif.org/species/2453826) | species | 64,677 | 82,533 | Apr–Jun | May | the United States | | DeKay's brown snake | [Storeria dekayi](https://www.gbif.org/species/9056579) | species | 49,081 | 68,747 | Mar–Jun | November | the United States | | Black racer | [Coluber constrictor Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/6161776) | species | 48,933 | 58,543 | Apr–Jun | January | the United States | | Ring-necked snake | [Diadophis punctatus](https://www.gbif.org/species/8763701) | species | 44,522 | 48,004 | Apr–Jun | February | the United States | | Eastern ratsnake | [Pantherophis alleghaniensis](https://www.gbif.org/species/7453543) | species | 41,026 | 60,682 | Apr–Jun | June | the United States | | Western rattlesnake | [Crotalus oreganus Holbrook, 1840](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444446) | species | 30,556 | 38,589 | Apr–Jun | February | the United States | | Western diamondback rattlesnake | [Crotalus atrox Baird & Girard, 1853](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444356) | species | 28,016 | 31,562 | May–Aug | November | the United States | | Copperhead | [Agkistrodon contortrix](https://www.gbif.org/species/9215881) | species | 23,082 | 27,766 | Apr–Jul | September | the United States | | Eastern milk snake | [Lampropeltis triangulum](https://www.gbif.org/species/5224503) | species | 21,945 | 29,750 | May–Jun | June | the United States | | Cottonmouth | [Agkistrodon piscivorus](https://www.gbif.org/species/9105722) | species | 20,525 | 24,500 | Mar–Jun | December | the United States | | Coachwhip | [Masticophis flagellum](https://www.gbif.org/species/8433585) | species | 19,174 | 18,629 | Apr–Jun | April | the United States | | Rough green snake | [Opheodrys aestivus Linnaeus, 1766](https://www.gbif.org/species/8984671) | species | 18,637 | 22,781 | Mar–Jun | October | the United States | | Prairie rattlesnake | [Crotalus viridis Rafinesque, 1818](https://www.gbif.org/species/8945077) | species | 15,687 | 38,589 | Apr–Jul | December | the United States | | Timber rattlesnake | [Crotalus horridus Linnaeus, 1758](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444468) | species | 12,293 | 15,680 | May–Jul | July | the United States | | Eastern hognose snake | [Heterodon platirhinos Latreille, 1801](https://www.gbif.org/species/5223730) | species | 11,733 | 13,502 | Mar–Jun | September | the United States | | Corn snake | [Pantherophis guttatus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2455615) | species | 10,069 | 12,362 | Mar–Jun | January | the United States | | Eastern kingsnake | [Lampropeltis getula](https://www.gbif.org/species/9799308) | species | 9,460 | 34,229 | Apr–Jun | January | the United States | | Sidewinder | [Crotalus cerastes Hallowell, 1854](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444360) | species | 8,565 | 5,127 | Mar–May | April | the United States | | Mojave rattlesnake | [Crotalus scutulatus Kennicott, 1861](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444480) | species | 8,048 | 6,226 | Jun–Aug | August | the United States | | Pygmy rattlesnake | [Sistrurus miliarius Linnaeus, 1766](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444222) | species | 5,531 | 6,178 | May–Sep | December | the United States | | Eastern diamondback rattlesnake | [Crotalus adamanteus Palisot De Beauvois, 1799](https://www.gbif.org/species/2444432) | species | 4,259 | 4,553 | Apr–Sep | January | the United States | | Massasauga | [Sistrurus catenatus](https://www.gbif.org/species/9223124) | species | 4,175 | 5,476 | Jul–Aug | August | Canada | | Eastern coral snake | [Micrurus fulvius](https://www.gbif.org/species/9173089) | species | 2,060 | 4,904 | Mar–Jul | January | the United States | | Scarlet kingsnake | [Lampropeltis elapsoides](https://www.gbif.org/species/7794320) | species | 1,234 | 1,304 | Feb–May | January | the United States | | Eastern indigo snake | [Drymarchon couperi](https://www.gbif.org/species/2452317) | species | 145 | 276 | Nov–Mar | December | the United States | | Common watersnake of the West | [Thamnophis Fitzinger, 1843](https://www.gbif.org/species/2457825) | genus | 329,102 | 339,462 | Apr–Jul | August | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How do I tell a venomous snake from a harmless one? In the United States, learn four groups rather than twenty-two species: rattlesnakes have a rattle, copperheads have hourglass crossbands pinched narrow across the spine, cottonmouths are heavy dark water snakes of the southeastern coastal plain that gape white, and coral snakes have complete red, yellow and black rings with red touching yellow. Everything else is harmless. Region filters more than anything else: there are no venomous snakes in Maine, Alaska or Hawaii, and one species across most of the Pacific Northwest. Does a triangular head mean venomous? No, and it is the most misleading rule in circulation. Water snakes, hognose snakes and gopher snakes all flatten their heads into a triangle when threatened, which is exactly when you are looking at them. Meanwhile the coral snake, the most medically serious venomous snake in the country, has a narrow head no wider than its neck. Use pattern and region instead. Is the snake in my pond a cottonmouth? Almost certainly not unless you are in the southeastern coastal plain — there is no cottonmouth west of central Texas or north of Virginia. In their range, cottonmouths swim with the whole body riding on the surface and stand their ground with a white gaping mouth; harmless water snakes swim with only the head above water and flee. Most reported cottonmouths are northern or banded water snakes. What do I do if I am bitten? Move away from the snake, call emergency services, keep the person calm with the limb still and at or below heart level, and remove rings and watches before swelling starts. Mark the edge of the swelling with a pen and note the time. Do not cut, suck, ice, tourniquet, or give alcohol or ibuprofen — all of those make the outcome worse. Antivenom is the treatment and it is only in hospital. Does the red-and-yellow rhyme actually work? Within the United States, yes. "Red touches yellow, kill a fellow; red touches black, friend of Jack" reliably separates the eastern coral snake from the scarlet kingsnake and scarlet snake. Coral snakes also have a black snout while the mimics have a red one. The rhyme fails completely in Central and South America, where coral snakes occur in patterns it does not describe. Do snakes chase people? No. What people experience as a chase is almost always a snake heading for cover with a person standing between it and that cover. Step to one side and it will pass. Cottonmouths and gopher snakes both hold their ground rather than fleeing, which reads as aggression and is actually a bluff. What keeps snakes out of a yard? Removing food and shelter. Secure feed and bird seed, use a closed compost bin, raise woodpiles off the ground, clear plywood sheets and rock piles, cut long grass near the house and seal any gap a mouse could use. Repellents do not work: mothballs, sulphur, lime and ultrasonic devices have all been tested and failed, and mothballs used outdoors are illegal under their own label in the US and poison children and pets. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows snakes down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Identify a snake by picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-snake-by-picture/) - [Snake identification apps](https://orvik.app/animals/snake-identification-app/) - [Identify an animal by picture](https://orvik.app/animals/identify-animal-by-picture/) - [Frog vs toad](https://orvik.app/animals/frog-vs-toad/) - [Animal track identification](https://orvik.app/animals/animal-track-identification/) - [What type of spider is this?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-type-of-spider-is-this/) - [What animal makes noise at night?](https://orvik.app/animals/what-animal-makes-noise-at-night/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What animal made this track?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-track-identifier/) - [Whose droppings are these?](https://orvik.app/tools/animal-scat-identifier/) - [How old is my dog or cat in human years?](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) - [Which bird did this feather come from?](https://orvik.app/tools/feather-identifier/) - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) - [What gemstone is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/gemstone-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [CDC — venomous snakes and first aid](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/snakes/) - [American College of Medical Toxicology — snakebite management](https://www.acmt.net/) - [Amphibians and Reptiles of North America — species accounts](https://amphibiaweb.org/) - [US Fish and Wildlife Service — protected reptile species](https://www.fws.gov/species) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Spider Identification Chart — Filter by Markings, Web & Size** > Free spider identification key for 31 common North American spiders. Filter by markings, web type, body size and where you found it. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Insects & spiders Insects & spiders # What spider is this? **The web is worth more than the spider.** A flat funnel in the grass, a messy tangle in a basement corner and a neat wheel across a doorway are made by three unrelated families, and the shape narrows the list before you have looked at a single marking. If there is no web, the spider is a hunter — and that is a useful answer in itself. Entries **31** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** **Only two North American spiders are medically significant: widows and the brown recluse.** Both are flagged below. Recluses live in a defined range through the central and southern Midwest and are extremely rare outside it, so a "recluse bite" in California, Florida or New England is almost always something else — usually a bacterial skin infection. If a bite develops an expanding dark centre, fever or severe pain, see a doctor and take a photograph of the spider if you safely can. Narrow it down Clear all Search spiders by name The web Look before you look at the spider. Web shape splits the families. Neat wheel or orb Flat sheet with a funnel retreat Messy tangle or cobweb No web — it hunts Silk-lined burrow or hole Small silk sac or retreat Markings Red hourglass underneath Violin shape on the head plate Banded or striped legs Lengthwise stripes on the body Chevrons or herringbone Bold spots or a cross Plain, one colour Bright green, yellow or white Body length, legs excluded Under 5 mm 5–10 mm 10–18 mm Over 18 mm Where you found it Inside the house Basement, garage or woodpile Garden, shrub or flower On the ground or under a rock At the water's edge Eaves, window frame or fence Bite risk Harmless Bite hurts, no lasting harm Medically significant Showing all 31 spiders 1. ### Black widow Can injure you Latrodectus mactans, L. hesperus, L. variolus Glossy, almost lacquered jet-black globe of an abdomen with a red hourglass on the underside, hanging upside down in a coarse, irregular, very strong tangle web low down in a dark sheltered spot. Size Female body 8–13 mm Where Across the southern and western United States; the northern widow reaches New England and southern Canada. Confused with False widow and immature widows, which are brown with pale markings. The hourglass — sometimes two separate red triangles — is the character to check, and it is on the belly. Risk Venom is a neurotoxin: severe muscle cramping spreading from the bite, sweating, abdominal rigidity. Rarely fatal in healthy adults but genuinely serious in children and the elderly. Seek medical care. In the record 9,532 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2157949) 2. [How dangerous is a black widow?](https://orvik.app/insects/how-dangerous-is-a-black-widow/) 3. ### Brown widow Handle with care Latrodectus geometricus Tan to grey-brown with a geometric pattern on top and an orange or yellow hourglass beneath. The decisive clue is the egg sac: a pale ball covered in blunt silk spikes, like a tiny mine. Size Female body 7–12 mm Where The US Gulf Coast, Florida, and now much of southern California. Risk Venom is comparable to the black widow's but the spider injects far less and is much less inclined to bite. Bites usually stay local. In the record 19,655 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Oct · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2157944) 4. ### Brown recluse Can injure you Loxosceles reclusa Uniform tan with no leg bands, no abdominal pattern, a dark violin shape on the head plate pointing backwards, and — the reliable character — six eyes in three pairs rather than eight. Size Body 6–9 mm; legs span about a quarter Where A well-mapped range: Kansas and Nebraska east to western Ohio, south to Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. Very rare outside it. Confused with Almost everything brown gets called a recluse. Any spider with banded legs, a patterned abdomen or eight eyes is not one, and neither is anything found outside the range map. Risk Most bites heal without incident; a minority produce a necrotic ulcer over one to two weeks. Do not excise the wound. Photograph the spider — the diagnosis is otherwise unreliable, and infections are misdiagnosed as recluse bites constantly. In the record 6,189 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5170704) 5. [Identifying a brown recluse properly](https://orvik.app/insects/brown-recluse-spider-how-to-identify/) 6. ### Yellow sac spider Handle with care Cheiracanthium inclusum, C. mildei Pale straw to greenish-yellow with a slightly darker stripe down the abdomen and dark tips to the jaws, spending the day in a small flat silk sac tucked into a wall-ceiling corner or a folded leaf. Size Body 5–10 mm Where Across North America, and one of the commonest indoor spiders. Risk The most common source of genuine spider bites indoors. Stings sharply and leaves a red mark; the old claim that it causes necrosis is not supported by the evidence. In the record 803 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in December · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2164133) 7. ### Cellar spider Pholcus phalangioides A tiny body on absurdly long thin legs, hanging in a loose tangle in a ceiling corner. Disturb it and it vibrates the web into a blur — the behaviour is diagnostic. Size Body 7–9 mm, legs to 50 mm Where Buildings across North America and Europe. Confused with Harvestmen, also called daddy long-legs, which have one body segment and no web. The myth that either has fangs too short to bite through skin has been tested and is false in the details and irrelevant in practice. In the record 79,360 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from Belgium [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2149937) 8. ### Common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum A dull grey-brown bulbous abdomen with faint darker chevrons, in a messy tangle web in a window corner, often with two or three brown papery egg sacs hanging in it. Size Body 5–8 mm Where Homes across North America. Confused with Immature widows, which are also in a tangle web. Widow legs are shinier and longer, and an adult widow's egg sac is smooth and white rather than papery brown. In the record 15,378 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2157402) 9. ### Wolf spider Hogna, Tigrosa and Rabidosa species Big, hairy, brown and grey with lengthwise stripes, running fast on the ground rather than sitting in a web. Two of its eight eyes are much larger than the rest and glow back at a headtorch. Size Body 10–35 mm Where Everywhere in North America. Confused with Constantly mistaken for a tarantula or a recluse. The decisive sight is a female with a pea-sized egg sac attached to her spinnerets, or carrying dozens of spiderlings on her back. In the record 29,229 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2146483) 10. ### Grass spider Agelenopsis species A flat horizontal sheet of dense silk in a hedge or on the lawn, with a funnel at one corner where the spider waits. Two long tail-like spinnerets project noticeably beyond the abdomen. Size Body 10–20 mm Where Across North America. Confused with Hobo spider, which is in the same family and is what most funnel webs get blamed on in the Pacific Northwest. In the record 24,831 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2139659) 11. ### Hobo spider Eratigena agrestis A brown funnel-web spider with a herringbone of pale chevrons on the abdomen and — unlike its relatives — plain, unbanded legs. Size Body 8–15 mm Where The Pacific Northwest and the northern Rockies only. Confused with Its own reputation. The CDC removed the hobo spider from its list of venomous spiders in 2017; the necrotic-bite claim was never replicated. In the record 4,642 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7909042) 12. ### Giant house spider Eratigena atrica The large fast brown spider that appears in a bathtub in autumn. Males wander in September and October looking for females; they cannot climb the enamel, which is why they are found stranded. Size Body 12–18 mm, leg span up to 75 mm Where The Pacific Northwest, the northeastern US and across northern Europe. In the record 16,252 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Sep · most distinctive in January · mostly from Germany [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7783291) 13. ### Bold jumping spider Phidippus audax Compact, fuzzy, black with a white or orange triangle and two spots on the abdomen, and iridescent green or blue jaws. Two enormous forward-facing eyes; it turns to look at you, which nothing else does. Size Body 8–15 mm Where Across North America. In the record 81,735 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5173257) 14. ### Zebra jumping spider Salticus scenicus A tiny black-and-white striped jumper patrolling a sunny brick wall or windowsill in short darting runs, always trailing a silk safety line. Size Body 5–7 mm Where North America and Europe, mostly on sunlit walls and fences. In the record 86,602 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in March · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2172595) 15. ### Black and yellow garden spider Argiope aurantia Big, unmistakable, silver head and a black abdomen splashed with bright yellow, sitting head-down in the middle of a large orb web with a thick zigzag ribbon of silk running through the centre. Size Female body 19–28 mm Where Across the United States and southern Canada. Confused with Nothing much. The zigzag stabilimentum plus the yellow-on-black is unique among common garden orb weavers. In the record 70,101 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5171022) 16. ### Banded garden spider Argiope trifasciata Silvery abdomen finely banded in yellow and black across its width rather than blotched, in an orb web in open grassland late in the summer. Size Female body 15–25 mm Where Across North America, mostly in tall grass and old fields. In the record 32,212 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5170973) 17. ### Cross orbweaver Araneus diadematus Mottled brown or orange with a clear cross of white dots on the top of the abdomen, in a classic wheel web across a doorway or between two shrubs, rebuilt nightly. Size Female body 10–18 mm Where The northern US, Canada, and all of Europe. In the record 252,149 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in September · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2160133) 18. ### Marbled orbweaver Araneus marmoreus A bulbous orange or cream abdomen marbled with brown, on orange legs banded in black. The autumn form is so pumpkin-like it is sometimes called the pumpkin spider. Size Female body 9–18 mm Where Across North America and Europe. In the record 21,879 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2159970) 19. ### Spiny-backed orbweaver Gasteracantha cancriformis A hard, flattened, crab-like white or yellow shell with six red or black spikes around the edge and black dots on top. Nothing else looks remotely like it. Size Body 5–9 mm wide Where The US South from California to Florida. In the record 34,539 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Nov · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2158546) 20. ### Spined micrathena Micrathena gracilis A tall, black-and-white, sharply spined abdomen in a small vertical orb web strung across a woodland trail at face height — the spider you walk into in August. Size Body 8–11 mm Where Eastern woodland in the United States. In the record 16,390 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2159593) 21. ### Orchard orbweaver Leucauge venusta A small, elongated, silvery-green spider with lime and yellow stripes and orange spots underneath, hanging upside down in a nearly horizontal orb in shaded shrubbery. Size Body 5–8 mm Where Eastern North America. In the record 32,131 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jun · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2151568) 22. ### Long-jawed orbweaver Tetragnatha species Long, thin and stick-like with enormous jaws, resting stretched flat along a grass stem with the front legs extended forward and the back pair behind, becoming almost invisible. Size Body 6–12 mm, very elongated Where Waterside vegetation across North America and Europe. In the record 72,848 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2151693) 23. ### Golden silk orbweaver Trichonephila clavipes Large, elongated orange-brown body with tufts of black hair on the legs, in a huge web whose silk is visibly golden in sunlight. Called a banana spider in the southeast. Size Female body 24–40 mm Where The US South from Texas to North Carolina, and the American tropics. In the record 43,595 georeferenced records · half of them May–Sep · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10886629) 24. ### Joro spider Trichonephila clavata Bright yellow and blue-grey banded body with red marks underneath and long black-and-yellow legs, in a very large three-dimensional golden web often built high, across driveways and porches. Size Female body 17–25 mm Where Introduced to Georgia around 2013 and spreading through the southeastern United States. Confused with Golden silk orbweaver, which shares the habitat and web colour. The Joro is more brightly banded and has red on the underside. In the record 20,077 georeferenced records · half of them Sep–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10670284) 25. ### Green lynx spider Peucetia viridans Vivid translucent green with long spiny legs and a pointed abdomen, sitting motionless on a flower head waiting to ambush pollinators. It can spit venom a short distance when guarding eggs. Size Body 12–22 mm Where The southern United States from California to Florida. In the record 21,645 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2178540) 26. ### Goldenrod crab spider Misumena vatia Crab-shaped, holding its long front legs open sideways, sitting inside a flower. It changes colour between white and yellow over several days to match whatever it is sitting on. Size Female body 6–10 mm Where Across North America and Europe. In the record 106,811 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from Germany [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2165951) 27. ### Six-spotted fishing spider Dolomedes triton A big grey-brown spider with white side stripes standing on the surface film of still water, legs spread wide. It dives and stays under when disturbed. Size Body 9–20 mm Where Pond and marsh margins across North America. In the record 12,771 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2150962) 28. ### Dark fishing spider Dolomedes tenebrosus Very large, mottled brown with dark W-shaped chevrons on the abdomen and banded legs, flattened against a tree trunk, a woodpile or a basement wall. Size Body 15–26 mm, leg span up to 90 mm Where Eastern North America, often well away from water. Confused with Wolf spiders and, inevitably, tarantulas. Fishing spiders have a flatter posture and their eyes are in two rows of four rather than the wolf spider's two big headlights. In the record 27,370 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2150903) 29. ### Texas brown tarantula Aphonopelma hentzi A genuinely large, uniformly dark brown, densely hairy spider living in a silk-lined burrow. Mass wanderings of males across roads happen every autumn in the southern Plains. Size Body 40–55 mm, leg span up to 110 mm Where Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, New Mexico and Colorado. Risk Bite is mechanically painful but medically trivial. The real irritant is the barbed hairs it kicks off its abdomen, which sting skin and are genuinely dangerous to eyes. In the record 6,118 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2153618) 30. ### Trapdoor spider Ummidia species A glossy, almost bald, dark chocolate spider with a shovel-shaped head, found only when the hinged soil-covered lid of its burrow is turned up. Males wander after rain. Size Body 12–28 mm Where The southern and eastern United States. In the record 1,541 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2163771) 31. ### Woodlouse hunter Dysdera crocata A shiny red-orange head and legs with a pale grey-pink abdomen, and jaws so long and forward-projecting they look wrong for the body. Six eyes, and it eats nothing but woodlice. Size Body 9–15 mm Where North America and Europe, under stones, logs and pots. Confused with Brown recluse, because both have six eyes. The huge jaws and two-tone red-and-cream body separate them instantly. In the record 22,126 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2139331) 32. ### Parson spider Herpyllus ecclesiasticus Flat, velvety black-grey with a single white stripe down the abdomen that breaks into a comma at the rear — the shape of a clerical collar. Runs erratically across a wall or floor at night. Size Body 8–13 mm Where Across North America. In the record 12,787 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2132839) 33. ### Southern house spider Kukulcania hibernalis The female is a stout velvety charcoal spider living in a crevice with radiating tangled silk around the opening; the male is a slim tan spider with long legs that wanders indoors. Size Female body 13–19 mm Where Florida and the Gulf states west to California. Confused with The male is the single most common false brown recluse report in Florida. It is larger, longer-legged and has eight eyes. In the record 6,235 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2167609) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Read the web first Spiders that build webs are far easier to place than spiders that hunt, because the architecture is family-specific and it does not vary with the individual. Learning five shapes covers most of what you will find around a house. *Web architecture and the families that build it. Applies across North America and Europe.* | What it looks like | Family | Typical builders | | --- | --- | --- | | Vertical wheel with radiating spokes, rebuilt most nights | Araneidae, Tetragnathidae | Garden spiders, cross orbweaver, spiny-backed orbweaver, long-jawed orbweaver | | Flat horizontal sheet with a funnel retreat at one edge | Agelenidae | Grass spiders, hobo spider, giant house spider | | Messy three-dimensional tangle, no obvious plan | Theridiidae | Common house spider, widows, false widows | | Loose tangle with a tiny spider on very long legs | Pholcidae | Cellar spider | | Silk tube or lid over a hole in the ground | Ctenizidae, Theraphosidae | Trapdoor spiders, tarantulas | | Small flat silk sac in a corner or a folded leaf | Cheiracanthiidae | Yellow sac spider | | No web at all | Several | Wolf, jumping, crab, lynx, fishing, ground spiders | Two shortcuts follow from this. A neat wheel across your porch light means an orb weaver, and no orb weaver in North America is dangerous. A dense, coarse, irregular tangle low down in a garage, shed or woodpile is the widow habitat, and it is worth looking at properly before you reach in. ## The two that matter, and everything that gets blamed instead North America has roughly 3,500 spider species and two groups of medical significance. Everything else either cannot break skin, does not bite, or produces a bite equivalent to a bee sting. ### Widows Look for a glossy black globular abdomen with a red hourglass on the *underside*, hanging upside down in a tangle web. Widow venom is a neurotoxin and the bite is systemic — cramping muscle pain that spreads from the site, sweating, and abdominal rigidity severe enough that it has been mistaken for appendicitis. Deaths are very rare, but a bite in a child, an elderly person or anyone with heart disease is a hospital visit. ### Brown recluse The recluse deserves care and gets hysteria. Three facts change how you read a suspected bite. First, the **range is well mapped and narrow**: roughly Kansas and Nebraska to western Ohio, south to Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. Outside it, verified recluses turn up only as rare imports. Second, the identification requires **six eyes in three pairs, uniformly coloured legs with no bands, and no pattern on the abdomen** — the violin is variable and by itself proves nothing. Third, most confirmed bites heal on their own; a minority ulcerate. The clinical literature is blunt about the consequences of the panic: studies collecting "recluse bites" reported from outside the range have repeatedly found that the great majority were bacterial infections, most commonly MRSA, along with Lyme disease, diabetic ulcers, fungal infections and burns. Treating a MRSA abscess as a spider bite delays the antibiotic that would fix it. If a lesion is spreading, take it to a doctor and describe it as a skin lesion, not as a spider bite, unless you actually caught the spider. ## Body plan, when there is no web to read For the hunters, the shape and the way the animal moves are more reliable than colour. **Jumping spiders** are short, compact and hairy with two huge forward-facing eyes, and they turn their whole body to look at you. Nothing else does that, and it makes them the easiest family to recognise at a glance. **Wolf spiders** are long-legged, striped brown-and-grey ground runners with two big eyes in the middle row that reflect a headtorch beam back as green points. A female carrying a round egg sac attached to her spinnerets, or covered in spiderlings, is a wolf spider and cannot be anything else. **Crab and lynx spiders** hold their two front pairs of legs open sideways and sit still on flowers. A green spider on a flower in the southern US is a green lynx; a white or yellow one that seems to be part of the petal is a crab spider. **Fishing spiders** are the very large flat mottled spiders on tree trunks, boathouses and basement walls near water. They are the animal most often reported as a tarantula east of the Mississippi. **Ground spiders** like the parson spider are flat, velvety, and run in short erratic bursts across a wall at night, which is why they get noticed at all. ## Why there is suddenly a big spider in the bathtub Almost every autumn spider question has the same answer: adult males of the large house-dwelling species mature in late summer and abandon their webs to find females. They wander at night, fall into baths and sinks, and cannot climb back out because the enamel gives no grip. They are not coming in for water and they did not come up the drain — a U-bend full of water is not a route. Two other seasonal patterns are worth knowing. Orb weavers reach full size in late summer, which is why the garden spider that has been there since June suddenly seems enormous in September. And male tarantulas in the southern Plains march across roads in September and October in numbers that make the local news every year. If you want fewer spiders indoors, the levers are the ones that reduce insects: replace white porch bulbs with warm or yellow ones so the light attracts fewer moths, seal gaps around doors and utility penetrations, and clear the leaf litter and woodpiles stacked against the wall. Spraying pesticide around a foundation is largely theatre against spiders, which walk on the tips of their legs and pick up very little residue. ## Moving one out without hurting either of you The glass-and-card method works on everything in this key. Put a glass over the spider, slide a stiff card underneath, lift, carry, release outside — or in a garage or shed if it is a species that will not survive outdoors in winter. Do not use a vacuum on a spider you want to identify; it destroys the specimen and the legs come off. Two exceptions. Do not handle a widow or a suspected recluse: use the glass without letting it touch your hand, or leave it and use a sticky trap in the corner instead. And do not handle a tarantula with bare hands — not for the bite, but because it kicks urticating hairs off its abdomen, which sting skin and can cause lasting eye injury. If you want the identification confirmed, photograph before you release: one shot from directly above showing the whole body and leg markings, and one of the underside through the glass, because for widows the diagnostic marking is on the belly. If you can see the eyes, a close-up of the eye arrangement is the single most useful picture in the whole of spider identification. ## The limits of this key 31 entries covering the spiders people actually encounter in and around North American homes and gardens. That is a fraction of one percent of the described fauna, and many genera here — *Araneus*, *Dolomedes*, *Phidippus*, *Agelenopsis* — contain dozens of species that cannot be separated without examining genitalia under a microscope. Where that is the case the entry names the genus and says what it looks like, rather than pretending to a species. Regional gaps are deliberate: desert species, cave species, the whole of the tropical Florida fauna and most of the small ground-dwelling families are absent. If an identification matters, post the photograph to BugGuide or iNaturalist with your location and the date; both have arachnologists who identify submissions for free and will tell you plainly when a photograph cannot be taken past genus. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 31 of the 31spiders here: **1,059,084 georeferenced records** across the 27 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 17 families, the oldest of them collected in 1957. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded spiders in this key hold 57% of all the records between them: Cross orbweaver alone accounts for 252,149, while Yellow sac spider has 803. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 42% of these records come from the United States, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 1,045,676 georeferenced records for these 27 spiders fall in July–September alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these spiders are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in August. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in July–September. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these spiders recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 20 of the 27spiders here peak outside the warm half of the year — Zebra jumping spider, Cellar spider, Golden silk orbweaver among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 31 named spiders in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Cross orbweaver | [Araneus diadematus Clerck, 1757](https://www.gbif.org/species/2160133) | species | 252,149 | 165,956 | Aug–Sep | September | the Netherlands | | Goldenrod crab spider | [Misumena vatia](https://www.gbif.org/species/2165951) | species | 106,811 | 82,641 | Jun–Jul | June | Germany | | Zebra jumping spider | [Salticus scenicus](https://www.gbif.org/species/2172595) | species | 86,602 | 73,832 | Apr–Jun | March | the Netherlands | | Bold jumping spider | [Phidippus audax](https://www.gbif.org/species/5173257) | species | 81,735 | 132,457 | Mar–Jun | April | the United States | | Cellar spider | [Pholcus phalangioides](https://www.gbif.org/species/2149937) | species | 79,360 | 57,473 | May–Aug | January | Belgium | | Black and yellow garden spider | [Argiope aurantia Lucas, 1833](https://www.gbif.org/species/5171022) | species | 70,101 | 107,746 | Aug–Sep | August | the United States | | Golden silk orbweaver | [Trichonephila clavipes](https://www.gbif.org/species/10886629) | species | 43,595 | 66,269 | May–Sep | January | the United States | | Spiny-backed orbweaver | [Gasteracantha cancriformis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2158546) | species | 34,539 | 51,854 | Jul–Nov | December | the United States | | Banded garden spider | [Argiope trifasciata](https://www.gbif.org/species/5170973) | species | 32,212 | 44,041 | Sep–Oct | November | the United States | | Orchard orbweaver | [Leucauge venusta](https://www.gbif.org/species/2151568) | species | 32,131 | 50,714 | May–Jun | June | the United States | | Dark fishing spider | [Dolomedes tenebrosus Hentz, 1844](https://www.gbif.org/species/2150903) | species | 27,370 | 49,789 | May–Jul | May | the United States | | Woodlouse hunter | [Dysdera crocata C.L.Koch, 1838](https://www.gbif.org/species/2139331) | species | 22,126 | 29,441 | Apr–Jul | February | the United States | | Marbled orbweaver | [Araneus marmoreus Clerck, 1757](https://www.gbif.org/species/2159970) | species | 21,879 | 27,915 | Aug–Sep | November | the United States | | Green lynx spider | [Peucetia viridans](https://www.gbif.org/species/2178540) | species | 21,645 | 35,401 | Jul–Sep | October | the United States | | Joro spider | [Trichonephila clavata](https://www.gbif.org/species/10670284) | species | 20,077 | 27,699 | Sep–Oct | November | the United States | | Brown widow | [Latrodectus geometricus C.L.Koch, 1841](https://www.gbif.org/species/2157944) | species | 19,655 | 31,156 | Jun–Oct | February | the United States | | Spined micrathena | [Micrathena gracilis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2159593) | species | 16,390 | 24,108 | Jul–Aug | August | the United States | | Giant house spider | [Eratigena atrica](https://www.gbif.org/species/7783291) | species | 16,252 | 42,470 | Jun–Sep | January | Germany | | Common house spider | [Parasteatoda tepidariorum](https://www.gbif.org/species/2157402) | species | 15,378 | 33,117 | May–Aug | February | the United States | | Parson spider | [Herpyllus ecclesiasticus Hentz, 1832](https://www.gbif.org/species/2132839) | species | 12,787 | 22,168 | Jun–Aug | February | the United States | | Six-spotted fishing spider | [Dolomedes triton](https://www.gbif.org/species/2150962) | species | 12,771 | 18,927 | Mar–Jun | March | the United States | | Black widow | [Latrodectus mactans](https://www.gbif.org/species/2157949) | species | 9,532 | 14,735 | Jul–Oct | November | the United States | | Southern house spider | [Kukulcania hibernalis](https://www.gbif.org/species/2167609) | species | 6,235 | 11,476 | Feb–Jul | January | the United States | | Brown recluse | [Loxosceles reclusa Gertsch & Mulaik, 1940](https://www.gbif.org/species/5170704) | species | 6,189 | 9,483 | Apr–Jul | February | the United States | | Texas brown tarantula | [Aphonopelma hentzi](https://www.gbif.org/species/2153618) | species | 6,118 | 11,314 | Apr–Aug | October | the United States | | Hobo spider | [Eratigena agrestis](https://www.gbif.org/species/7909042) | species | 4,642 | 4,303 | Jul–Sep | January | the United States | | Yellow sac spider | [Cheiracanthium inclusum](https://www.gbif.org/species/2164133) | species | 803 | 3,704 | Apr–Aug | December | Brazil | | Long-jawed orbweaver | [Tetragnatha Walckenaer, 1805](https://www.gbif.org/species/2151693) | genus | 72,848 | 150,215 | May–Jul | June | the United States | | Wolf spider | [Hogna Simon, 1885](https://www.gbif.org/species/2146483) | genus | 29,229 | 56,472 | May–Aug | July | the United States | | Grass spider | [Agelenopsis Giebel, 1869](https://www.gbif.org/species/2139659) | genus | 24,831 | 70,004 | Aug–Sep | September | the United States | | Trapdoor spider | [Ummidia Thorell, 1875](https://www.gbif.org/species/2163771) | genus | 1,541 | 5,366 | Jun–Jul | June | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How do I know if it is a brown recluse? Three things must all be true: six eyes arranged in three pairs, legs that are a uniform colour with no bands or stripes, and an abdomen with no pattern. The violin marking is variable and many harmless spiders have something violin-shaped, so it is the weakest of the four characters. Add the range: verified recluses live roughly between Nebraska and western Ohio and south to Texas and Georgia, and are very rare outside it. What is the messy web in the corner of my garage? Almost certainly a common house spider or, in the southern and western US, a widow. Both build irregular three-dimensional tangles. The house spider is dull grey-brown with faint chevrons and brown papery egg sacs; a widow is glossy black with a red hourglass on its underside and smooth white egg sacs, and its silk is noticeably tougher — you can hear it tear. Is a daddy long-legs the most venomous spider in the world? No, and the claim is wrong twice over. The name is used for cellar spiders, which are spiders with weak venom of no medical significance, and for harvestmen, which are not spiders at all and have no venom glands. The story has been tested on television and in the literature and fails at every step. Why are there suddenly big spiders in the house in September? Males of the large house-dwelling species mature in late summer and leave their webs to find females. They wander at night, fall into baths and sinks, and cannot climb the smooth sides to get out. They did not come up the drain and they are not looking for water. The same seasonality makes garden orb weavers seem to appear overnight — they have been there since spring and have only now reached full size. Do wolf spiders bite? They can, if pinned against skin, and it feels like a bee sting with no lasting effect. They have no medically significant venom. Wolf spiders are among the most useful animals in a garden, eating large numbers of pest insects, and a female carrying spiderlings on her back is one of the more remarkable things you can watch in a back yard. What is the spider with the zigzag in its web? A black and yellow garden spider, Argiope aurantia, or one of its relatives. The thick zigzag ribbon is called a stabilimentum; its function is still debated, with evidence for both web advertisement to birds that would otherwise fly through it and for attracting insects that respond to ultraviolet. The spider is large, striking and completely harmless. Should I kill spiders in the house? There is little reason to. Household spiders eat flies, mosquitoes, clothes moths and each other, and the two dangerous groups are recognisable and avoidable rather than eliminable. If you want fewer of them, address what they are eating: switch porch lights to warm or yellow bulbs, seal gaps around doors and pipes, and clear leaf litter and woodpiles stacked against the wall. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows spiders down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [What type of spider is this?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-type-of-spider-is-this/) - [Identify a spider by picture](https://orvik.app/insects/identify-spider-by-picture/) - [How to identify a brown recluse](https://orvik.app/insects/brown-recluse-spider-how-to-identify/) - [How dangerous is a black widow?](https://orvik.app/insects/how-dangerous-is-a-black-widow/) - [Is a brown recluse deadly?](https://orvik.app/insects/is-a-brown-recluse-deadly/) - [Is this spider bite serious?](https://orvik.app/insects/how-do-i-know-if-a-spider-bite-is-serious/) - [Apps that identify spiders](https://orvik.app/insects/app-that-identifies-spiders/) - [What type of bug is this?](https://orvik.app/insects/what-type-of-bug-is-this/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) - [What kind of arrowhead did I find?](https://orvik.app/tools/arrowhead-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [How old is my dog or cat in human years?](https://orvik.app/tools/pet-age-calculator/) - [Mohs hardness scale, with a scratch test you can actually do](https://orvik.app/tools/mohs-hardness-scale/) ## Where the data comes from - [World Spider Catalog — the taxonomic authority for Araneae](https://wsc.nmbe.ch/) - [University of California IPM — spiders](https://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7442.html) - [Vetter, R. — brown recluse distribution and misdiagnosis research (UC Riverside)](https://spiders.ucr.edu/) - [CDC NIOSH — venomous spiders](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/spiders/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Succulent Identification Chart — Rosettes, Trailers and Cacti** > Free succulent identification key for 28 common house and garden succulents. Filter by growth form, leaf shape and flower, with toxic ones marked. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Plants & trees Plants & trees # What succulent is this? Succulence is a strategy, not a family — it has evolved dozens of separate times, which is why an aloe and an agave look alike and are not related. Sort by **growth form first**: a flat rosette, an upright column, a trailing stem, a clump of pads. Then the leaf shape and the flower place the genus. Entries **28** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search succulents by name Growth form Flat rosette Upright stem or shrub Trailing or hanging Clump of columns or pads Ball or barrel Stemless, ground-hugging Leaves Thick and fleshy Sword-like or pointed Beads, pearls or fingers Spines instead of leaves Translucent windows or stripes Hairy or powdery Colour Plain green Blue-grey or silver Striped or variegated Red, pink or purple tinted Practicalities Survives frost outdoors Indoor only Toxic to pets Non-toxic Hard to kill Showing all 28 succulents 1. ### Echeveria Echeveria species A neat symmetrical rosette of thick spoon-shaped leaves, usually with a chalky farina bloom that fingerprints permanently. Flowers arch out on a curved stalk from the side, not the centre. Size Rosette 5–30 cm Where Native to Mexico; the default garden-centre succulent worldwide. Confused with Sempervivum, which is frost-hardy, has thinner pointed leaves and flowers from the centre — and then that rosette dies. In the record 10,479 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5362052) 2. ### Hens and chicks Sempervivum tectorum Tight rosettes of pointed leaves, often red-tipped, ringed by offsets on short runners. Survives serious frost — the name means "always alive". Size Rosette 3–10 cm Where European mountains; grown outdoors across the northern hemisphere. Risk The one that flowers dies afterwards, having set seed. The offsets carry on. In the record 43,781 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985949) 3. ### Aloe vera Handle with care Aloe barbadensis Thick grey-green spears with soft white teeth along the edges, oozing clear gel when cut. Offsets freely from the base. Size Rosette 30–60 cm Where Windowsills worldwide; naturalised in dry climates. Confused with Agave, which has hard woody spines rather than soft teeth and no gel. Risk The yellow latex under the skin is toxic to dogs and cats — vomiting, diarrhoea, lethargy. The clear inner gel is not the problem part. In the record 98 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Apr · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2777729) 4. ### Agave Handle with care Agave species A rigid rosette of thick fibrous leaves ending in a hard needle spine, usually with hooked spines along the margins. Leaves keep the imprint of the ones they grew pressed against. Size Rosette 30 cm to 3 m Where The Americas; landscape plants across the dry world. Risk Sap contains calcium oxalate and saponins and causes contact dermatitis, sometimes severe. Terminal spines cause eye injuries — trim them on plants near a path. In the record 120,762 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2766430) 5. ### Haworthia Haworthiopsis and Haworthia species Small dark rosettes either banded with raised white pearly stripes (zebra plant) or with translucent windows at the leaf tips that let light down into buried leaves. Size Rosette 5–15 cm Where South Africa; a standard small houseplant. In the record 2,109 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9233780) 6. ### Gasteria Gasteria species Thick tongue-shaped mottled leaves growing in two opposite ranks rather than a spiral, with a rough sandpapery surface. Tolerates far less light than most succulents. Size 10–30 cm Where South Africa. In the record 2,207 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Nov · most distinctive in November · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2778529) 7. ### Jade plant Handle with care Crassula ovata A small tree with a thick woody trunk and glossy oval pads in opposite pairs, edged red in strong light. Lives for decades and is frequently inherited. Size 30 cm to 2 m Where South Africa; a classic windowsill plant everywhere. Risk Toxin unidentified. Causes vomiting, unsteady walking and a slowed heart rate in dogs and cats. In the record 2,321 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5362063) 8. ### String of pearls Handle with care Curio rowleyanus Threadlike stems hung with spherical green beads, each with a thin translucent window along one side. Flowers smell of cinnamon. Size Strands to 90 cm Where South Africa; a hanging-basket favourite. Risk Toxic to dogs and cats, and the beads are exactly the shape a cat wants to bat off a shelf. In the record 23 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Oct · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3149649) 9. ### String of hearts Ceropegia woodii Fine purple threads carrying paired heart-shaped leaves marbled silver over dark green, purple underneath. Grows small round tubers along the stems. Size Strands to 2 m Where South Africa. In the record 139 georeferenced records · half of them Nov–Feb · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3572767) 10. ### Burro's tail Sedum morganianum Thick hanging ropes densely packed with plump blue-grey leaves overlapping like a plaited tail. The leaves drop at the slightest touch — and each one roots into a new plant. Size Strands 30–90 cm Where Mexico. In the record 52 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5690408) 11. ### Christmas cactus Schlumbergera species Flat segmented stems with scalloped edges, arching over the pot, with magenta or white flowers at the tips in midwinter. Needs more water and less sun than a desert cactus. Size 30–60 cm Where Brazilian rainforest, growing on trees rather than in deserts. 12. ### Snake plant Handle with care Dracaena trifasciata Stiff upright sword leaves banded grey-green with a yellow margin, growing in a tight clump from a rhizome. Tolerates deep shade and long neglect. Size 30 cm to 1.2 m Where West Africa; one of the most sold houseplants in the world. Risk Saponins cause vomiting and drooling in dogs and cats. In the record 2,951 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Brazil [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/11041822) 13. ### ZZ plant Handle with care Zamioculcas zamiifolia Stiff arching stalks of thick waxy symmetrical leaflets rising from a potato-like rhizome. Survives months without water and very low light. Size 45–90 cm Where East Africa. Risk Calcium oxalates cause mouth and stomach irritation; the claim that it is extremely poisonous is not supported. In the record 188 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in December · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869014) 14. ### Ponytail palm Beaucarnea recurvata A swollen bulbous water-storing base topped with a fountain of long thin curling leaves. Neither a palm nor a tree — an agave relative. Size 30 cm to 3 m Where Mexico. In the record 551 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in August · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2768035) 15. ### Kalanchoe Handle with care Kalanchoe blossfeldiana Thick scallop-edged leaves under dense flat-topped clusters of tiny four-petalled flowers in hot pink, orange, yellow or white. Size 20–40 cm Where Madagascar; sold as a flowering gift plant everywhere. Risk Bufadienolide cardiac glycosides. Usually vomiting, but large amounts affect heart rhythm in pets. In the record 325 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in March · mostly from Colombia [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985944) 16. ### Mother of thousands Can injure you Kalanchoe daigremontiana Long arrowhead leaves fringed with rows of tiny complete plantlets that drop off and root wherever they land, including in the pots of every other plant in the room. Size 45–90 cm Where Madagascar; an invasive weed in warm climates. Risk Cardiac glycosides throughout. Has killed grazing livestock, and the plantlets scatter everywhere a pet might eat them. In the record 1,117 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985936) 17. ### Aeonium Aeonium species Flat plate-like rosettes of thin glossy leaves held on top of bare woody stems, black-purple in the popular Zwartkop cultivar. Grows in winter and rests in summer — the reverse of most succulents. Size Rosette 10–30 cm on stems to 1 m Where The Canary Islands. In the record 17,654 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in December · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985681) 18. ### Sedum and stonecrop Sedum species A very large genus of frost-hardy succulents from creeping ground-cover mats to the upright border sedums with flat pink flower heads in autumn. Star-shaped five-petalled flowers throughout. Size 5–60 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere. In the record 1,146,952 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361975) 19. ### Living stones Lithops species A pair of fused fleshy leaves split by a slit, patterned to look exactly like a pebble, with a translucent window on top to let light down to buried tissue. A daisy-like flower emerges from the slit. Size 2–5 cm Where The deserts of Namibia and South Africa. Risk Killed by overwatering more than anything else. It uses no water at all while the new pair of leaves is absorbing the old one. In the record 569 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3231652) 20. ### Prickly pear Handle with care Opuntia species Flat oval pads joined end to end, with large spines and — the real hazard — clusters of tiny barbed bristles called glochids at each areole. Size 30 cm to 4 m Where The Americas; naturalised across the Mediterranean, Australia and southern Africa. Risk Glochids detach on the lightest contact, are almost invisible, and are extremely hard to remove from skin. Handle with tongs and use tape or PVA glue to pull them out. In the record 331,834 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3084187) 21. ### Golden barrel cactus Kroenleinia grusonii A near-perfect ribbed sphere covered in stiff golden spines along the ridges, with white wool at the crown. Grows slowly for decades. Size 20 cm to 1 m Where A small area of central Mexico, endangered in the wild. In the record 110 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10911827) 22. ### Bunny ears cactus Handle with care Opuntia microdasys Small oval pads in pairs like ears, with no long spines at all but dense tufts of white or gold glochids — which is why it is the most frequently regretted purchase in a garden centre. Size 30–60 cm Where Mexico. Risk Looks fuzzy and harmless. The glochids come off on anything that touches them. In the record 2,557 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in November · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7283961) 23. ### Old man cactus Cephalocereus senilis A slim column wrapped in long shaggy white hair, which shades the plant from the sun. Sharp spines hide underneath the hair. Size 30 cm to 5 m Where Eastern Mexico. In the record 168 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Dec · most distinctive in December · mostly from Mexico [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7283905) 24. ### Euphorbia — pencil cactus and African milk tree Can injure you Euphorbia tirucalli, E. trigona Looks like a cactus and is not: euphorbias have paired spines on ridges rather than spines from a woolly areole, and every part bleeds copious white latex when cut. Size 60 cm to 3 m Where Africa and Madagascar. Risk The latex is a severe irritant and causes serious chemical burns to the eye, sometimes with lasting damage. Wear gloves and eye protection when pruning, and wash immediately if sap contacts skin. In the record 5,377 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in April · mostly from South Africa [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3069353) 25. ### Snake plant impostor: Sansevieria cylindrica Handle with care Dracaena angolensis Stiff round spears rather than flat blades, banded pale green, often sold braided. Same genus and same mild toxicity as the flat snake plant. Size 30–90 cm Where Angola. In the record 295 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–May · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10961470) 26. ### Panda plant Handle with care Kalanchoe tomentosa Thick oval leaves covered in dense silvery felt, edged with chocolate-brown spots along the tips. Feels like suede. Size 30–45 cm Where Madagascar. Risk Kalanchoe cardiac glycosides, as with the flowering species. In the record 134 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Dec · most distinctive in March · mostly from MG [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/4198346) 27. ### Ghost plant Graptopetalum paraguayense Loose rosettes of pointed leaves with a heavy pinkish-grey bloom, on stems that lengthen and trail. Every dropped leaf roots, which is why it spreads across a whole bed. Size Rosette 10–15 cm Where Mexico; hardy to about −7 °C. In the record 97 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–May · mostly from Spain [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7334731) 28. ### Hoya Hoya carnosa Thick waxy oval leaves on a twining vine, with spherical clusters of small star-shaped flowers that look like porcelain and drip nectar. Flowers from the same short spur year after year — never cut it off. Size Vines to 4 m Where Southeast Asia and Australia. In the record 2,098 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from Taiwan [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8658195) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Succulent is a habit, not a family Succulence — storing water in leaves, stems or roots — has evolved independently in more than twenty plant families. That is why the group contains plants with nothing else in common, and why a key has to work on form rather than relationship. The families you will actually meet on a windowsill: - **Crassulaceae** — echeveria, sedum, sempervivum, crassula, kalanchoe, aeonium. Rosettes and fleshy paired leaves; the largest group in cultivation. - **Asphodelaceae** — aloe, haworthia, gasteria. Rosettes of pointed leaves, often with teeth or windows. - **Asparagaceae** — agave, snake plant, ponytail palm. Rigid fibrous leaves, and slow. - **Cactaceae** — every true cactus. Defined by the areole, a small cushion from which spines, flowers and new growth all emerge. - **Euphorbiaceae** — pencil cactus, African milk tree, crown of thorns. Cactus-shaped, and defined by copious white latex. - **Apocynaceae** — string of pearls, string of hearts, hoya, stapelia. Trailing stems and often milky sap. The most useful thing in that list is the cactus definition. **All cacti are succulents; most succulents are not cacti.** The test is the areole — if the spines come out of a small round felted cushion, it is a cactus, and if they do not, it is something else wearing the same costume. ## The pairs that get confused, and why it matters *Look-alike succulents, the test that separates them, and why the distinction is practical rather than academic.* | Pair | The test | Why it matters | | --- | --- | --- | | Echeveria vs sempervivum | Echeveria flowers on an arching stalk from the side; sempervivum flowers from the centre and that rosette then dies | Sempervivum is frost-hardy and echeveria is not — one lives outdoors, the other does not | | Aloe vs agave | Aloe has soft white teeth and gel-filled leaves; agave has hard woody marginal spines, a terminal needle and fibrous leaves | Agave sap causes dermatitis and the terminal spines cause eye injuries | | Cactus vs euphorbia | Cactus spines emerge from a felted areole; euphorbia has paired spines on ridges and bleeds white latex | Euphorbia latex causes serious chemical eye burns. Cactus sap does not | | Christmas cactus vs desert cactus | Flat scalloped segments and rainforest origin versus ribs and spines | Watering and light needs are opposite; treating a Schlumbergera as a desert plant kills it | | Bunny ears vs a harmless fuzzy plant | Tufts of glochids at each areole | Glochids detach on the lightest contact and are extremely difficult to remove from skin | The euphorbia point is worth repeating because the plants are sold beside cacti and look like them. Ophthalmology literature carries a steady stream of case reports of corneal injury from *Euphorbia* sap, some with lasting visual loss. Gloves and eye protection when pruning, and immediate irrigation if it contacts an eye. ## Etiolation, and why your succulent stopped looking like the photograph The commonest complaint about succulents is that a tight compact rosette has stretched into a pale straggling tower with widely spaced leaves. That is etiolation, and it is a light problem rather than a water or feeding one. Most succulents come from high-light environments and need four to six hours of direct sun. A north-facing windowsill or a spot a metre back from a bright window provides a small fraction of that, and the plant responds by stretching towards it. Once stretched, the stem does not compact again — the plant grows on from where it is. The fix is to behead it: cut the rosette off with a few centimetres of stem, let the cut callus over for several days in dry air, and set it on dry compost until it roots. The old stump usually sprouts several new heads, so one etiolated plant becomes four. Move all of them somewhere brighter, and increase light gradually — a plant moved straight from a dim room to full summer sun sunburns, and the scars are permanent. Colour is the early warning. Many succulents are green in low light and develop red, purple or orange edges under stress from strong light, cold nights or drought. A plant that has gone plain green and soft is telling you it is not getting enough of any of those. ## Watering, which is where nearly all of them die Succulents are killed by kindness far more often than by neglect, and the mechanism is root rot rather than the water itself. - **Soak thoroughly, then let it dry out completely.** Water until it runs from the drainage hole, then do not water again until the compost is dry all the way down. Small frequent sips keep the top wet and the roots thirsty — the worst of both. - **A pot without a drainage hole will eventually kill the plant.** The decorative ceramic bowls succulents are sold in are the single most common cause of death. Repot, or use the bowl as a cachepot with the plant in a plastic liner. - **Use gritty compost.** Half potting compost and half coarse sand, perlite or pumice. Ordinary houseplant compost holds far too much water for too long. - **Terracotta helps.** It breathes, so the compost dries faster and the margin for error is wider. - **Water much less in winter.** Most succulents rest when light levels drop; a monthly splash is often enough. Aeoniums are the exception and grow in winter. Reading the signs: **overwatered** leaves are translucent, yellow, mushy and drop from the bottom of the plant. **Underwatered** leaves wrinkle, shrivel and go crisp from the bottom. Wrinkled is recoverable in a day; translucent and mushy usually is not. ## Which are safe with pets, and which are not Most succulents are non-toxic, and a few genuinely are not. Filter the key above by "toxic to pets" for the full list; the short version: **Avoid in a house with animals:** every *Euphorbia*, kalanchoe of any species including mother of thousands and panda plant, jade plant, aloe, agave, snake plant, ZZ plant and string of pearls. Mother of thousands deserves particular caution because it scatters rooted plantlets across the floor. **Listed non-toxic:** haworthia, gasteria, echeveria, sempervivum, sedum, graptopetalum, hoya, Christmas cactus, ponytail palm, lithops and true cacti — though a cactus is a mechanical hazard even when it is not a chemical one. The mechanical hazards are worth naming separately, because they injure people rather than pets. Agave terminal spines cause eye injuries and are worth trimming on any plant beside a path. Opuntia glochids are almost invisible, detach on the lightest brush and are removed with adhesive tape or a layer of PVA glue peeled off when dry — tweezers rarely work. And euphorbia latex is a chemical hazard rather than a mechanical one, and the most serious thing in this section. 28 entries here cover the succulents actually sold in garden centres and grown on windowsills. The wider group runs to many thousands of species, and rare-plant collecting has driven serious poaching pressure on wild populations of dudleya, conophytum and several cacti — buy nursery-propagated stock, and be sceptical of unusually cheap wild-collected specimens. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 27 of the 28succulents here: **62,382 georeferenced records** across the 19 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 9 families, the oldest of them collected in 1926. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded succulents in this key hold 91% of all the records between them: Hens and chicks alone accounts for 43,781, while String of pearls has 23. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 36% of these records come from France, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 51,634 georeferenced records for these 19 succulents fall in April–July alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these succulents are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in July. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in April–July. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these succulents recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 10 of the 19succulents here peak outside the warm half of the year — Snake plant, Bunny ears cactus, Jade plant among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 27 named succulents in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Hens and chicks | [Sempervivum tectorum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985949) | species | 43,781 | 10,352 | May–Jul | July | France | | Euphorbia — pencil cactus and African milk tree | [Euphorbia tirucalli L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3069353) | species | 5,377 | 13,030 | Mar–Jul | April | South Africa | | Snake plant | [Dracaena trifasciata (Prain) Mabb.](https://www.gbif.org/species/11041822) | species | 2,951 | — | Feb–Jun | November | Brazil | | Bunny ears cactus | [Opuntia microdasys (Lehm.) Pfeiff.](https://www.gbif.org/species/7283961) | species | 2,557 | 10,120 | Jan–Jun | November | Mexico | | Jade plant | [Crassula ovata (Mill.) Druce](https://www.gbif.org/species/5362063) | species | 2,321 | 28,409 | Mar–Jul | February | South Africa | | Hoya | [Hoya carnosa (L.fil.) R.Br.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8658195) | species | 2,098 | 6,367 | Mar–Jul | November | Taiwan | | Mother of thousands | [Kalanchoe daigremontiana Raym.-Hamet & H.Perrier](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985936) | species | 1,117 | 12,628 | Jan–Jun | February | Spain | | Ponytail palm | [Beaucarnea recurvata (K.Koch & Fintelm.) Lem.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2768035) | species | 551 | 4,645 | May–Aug | August | Mexico | | Kalanchoe | [Kalanchoe blossfeldiana Poelln.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985944) | species | 325 | 27,097 | Jan–Jun | March | Colombia | | Snake plant impostor: Sansevieria cylindrica | [Dracaena angolensis (Welw. ex Carrière) Byng & Christenh.](https://www.gbif.org/species/10961470) | species | 295 | — | Jan–May | February | the United States | | ZZ plant | [Zamioculcas zamiifolia (G.Lodd.) Engl.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2869014) | species | 188 | 10,149 | Jan–Jun | December | South Africa | | Old man cactus | [Cephalocereus senilis (Haw.) Pfeiff.](https://www.gbif.org/species/7283905) | species | 168 | 729 | Aug–Dec | December | Mexico | | String of hearts | [Ceropegia woodii Schltr.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3572767) | species | 139 | 739 | Nov–Feb | — | South Africa | | Panda plant | [Kalanchoe tomentosa Baker](https://www.gbif.org/species/4198346) | species | 134 | 2,539 | Aug–Dec | March | MG | | Golden barrel cactus | [Kroenleinia grusonii (Hildm.) Lodé](https://www.gbif.org/species/10911827) | species | 110 | 11,754 | Feb–May | — | Spain | | Aloe vera | [Aloe barbadensis Mill.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2777729) | species | 98 | 48,174 | Feb–Apr | — | Mexico | | Ghost plant | [Graptopetalum paraguayense (N.E.Br.) Walther](https://www.gbif.org/species/7334731) | species | 97 | 7,801 | Feb–May | — | Spain | | Burro's tail | [Sedum morganianum Walther](https://www.gbif.org/species/5690408) | species | 52 | 2,515 | Feb–May | — | Mexico | | String of pearls | [Curio rowleyanus (H.Jacobsen) P.V.Heath](https://www.gbif.org/species/3149649) | species | 23 | 1,868 | Jun–Oct | — | South Africa | | Sedum and stonecrop | [Sedum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361975) | genus | 1,146,952 | 315,712 | May–Jul | June | France | | Prickly pear | [Opuntia Mill.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3084187) | genus | 331,834 | 539,811 | Mar–Jul | November | the United States | | Agave | [Agave L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2766430) | genus | 120,762 | — | Jan–Jun | November | Mexico | | Aeonium | [Aeonium Webb & Berthel.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2985681) | genus | 17,654 | 48,671 | Jan–May | December | Spain | | Echeveria | [Echeveria DC.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5362052) | genus | 10,479 | 43,518 | Mar–Aug | November | Mexico | | Gasteria | [Gasteria Duval](https://www.gbif.org/species/2778529) | genus | 2,207 | 4,019 | Aug–Nov | November | South Africa | | Haworthia | [Haworthiopsis G.D.Rowley](https://www.gbif.org/species/9233780) | genus | 2,109 | 10,255 | Feb–Jul | February | South Africa | | Living stones | [Lithops N.E.Br.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3231652) | genus | 569 | 2,140 | Feb–Jun | November | South Africa | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this Is my plant a cactus or just a succulent? Look for areoles — small round felted cushions from which spines, flowers and new branches all emerge. Only cacti have them. Euphorbias, which look convincingly cactus-like, have paired spines directly on the ridges and bleed copious white latex when cut. All cacti are succulents, but most succulents are not cacti. Why has my succulent gone tall and leggy? Not enough light. The plant is stretching towards a window and it will not compact again. Behead the rosette with a few centimetres of stem, let the cut callus over for several days, and set it on dry compost to root; the stump usually sprouts several new heads. Then move everything somewhere brighter, increasing the light gradually so it does not sunburn. How often should I water a succulent? There is no schedule — water when the compost is dry all the way through, then soak it until water runs from the drainage hole. In a bright warm room that might be weekly in summer and monthly in winter. Small frequent sips are the worst approach, because they keep the surface wet and the roots dry. A pot with no drainage hole will kill the plant eventually. What is the difference between an aloe and an agave? Aloe leaves are soft and filled with clear gel, with soft white teeth along the edges. Agave leaves are hard and fibrous, ending in a rigid needle spine, usually with hooked spines on the margins. It matters practically: agave sap causes contact dermatitis and the terminal spines cause eye injuries, while aloe gel is a traditional skin remedy. Which succulents are safe for cats and dogs? Haworthia, gasteria, echeveria, sempervivum, sedum, graptopetalum, hoya, Christmas cactus, ponytail palm and lithops are all listed non-toxic. Avoid every Euphorbia, all kalanchoes including mother of thousands, jade plant, aloe, agave, snake plant, ZZ plant and string of pearls. Cacti are chemically harmless and mechanically not. My succulent leaves are wrinkling. Too much or too little water? Too little. Wrinkled, shrivelled, crisp leaves starting from the bottom mean the plant is drawing on its own reserves, and a good soak usually fixes it within a day. Translucent, yellow, mushy leaves that fall off at a touch mean too much water and root rot, which is far harder to recover from and often needs the plant beheaded and re-rooted. How do I get the spines out after touching a prickly pear? The large spines pull out with tweezers. The real problem is glochids — the tufts of tiny barbed bristles at each areole, which are almost invisible and come off on the lightest contact. Press adhesive tape onto the area and pull, or spread a layer of PVA glue, let it dry and peel it off. Handle Opuntia with tongs or folded newspaper, never bare hands. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows succulents down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [Types of cactus with names](https://orvik.app/plants/types-of-cactus-with-names/) - [Cactus identification apps](https://orvik.app/plants/cactus-identification-app/) - [Are cactus plants poisonous?](https://orvik.app/plants/cactus-is-poisonous/) - [House plant recognition](https://orvik.app/plants/house-plant-recognition/) - [Indoor palm identification](https://orvik.app/plants/indoor-palm-plant-identification/) - [What plant is this?](https://orvik.app/plants/what-plant-is-this/) - [Free plant identifier apps](https://orvik.app/plants/free-plant-identifier-app/) - [Apps that diagnose plant problems](https://orvik.app/plants/app-to-diagnose-plants/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [What fossil is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/fossil-identifier/) - [What berry is this, and can you eat it?](https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [ASPCA — toxic and non-toxic plants](https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants) - [Cactus and Succulent Society of America](https://cactusandsucculentsociety.org/) - [RHS — growing cacti and succulents](https://www.rhs.org.uk/plants/types/cacti-succulents) - [Missouri Botanical Garden — Plant Finder database](https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Tree Age Calculator — Estimate Age From Trunk Circumference** > Measure the trunk with a tape, pick the species, and get an age estimate from the arborists' growth-factor method — with the honest error bars. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Plants & trees Plants & trees # How old is this tree? Wrap a tape around the trunk at chest height, choose the species, and this works the tree's age the way a municipal arborist does — **diameter in inches × the species growth factor**. No borer, no stump, no damage to the tree. Species **32** Method **ISA growth factor** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** Trunk circumference at 1.37 m / 4 ft 6 in cm inches Measure right around the trunk, tape level and snug, on the uphill side if there is a slope. Species Aspen — factor 2 Cottonwood — factor 2 Silver maple — factor 3 Basswood / linden — factor 3 Tulip tree — factor 3 Pin oak — factor 3 River birch — factor 3.5 Scots pine — factor 3.5 American elm — factor 4 American sycamore — factor 4 Green ash — factor 4 Honey locust — factor 4 Northern red oak — factor 4 Sweetgum — factor 4 Red maple — factor 4.5 Norway maple — factor 4.5 Black walnut — factor 4.5 Austrian pine — factor 4.5 Colorado blue spruce — factor 4.5 White oak — factor 5 Eastern white pine — factor 5 Douglas fir — factor 5 Black cherry — factor 5 Paper birch — factor 5 Sugar maple — factor 5.5 White ash — factor 5.5 Red pine — factor 5.5 Flowering dogwood — factor 7 Redbud — factor 7 Ironwood / hornbeam — factor 7 Shagbark hickory — factor 7.5 Horse chestnut — factor 8 The factor is how many years that species takes to add one inch of diameter. Where it grows Open grown — lawn, park, field edge Forest interior — grew up under a canopy Irrigated and fertilised street or garden tree The growth-factor table assumes an open-grown tree; the other two adjust for it. Estimated age — — - Diameter **—** - Growth factor **—** - Planted around **—** ## Growth factors, in full *Years to add one inch of trunk diameter. Values are the International Society of Arboriculture set used in municipal tree appraisal.* | Species | Growth factor | Age at 30 cm diameter | Note | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Aspen | 2.0 | 24 yr | Fast and short-lived | | Cottonwood | 2.0 | 24 yr | The fastest common hardwood | | Silver maple | 3.0 | 35 yr | Fast, weak-wooded | | Basswood / linden | 3.0 | 35 yr | | | Tulip tree | 3.0 | 35 yr | | | Pin oak | 3.0 | 35 yr | Much faster than other oaks | | River birch | 3.5 | 41 yr | | | Scots pine | 3.5 | 41 yr | | | American elm | 4.0 | 47 yr | | | American sycamore | 4.0 | 47 yr | | | Green ash | 4.0 | 47 yr | | | Honey locust | 4.0 | 47 yr | | | Northern red oak | 4.0 | 47 yr | | | Sweetgum | 4.0 | 47 yr | | | Red maple | 4.5 | 53 yr | | | Norway maple | 4.5 | 53 yr | | | Black walnut | 4.5 | 53 yr | | | Austrian pine | 4.5 | 53 yr | | | Colorado blue spruce | 4.5 | 53 yr | | | White oak | 5.0 | 59 yr | | | Eastern white pine | 5.0 | 59 yr | | | Douglas fir | 5.0 | 59 yr | | | Black cherry | 5.0 | 59 yr | | | Paper birch | 5.0 | 59 yr | | | Sugar maple | 5.5 | 65 yr | | | White ash | 5.5 | 65 yr | | | Red pine | 5.5 | 65 yr | | | Flowering dogwood | 7.0 | 83 yr | Slow understory tree | | Redbud | 7.0 | 83 yr | Slow understory tree | | Ironwood / hornbeam | 7.0 | 83 yr | Very slow | | Shagbark hickory | 7.5 | 89 yr | Very slow | | Horse chestnut | 8.0 | 94 yr | The slowest on this table | ## How the estimate is made Foresters and municipal arborists use a two-step approximation that has been in service for decades and needs nothing but a tape measure. 1. **Measure the circumference at 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) above the ground.** That height is the international standard reference point, called diameter at breast height or DBH, and every published growth figure assumes it. 2. **Divide by π** to get the diameter. A tape reading of 100 cm gives a diameter of 31.8 cm, or 12.5 inches. 3. **Multiply the diameter in inches by the species growth factor.** The factor is the number of years that species typically takes to add one inch of diameter, averaged across a normal urban or open-grown life. A 12.5-inch white oak, with a growth factor of 5, comes out at about 63 years. The same trunk on a cottonwood, factor 2, is about 25 years — which is the point of the table. Diameter alone tells you nothing without the species. The growth-factor table below is the International Society of Arboriculture set, the one used in tree ordinances and appraisal work across North America. It is an estimate by design: the alternative is an increment borer, which drills a core out of the living trunk. ## Where the estimate goes wrong, and by how much Treat the output as ±25% on a typical open-grown tree, and worse than that in four specific situations. **Forest trees are older than they measure.** A tree that spent forty years suppressed under a closed canopy adds almost no diameter during that time, then grows fast when a gap opens. Woodland trees are routinely one and a half to two times the calculated age. **Street and lawn trees are younger than they measure.** Full sun, irrigation, fertiliser and no competition produce diameter growth well above the table's assumption. A well-watered lawn maple can outpace the factor by half. **Species with strong site sensitivity.** Oaks on a dry ridge and oaks in a river bottom grow at rates that differ by a factor of two, and the table has one number for both. **Trees that are not what you think they are.** Getting the species wrong is the largest single error available: pin oak and white oak differ by 67% in factor and look similar to a beginner. Identify the tree before you measure it. The method also fails outright on multi-stemmed trees, on trees with buttressed or fluted trunks like beech and ironwood, on palms, which have no growth rings at all, and on clonal species like aspen, where the visible stem may be decades old and the organism thousands of years old. ## Measuring a trunk properly - **Find 1.37 m on the uphill side** if the tree is on a slope. On a slope, measure from the ground on the high side, not the average. - **Keep the tape level and snug**, at right angles to the stem. A tape that sags or spirals adds several centimetres. - **If the trunk forks below 1.37 m**, it counts as two trees. Measure each stem separately below the fork; there is no meaningful single answer. - **If there is a swelling, burl or wound at that height**, measure at the nearest normal point below it and note that you did. - **Do not measure over loose bark or vines.** Ivy and shaggy bark can add 10% to a reading, and 10% on diameter is 10% on the age. If you have no tape, a piece of string and a ruler works. If you have neither, an adult's outstretched arm span is roughly their height, which gives a usable circumference for very large trees. ## The methods that give a real number Three approaches produce actual ages rather than estimates, in ascending order of cost to the tree. **Count the whorls, on conifers only.** Pines, spruces and firs put out one ring of branches per year. Count the whorls from the ground up and add two or three years for the seedling stage. This is exact for young conifers up to about 30 years, after which the lower whorls have been shed and the scars have grown over. **Count rings on a stump or a fallen tree.** If the tree is already down, this is free and definitive. Count from the pith outwards on a sanded cut, using one dark latewood band per year. Rings are hard to see on diffuse-porous species like maple and birch, and a wet sanded surface reads far better than a dry chainsaw cut. **Take an increment core.** A hollow borer removes a pencil-thin core to the pith, which is then mounted and counted. It is the standard research method and the wound is small, but it is a wound, and it should be done by somebody who knows the technique on a tree that matters. Two ring-counting cautions. False rings form when a drought interrupts growth mid-season and then it resumes, adding a ring that is not a year. Missing rings occur in badly suppressed or damaged trees, which simply skip a season. Both are why dendrochronologists cross-date against multiple trees rather than trusting one. ## What tree age is actually used for **Tree ordinances and permits.** Many municipalities protect trees above a threshold diameter and require a permit or a replacement planting to remove one. Those rules are written in DBH, which is exactly what this tool asks you to measure, so the diameter output is often the number that matters rather than the age. **Property and insurance valuation.** Appraisal formulas for a damaged or illegally removed tree combine trunk area, species rating, condition and location. Age enters indirectly through size, and a replacement-cost figure for a mature specimen commonly runs into thousands. **Heritage tree registration.** Champion-tree and veteran-tree registers in the US, UK and Europe score entries on trunk girth, height and crown spread. Girth is the dominant term, and a measured circumference is the first thing a register asks for. **Woodland management.** Age structure across a stand tells you whether it is regenerating. A woodland where every tree calculates to the same age is even-aged, usually from a single disturbance — a fire, a clearance, a farm abandoned in a known decade — and that history is often recoverable from local records. The everyday use is simpler than any of these: knowing that the oak in a garden was a sapling when the house was built changes how people treat it. Trees are the only thing in most gardens older than the people in them. ## Questions people ask about this How accurate is a tree age calculator? Within about 25% for an open-grown tree of a correctly identified species on a normal site. Forest-grown trees that spent decades suppressed under a canopy are routinely one and a half to two times older than the calculation suggests, and irrigated lawn or street trees are often younger. The single largest source of error is getting the species wrong, because growth factors range from 2 to 8 — a fourfold spread on the same trunk. Where exactly do I measure the trunk? At 1.37 m, or 4 feet 6 inches, above the ground — the international standard called diameter at breast height. On a slope, measure from the ground on the uphill side. If the trunk forks below that height it counts as two trees and each stem is measured separately. Keep the tape level, snug and free of ivy or loose bark. Can I tell a tree's age without cutting it down? Yes, three ways. This circumference method gives an estimate from a tape measure alone. Counting branch whorls gives an exact age for young conifers, since pines, spruces and firs add one whorl per year. An increment borer, which removes a pencil-thin core, gives an exact count for any species and is what researchers use — it makes a small wound, so it is a job for someone trained. Is one ring always one year? Usually, in temperate climates with a real winter. Two things break it: a false ring forms when drought stops growth mid-season and then it resumes, and a missing ring occurs when a suppressed or damaged tree skips a growing season entirely. Tropical trees with no distinct dry season may lay down no annual rings at all. Dendrochronologists deal with this by cross-dating patterns across many trees rather than counting one. Why does the same size trunk mean different ages for different trees? Because growth rate is a species trait. A cottonwood adds an inch of diameter in about two years; a horse chestnut takes about eight. A trunk 40 cm across is roughly 25 years old as a cottonwood and roughly 100 as a horse chestnut. That is why identifying the species is the first step and measuring is the second. What is the oldest tree in the world? The oldest verified individual non-clonal tree is a Great Basin bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California, ring-counted at over 4,850 years. Clonal organisms go far older: the Pando aspen colony in Utah is a single genetic individual estimated in the thousands of years, though every visible stem is much younger. That is also why aspen breaks this calculator — the trunk age and the organism age are different questions. ## Not sure which species it is? The growth factor changes the answer by a factor of four, so the species matters more than the tape does. Photograph a leaf, the bark and a twig and let Orvik name the tree first. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [How to identify a tree](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-tree/) - [Tree bark identification](https://orvik.app/plants/tree-bark-identification/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-tree-by-leaf/) - [Identifying a tree by bark](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-tree-by-bark/) - [Maple tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/maple-tree-identification/) - [How to identify an ash tree](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-an-ash-tree/) - [Tree names and species](https://orvik.app/plants/tree-names/) - [What kind of tree is this?](https://orvik.app/plants/what-kinda-tree-is-this/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [International Society of Arboriculture — Guide for Plant Appraisal](https://www.isa-arbor.com/) - [USDA Forest Service — Forest Inventory and Analysis field methods (DBH standard)](https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/programs/fia) - [Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona](https://ltrr.arizona.edu/) - [Woodland Trust — estimating the age of a tree](https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/ancient-trees/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Tree Bark Identification Chart — Winter Tree ID Without Leaves** > Free bark identification key for 34 common trees. Filter by texture, colour and pattern and identify a tree in winter, when there are no leaves to work with. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-03 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Plants & trees Plants & trees # Identify a tree by its bark Bark is what you have for five months of the year, and it is a better character than most people expect — provided you look at **the trunk at chest height on a mature tree**. Young bark and branch bark lie: nearly every rough-barked species is smooth for its first fifteen years. Filter by texture first, then by colour and pattern. Entries **34** Filters **4** Updated **2026-09-03** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search trees by name Texture Look at the trunk at chest height, not at a sapling or a branch. Smooth, no furrows Shallow furrows Deep furrows and ridges Plates, blocks or scales Shaggy, peeling in strips Papery, peeling in sheets Warty, corky or ridged with cork Colour White or chalky Grey Brown Very dark, near black Reddish or orange Mottled or patchy Greenish Pattern Horizontal dashes or lines Diamond or net pattern Camouflage patches Braided or ropy ridges Thorns or spines on the trunk Warts, bumps or burls No obvious pattern Other clues Scent when scratched Bright inner bark when scratched Sap, resin or pitch Fruit or pods hanging in winter Dead leaves held all winter Showing all 34 trees 1. ### American beech Fagus grandifolia Smooth pale silver-grey like elephant skin, from sapling to veteran — the only large eastern tree that never develops furrows. Which is why every beech in a public park is carved with initials. Size Smooth at any age Where Eastern North America; European beech is nearly identical. Confused with Young red maple and young hornbeam. Beech holds pale papery dead leaves through the winter and carries long slender cigar-shaped buds. In the record 90,676 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882274) 2. ### Paper birch Betula papyrifera Chalk-white bark peeling in horizontal papery sheets, marked with dark horizontal dashes, and orange beneath the peel. The base of an old tree turns black and furrowed. Size Peels in sheets from about 15 cm diameter Where Boreal and northern North America. Confused with Grey birch, which is whiter but does not peel and carries black triangular patches under each branch. In the record 28,894 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from Canada [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5332120) 3. [Birch identification](https://orvik.app/plants/birch-tree-identification/) 4. ### River birch Betula nigra Salmon-pink to cinnamon bark curling off in ragged papery sheets that stay attached, giving a permanently shaggy trunk. The only birch with warm colouring. Size Ragged from an early age Where River bottoms of the eastern US; widely planted in gardens. In the record 9,412 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5331532) 5. ### Shagbark hickory Carya ovata Long grey plates attached in the middle and curling away at both ends, so the whole trunk looks like it is coming apart. Unmistakable and unique among eastern hardwoods. Size Strips 20–60 cm long Where Eastern North America. In the record 17,910 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054296) 6. [Identifying hickories](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-hickory-tree/) 7. ### White oak Quercus alba Pale ash-grey bark breaking into loose vertical plates and blocks with a chalky, slightly scaly surface. Lighter than any other large oak. Size Plates 5–15 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 47,555 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Aug · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2879737) 8. ### Northern red oak Quercus rubra Dark grey with flat-topped ridges separated by shallow furrows, and — the diagnostic feature — smooth, shiny, pale grey stripes running down the ridge tops like ski trails. Size Ridges 2–5 cm wide Where Eastern North America; widely planted in Europe. In the record 226,793 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2880539) 9. ### Black oak Quercus velutina Nearly black, deeply furrowed and blocky. Cut into the outer bark with a knife and the inner bark is bright orange-yellow — no other oak does that, and it was once harvested as a dye. Size Very thick, blocky Where Eastern and central North America. In the record 13,233 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Sep · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8086561) 10. ### Sycamore and London plane Platanus occidentalis, P. × acerifolia Flakes off in irregular plates leaving a camouflage of cream, olive and tan, with the upper trunk and branches almost pure white. Visible from a kilometre away in winter. Size Patches 5–20 cm Where River bottoms of eastern North America; London plane on city streets worldwide. In the record 50,035 georeferenced records · half of them Feb–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152820) 11. [Sycamore identification](https://orvik.app/plants/sycamore-tree-identification/) 12. ### Black cherry Prunus serotina Young trunks are smooth dark red-brown with conspicuous horizontal lines; mature bark breaks into small curled dark plates often described as burnt cornflakes. Scratched twigs smell of bitter almond. Size Plates 1–3 cm Where Eastern North America; invasive in Europe. In the record 288,858 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3021850) 13. ### Sugar maple Acer saccharum Grey-brown bark forming long irregular vertical plates that lift along one edge, giving a slightly shaggy but firmly attached look. Younger trunks are smooth and grey. Size Plates 5–20 cm Where Northeastern North America. In the record 59,528 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189859) 14. ### Red maple Acer rubrum Smooth pale grey when young — often mistaken for beech — breaking into long thin flaking plates with age. Red buds and red twigs in winter are the reliable confirmation. Size Smooth young, plated old Where The most abundant tree in eastern North America. In the record 133,130 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189883) 15. ### Silver maple Acer saccharinum Silvery-grey bark that peels into long loose flakes curling away at both ends, giving a scruffy trunk. Softer and shaggier than sugar maple at the same age. Size Loose flakes Where Floodplains across eastern North America; a common street tree. In the record 95,335 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189837) 16. ### White ash Fraxinus americana An interlacing net of narrow ridges forming regular diamonds — the most geometric bark of any eastern hardwood. Dead and dying ashes now often show D-shaped exit holes and blonde woodpecker flecking. Size Ridges 1–2 cm Where Eastern North America; devastated by emerald ash borer. In the record 17,819 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172327) 17. [Ash tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-an-ash-tree/) 18. ### American elm Ulmus americana Deep furrows between flat scaly ridges, and a cut through the bark shows alternating light and dark layers like a slice of layer cake. That cross-section is diagnostic. Size Ridges 1–3 cm Where Eastern North America, much reduced by disease. In the record 45,426 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361872) 19. [Elm identification](https://orvik.app/plants/elm-tree-identification/) 20. ### Hackberry Celtis occidentalis Pale grey and covered in irregular corky warts and knobbly ridges like a bad rash. No other common tree has it, so hackberry is one of the easiest winter identifications there is. Size Warts 1–4 cm Where Central and eastern North America. In the record 28,574 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984481) 21. [Hackberry identification](https://orvik.app/plants/hackberry-tree-identification/) 22. ### Cottonwood Populus deltoides Massive vertical ridges and very deep furrows on old trees, pale ashy grey, with the trunk often over a metre thick. Young bark is smooth and yellow-green. Size Furrows up to 5 cm deep Where River bottoms across central and eastern North America. In the record 36,424 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040232) 23. [Cottonwood identification](https://orvik.app/plants/cottonwood-tree-identification/) 24. ### Quaking aspen Populus tremuloides Smooth greenish-white bark with a chalky bloom that rubs off on your hand, marked with black scars where branches fell, and dark furrowed only at the very base of old stems. Size Smooth except at the base Where The most widely distributed tree in North America. Confused with Paper birch, which is whiter and peels. Aspen bark does not peel and has a green cast under the powder. In the record 61,907 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040215) 25. ### Eastern white pine Pinus strobus Smooth grey-green with resin blisters when young; on old trees, thick dark rectangular blocks separated by deep furrows, often with pitch bleeding from wounds. Size Blocks 5–15 cm Where Northeastern North America. In the record 115,039 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284982) 26. [Pine bark identification](https://orvik.app/plants/pine-tree-identification-by-bark/) 27. ### Scots pine Pinus sylvestris The upper trunk and branches are bright orange-red with thin flaking papery plates, while the base is dark and blocky. That two-tone trunk identifies it at a distance. Size Upper trunk plates 5–20 cm Where Native across Eurasia; widely planted in North America. In the record 1,187,370 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5285637) 28. ### Ponderosa pine Pinus ponderosa Huge cinnamon-orange jigsaw plates separated by deep black fissures on mature trees, and the furrows smell distinctly of vanilla or butterscotch on a warm day. Size Plates 10–30 cm Where Western North America. In the record 67,650 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5285053) 29. ### Eastern hemlock Tsuga canadensis Thick cinnamon-brown bark with broad flat-topped ridges and deep furrows, and a purple-red flush inside a fresh cut. Historically stripped for tanning leather. Size Ridges 3–8 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 64,784 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2687182) 30. ### Eastern redcedar Juniperus virginiana Reddish-brown bark peeling in long fibrous vertical strips that shred between your fingers, over a fluted trunk, smelling strongly of cedar when scratched. Size Fibrous strips Where Old fields and fencerows across eastern North America. In the record 71,990 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684391) 31. [Cedar identification](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-cedar-tree/) 32. ### Black locust Robinia pseudoacacia Deeply furrowed dark bark with ridges that cross and interweave into a rope or braid pattern, and flat brown seed pods hanging on through winter. Size Ridges 2–4 cm Where Native to the Appalachians, naturalised across the northern hemisphere. In the record 496,561 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5352251) 33. ### Honey locust Handle with care Gleditsia triacanthos On a wild tree, clusters of branched red-brown thorns growing straight out of the trunk — nothing else in North America does that. Long twisted brown pods litter the ground beneath. Size Thorns to 20 cm Where Central North America; the thornless cultivar is a common street tree. Risk The trunk thorns are long, sharp and easily overlooked when you lean on the tree. In the record 139,443 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2959443) 34. ### Sweetgum Liquidambar styraciflua Deeply furrowed grey-brown bark, and often corky wings running along the twigs. The spiky brown gumball fruits scattered under the tree confirm it instantly. Size Ridges 1–2 cm Where The US Southeast; planted worldwide. In the record 97,409 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152824) 35. ### Sassafras Sassafras albidum Red-brown deeply furrowed bark with a distinctly cinnamon cast, and twigs that are bright green and smell of root beer when scratched. The smell is decisive. Size Ridges 1–3 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 62,820 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3034002) 36. ### Tulip tree Liriodendron tulipifera Grey bark with a fine interlacing diamond pattern on a very straight cylindrical trunk that stays branchless for many metres. Dry cone-like seed heads stand upright on the twigs all winter. Size Ridges 1–2 cm Where Eastern North America. In the record 77,205 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152861) 37. ### Persimmon Diospyros virginiana Very dark grey-black bark broken into small, thick, regular square blocks — the standard description is alligator hide, and no other eastern tree matches it. Size Blocks 2–4 cm Where The US Southeast and Midwest. In the record 32,442 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3032986) 38. ### Osage orange Maclura pomifera Orange-brown ridged bark with a stringy shaggy surface and stout straight thorns at the nodes. A cut shows brilliant orange-yellow wood beneath. Size Ridges 2–5 cm Where Hedgerows across the US Midwest. In the record 28,756 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Oct · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984580) 39. [Osage orange identification](https://orvik.app/plants/identifying-osage-orange-trees/) 40. ### American sycamore maple and Norway maple Acer pseudoplatanus, A. platanoides Norway maple has fine regular shallow furrows in a close vertical net over grey-brown bark; sycamore maple flakes into small squarish plates showing orange beneath. Size Fine shallow ridges Where Native to Europe; both naturalised in North America. In the record 1,327,995 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189870) 41. ### Douglas fir Pseudotsuga menziesii Smooth grey with resin blisters when young, becoming extraordinarily thick corky bark with deep vertical furrows and cinnamon layers visible inside — an adaptation that lets it survive ground fire. Size Furrows up to 30 cm deep on veterans Where Western North America. In the record 164,367 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685796) 42. [Douglas fir identification](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-douglas-fir/) 43. ### Coast redwood and giant sequoia Sequoia sempervirens, Sequoiadendron giganteum Fibrous cinnamon-red bark up to two feet thick, soft enough to punch, deeply furrowed and fire-resistant. Nothing else in North America has bark on that scale. Size Bark 15–60 cm thick Where Coastal and Sierra California. In the record 25,128 georeferenced records · half of them Jan–Jun · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2683909) 44. ### Striped maple Acer pensylvanicum Smooth green bark with vertical white stripes running down it, on a small understory tree. Also called moosewood. The green-and-white striping is unique. Size Understory tree, trunk under 20 cm Where Northeastern North America. In the record 33,473 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189836) 45. ### Ironwood and musclewood Carpinus caroliniana Smooth blue-grey bark over a fluted, sinewy trunk that looks like a flexed forearm. The ripples are in the wood, not the bark, and no other tree has them. Size Small understory tree Where Eastern North American woodland. In the record 22,618 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2875842) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Bark changes with age, and that is the main trap Almost every rough-barked tree begins life smooth. A twenty-year-old red oak, black cherry or white pine looks nothing like a two-hundred-year-old one, and a photograph of a sapling in a hedge will match nothing in this key or any other. Three practical rules follow, and they fix most failed bark identifications: - **Read the main trunk at chest height**, on the largest example of the tree you can find. That is the standard reference position, and every published description assumes it. - **Ignore branches entirely.** Branch bark stays juvenile far longer than trunk bark, which is why the top of a Scots pine is orange and papery while the bottom is black and blocky. Both are the same tree. - **Look at the base separately.** Several smooth-barked species — aspen, paper birch, beech in old age — develop dark furrowed bark in the lowest metre while staying smooth above it. The corollary is that bark identification is much easier in a woodland with mature trees than in a hedgerow or a new plantation, and it is close to impossible on nursery stock. ## The textures worth learning by name Six textures cover almost every temperate tree, and each one is a very short list. *Bark texture and the species it points to. Descriptions refer to mature trunk bark at chest height.* | Texture | What it looks like | Trees | | --- | --- | --- | | Smooth at any age | Unbroken, like skin | Beech, ironwood, striped maple, young everything | | Papery peeling | Horizontal sheets that curl and tear | Paper birch, river birch, yellow birch | | Shaggy vertical strips | Long plates loose at both ends | Shagbark hickory, silver maple, redcedar | | Interlacing ridges | A net of diamonds | White ash, tulip tree | | Blocks and plates | A tiled or alligator-hide surface | Persimmon, black oak, flowering dogwood, ponderosa pine | | Deep vertical furrows | Thick ridges, deep valleys | Cottonwood, black locust, sweetgum, Douglas fir, hemlock | | Warty and corky | Irregular knobs and bumps | Hackberry, cork elm, sweetgum twigs | Three of these are effectively single-species answers in eastern North America: a trunk covered in corky warts is hackberry, a trunk shedding long plates loose at both ends is shagbark hickory, and a perfectly smooth grey trunk on a large tree is beech. If you learn only those three, you can identify something in every winter woodland you walk through. ## The clues that are not bark Winter identification gets much easier once you stop looking only at the trunk. Four other things are visible in January and each is often more decisive than the bark itself. **Buds and twigs.** Arrangement survives leaf fall — buds on maples, ashes, dogwoods and horse chestnuts are still opposite. Bud shape is diagnostic on its own for several genera: beech buds are long, slender and sharply pointed; the ashes have a stout black bud sitting in a crescent-shaped leaf scar; oaks cluster several buds at the tip of the twig, which no other genus does. **Fruit on the ground.** The tree may be bare but its output is underneath it. Acorns, hickory nuts, gumballs, sycamore balls, catalpa pods, locust pods, samaras and cones all persist for months and settle the identification in one glance. **Dead leaves still attached.** Beech, several oaks and hornbeam hold their dead leaves through the winter — a habit called marcescence — mostly on young trees and lower branches. A tree with papery tan leaves in February is a very short list. **Overall form.** Elms vase outward, pin oaks droop their lower branches, tulip trees drive a single straight stem far up before branching, and honey locusts carry a broad flat crown. Silhouette works at a distance where nothing else does. ## Smell and scratch, carefully Several species are identified faster by nose than by eye, and a small scratch on a twig — not the trunk — does no harm to the tree. - **Sassafras** — root beer, unmistakably, from a scratched green twig. - **Black cherry** — bitter almond, from a scratched twig. That is cyanogenic glycoside, and it is why wilted cherry foliage is dangerous to livestock. - **Ponderosa pine** — vanilla or butterscotch, from the deep bark furrows on a warm afternoon. - **Eastern redcedar and other junipers** — pencil shavings. - **Black walnut** — a sharp resinous smell from the husks and from a cut twig, which stains skin brown. - **Black oak** — no smell, but bright orange-yellow inner bark under a knife cut, which nothing else in the genus shows. Scratch a twig or a small branch, never the trunk of a living tree: a ring of damaged bark can girdle and kill it, and repeated knife cuts in a public park are how veteran trees get infected. ## What bark cannot tell you Bark is variable in ways leaves are not. The same species grown in the open, in a closed forest and in a city will produce noticeably different bark at the same age, because light and growth rate change how the outer layers split. Bark on the north side of a trunk carries more moss and lichen than the south side in the northern hemisphere, and people read the moss as texture. Several genera cannot be taken to species from bark at all. Hickories other than shagbark, the willows, the hawthorns and most of the white oak group overlap so heavily that a professional will not attempt it. Where that is the case, this key names the group. Damage also masks everything. Fire scars, frost cracks, canker, sun scald, old wire, woodpecker rings and the blonde flecking left by woodpeckers working an ash killed by emerald ash borer all change the surface completely. If a trunk looks like nothing in any key, check whether you are reading an injury rather than a species. 34 entries here, weighted towards the trees people actually walk past in eastern and central North America plus the major western conifers and the common European species. For anything that matters, photograph the trunk at chest height with something for scale, a twig showing buds and their arrangement, and whatever is lying on the ground underneath. ## A short route to identifying a tree in February 1. **Look at the ground first.** Nuts, cones, pods, samaras and gumballs are the fastest identification available and they are lying right there. 2. **Check bud arrangement on a low twig.** Opposite puts you in a list of about seven groups; alternate leaves everything else. 3. **Read the bark texture at chest height**, on the biggest specimen present. 4. **Step back thirty metres and look at the silhouette.** Vase, column, spreading dome, drooping lower branches — form is a real character and it is free. 5. **Scratch a twig and smell it** if you are still choosing between two candidates. Done in that order it takes about ninety seconds and resolves most temperate trees. Done in the reverse order — starting with a close-up photograph of bark — it frequently resolves nothing at all, which is why so many winter identification attempts fail. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 34 of the 34trees here: **5,266,559 georeferenced records** across the 34 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 18 families, the oldest of them collected in 1995. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded trees in this key hold 67% of all the records between them: American sycamore maple and Norway maple alone accounts for 1,327,995, while River birch has 9,412. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 28% of these records come from the United States, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 4,057,302 georeferenced records for these 34 trees fall in April–July alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these trees are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in July. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in April–July. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these trees recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 25 of the 34trees here peak outside the warm half of the year — Northern red oak, Douglas fir, Honey locust among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 34 named trees in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | American sycamore maple and Norway maple | [Acer pseudoplatanus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189870) | species | 1,327,995 | 90,488 | Apr–Jul | June | the United Kingdom | | Scots pine | [Pinus sylvestris L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5285637) | species | 1,187,370 | 120,788 | Apr–Jul | July | Sweden | | Black locust | [Robinia pseudoacacia L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5352251) | species | 496,561 | 137,923 | Apr–Jul | May | France | | Black cherry | [Prunus serotina Ehrh.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3021850) | species | 288,858 | 135,083 | Apr–Jul | May | the Netherlands | | Northern red oak | [Quercus rubra L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2880539) | species | 226,793 | 123,423 | May–Aug | November | the United States | | Douglas fir | [Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco](https://www.gbif.org/species/2685796) | species | 164,367 | 89,698 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Honey locust | [Gleditsia triacanthos L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2959443) | species | 139,443 | 77,965 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Red maple | [Acer rubrum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189883) | species | 133,130 | 162,550 | Mar–Jul | October | the United States | | Eastern white pine | [Pinus strobus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5284982) | species | 115,039 | 140,642 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Sweetgum | [Liquidambar styraciflua L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152824) | species | 97,409 | 116,114 | Mar–Jul | December | the United States | | Silver maple | [Acer saccharinum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189837) | species | 95,335 | 63,212 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | American beech | [Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882274) | species | 90,676 | 123,876 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Tulip tree | [Liriodendron tulipifera L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152861) | species | 77,205 | 105,618 | Apr–Jun | April | the United States | | Eastern redcedar | [Juniperus virginiana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684391) | species | 71,990 | 122,953 | Jan–Jun | February | the United States | | Ponderosa pine | [Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex C.Lawson](https://www.gbif.org/species/5285053) | species | 67,650 | 39,339 | Apr–Jul | December | the United States | | Eastern hemlock | [Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carrière](https://www.gbif.org/species/2687182) | species | 64,784 | 82,747 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | Sassafras | [Sassafras albidum (Nutt.) Nees](https://www.gbif.org/species/3034002) | species | 62,820 | 75,951 | Apr–Jul | April | the United States | | Quaking aspen | [Populus tremuloides Michx.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040215) | species | 61,907 | 80,099 | Jun–Aug | June | the United States | | Sugar maple | [Acer saccharum Marshall](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189859) | species | 59,528 | 116,271 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | Sycamore and London plane | [Platanus occidentalis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3152820) | species | 50,035 | 96,662 | Feb–Jul | November | the United States | | White oak | [Quercus alba L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2879737) | species | 47,555 | 83,064 | Apr–Aug | December | the United States | | American elm | [Ulmus americana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5361872) | species | 45,426 | 78,701 | Mar–Jul | November | the United States | | Cottonwood | [Populus deltoides W.Bartram ex Marshall](https://www.gbif.org/species/3040232) | species | 36,424 | 64,817 | Apr–Jul | April | the United States | | Striped maple | [Acer pensylvanicum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189836) | species | 33,473 | 43,412 | May–Jul | May | the United States | | Persimmon | [Diospyros virginiana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3032986) | species | 32,442 | 50,429 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | Paper birch | [Betula papyrifera Marshall](https://www.gbif.org/species/5332120) | species | 28,894 | 51,283 | Mar–Jul | February | Canada | | Osage orange | [Maclura pomifera (Raf. ex Sarg.) C.K.Schneid.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984580) | species | 28,756 | 36,925 | Jul–Oct | November | the United States | | Hackberry | [Celtis occidentalis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2984481) | species | 28,574 | 47,957 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | Coast redwood and giant sequoia | [Sequoia sempervirens (D.Don) Endl.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2683909) | species | 25,128 | 41,597 | Jan–Jun | February | the United States | | Ironwood and musclewood | [Carpinus caroliniana Walter](https://www.gbif.org/species/2875842) | species | 22,618 | 39,459 | Apr–Jul | March | the United States | | Shagbark hickory | [Carya ovata (Mill.) K.Koch](https://www.gbif.org/species/3054296) | species | 17,910 | 41,288 | Mar–Jul | February | the United States | | White ash | [Fraxinus americana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3172327) | species | 17,819 | 66,604 | May–Aug | October | the United States | | Black oak | [Quercus velutina Lam.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8086561) | species | 13,233 | 34,173 | Jun–Sep | October | the United States | | River birch | [Betula nigra L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5331532) | species | 9,412 | 31,775 | Mar–Jul | December | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this Can you really identify a tree from bark alone? For some species, easily: shagbark hickory, hackberry, beech, sycamore, paper birch, ponderosa pine and persimmon are all decided by bark in one look. For many others bark narrows the field to a genus and no further, because hickories, willows, hawthorns and the white oak group overlap heavily. Combine bark with buds, fruit on the ground and the tree's silhouette and most temperate trees resolve. Why does the bark look different on the branches than on the trunk? Branch bark stays juvenile far longer than trunk bark. Scots pine is the classic demonstration: the upper trunk and limbs are orange and papery while the base is dark and blocky, on the same tree. Always read bark on the main trunk at about chest height, and on the largest example of the tree you can find. What tree has white peeling bark? Paper birch, which peels in horizontal papery sheets and is orange underneath. Grey birch is whiter still but does not peel and has black triangular patches below each branch. Quaking aspen is smooth greenish-white with a chalky bloom that rubs off, and it does not peel at all. Sycamore is white on the upper trunk but flakes in irregular camouflage plates rather than sheets. What tree has thorns growing out of the trunk? Honey locust, and in North America essentially nothing else. Wild honey locusts carry clusters of branched red-brown thorns up to 20 cm long directly on the trunk. Black locust and Osage orange have thorns too, but only at the nodes on twigs rather than on the bark of the trunk itself. What is the tree with warty bumps all over the bark? Hackberry. Pale grey bark covered in irregular corky warts and knobbly ridges is unique to it among common eastern trees, which makes it one of the easiest winter identifications available. Sweetgum produces corky wings on its twigs, but the trunk is deeply furrowed rather than warty. Does moss on a tree tell you which way is north? Weakly, and not reliably enough to navigate by. In the northern hemisphere the shaded north side of a trunk stays damper and does grow more moss and lichen on average, but local shade, prevailing wind and rain direction override it constantly. It matters more for identification: moss and lichen cover changes how bark texture reads, so brush a patch clear before judging the surface. Is it safe to scratch bark to identify a tree? Scratch a twig or a small branch, never the main trunk. A shallow nick on a twig heals; a ring of damage on a trunk can girdle a tree and kill it, and repeated knife cuts are an infection route. The scratch-and-smell test is genuinely useful for sassafras, black cherry, redcedar and walnut, and a twig gives you all of it. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows trees down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [How to identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-tree-by-bark/) - [Tree bark identification](https://orvik.app/plants/tree-bark-identification/) - [Pine tree identification by bark](https://orvik.app/plants/pine-tree-identification-by-bark/) - [How to identify a tree](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-tree/) - [Birch tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/birch-tree-identification/) - [How to identify a cedar tree](https://orvik.app/plants/how-to-identify-a-cedar-tree/) - [Sycamore tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/sycamore-tree-identification/) - [What kind of tree is this?](https://orvik.app/plants/what-kinda-tree-is-this/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [What snake did I just see?](https://orvik.app/tools/snake-identifier/) - [Whose egg is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/bird-egg-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [USDA Forest Service — Silvics of North America, Vol. 1: Conifers](https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/1547) - [Wojtech, M. — Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast](https://www.upne.com/1584658528.html) - [Virginia Tech Dendrology fact sheets](https://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/factsheets.cfm) - [Arbor Day Foundation — what tree is that?](https://www.arborday.org/trees/whattree/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Wild Berry Identification Chart — Edible and Poisonous Berries** > Free wild berry identification key covering 30 common berries of North America and Europe. Filter by colour, growth habit and habitat, toxic ones flagged. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Food & foraging Food & foraging # What berry is this, and can you eat it? Berry colour is close to useless on its own: there are edible black berries and lethal black berries, edible red berries and lethal red berries. What identifies a berry is **the plant carrying it** — how it grows, what the leaves are, whether the fruit is in a cluster or single. Filter on those, and read the toxic flag before anything else. Entries **30** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** **Never eat a wild berry on the strength of a web page.** This key narrows possibilities; it does not confirm anything. Several plants here can kill an adult from a small handful, and two of them — pokeweed and baneberry — grow in gardens and along paths where children play. Positive identification means the whole plant, in flower and in fruit, checked against a regional field guide or by someone who knows the local flora. If a child has eaten an unknown berry, call poison control now: (800) 222-1222 in the US, 111 in the UK. Narrow it down Clear all Search berries by name Edibility Edible Edible only when cooked or ripe Toxic Colour Red Black or purple Blue White or pale Orange or yellow What it grows on Thorny cane or bramble Shrub Tree Climbing vine Low soft-stemmed plant How the fruit sits Singly or in twos Flat-topped cluster Hanging spike or raceme Bunch like grapes Made of many little beads Where Woodland edge or hedgerow Deep woodland Field, heath or bog Garden or park Waste ground or roadside Showing all 30 berries 1. ### Blackberry Rubus fruticosus and allies An aggregate of glossy black beads that keeps its white core when picked, on an arching thorny cane with palmate leaves of three to five toothed leaflets. Size Fruit 1–2.5 cm Where North America, Europe and everywhere temperate. Confused with Nothing dangerous. There is no poisonous look-alike for a true blackberry in North America or Europe, which is why it is the standard first forage. In the record 255,561 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8436459) 2. ### Raspberry and black raspberry Rubus idaeus, R. occidentalis The same beaded aggregate as a blackberry but it pulls off the core hollow, like a thimble. Canes are bristly rather than thorny, often with a white bloom. Size Fruit 1–2 cm Where Temperate North America, Europe and Asia. In the record 799,549 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2993094) 3. ### Wild strawberry Fragaria vesca, F. virginiana A miniature strawberry with seeds on the outside, on a low plant with three toothed leaflets and white five-petalled flowers, spreading by runners. Size Fruit 1–2 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere. Confused with Mock strawberry (Potentilla indica), which has yellow flowers and an upward-pointing tasteless fruit. Harmless but not worth picking. In the record 798,077 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in April · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3029817) 4. ### Blueberry and huckleberry Vaccinium species Round blue fruit with a waxy bloom and a distinct five-pointed crown at the far end, on a twiggy shrub with small oval leaves. The crown is the confirmation. Size Fruit 5–12 mm Where Acid soils across North America and northern Europe. In the record 2,513,864 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882813) 5. [Which blueberries taste best](https://orvik.app/food/what-are-the-sweetest-blueberries/) 6. ### Elderberry Handle with care Sambucus canadensis, S. nigra Enormous flat-topped clusters of tiny purple-black berries on red-purple stalks, over compound leaves of five to eleven toothed leaflets. The stems are pithy and hollow-cored. Size Fruit 4–6 mm, clusters 15–25 cm across Where North America and Europe, on damp disturbed ground. Confused with Water hemlock and pokeweed both carry clustered dark fruit on reddish stems. Elder has woody stems and opposite compound leaves; pokeweed is a soft herb with alternate simple leaves. Risk Ripe cooked fruit is a traditional food. Raw berries, and all leaves, stems and roots, contain cyanogenic glycosides and cause vomiting and diarrhoea. Red elderberry is more toxic than black and its seeds should not be eaten at all. In the record 50,560 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/6369819) 7. [What elderberries are](https://orvik.app/food/what-are-elderberries/) 8. ### Serviceberry Amelanchier species Small purple pomes ripening from red, each with a five-pointed crown like a blueberry, on a small tree with smooth grey bark and oval finely toothed leaves. Ripens in June, before almost anything else. Size Fruit 6–10 mm Where North America and, as an ornamental, worldwide. In the record 293,125 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3023817) 9. ### Mulberry Handle with care Morus species A long beaded aggregate like a stretched blackberry, on a tree whose leaves come in three shapes — plain, mitten and glove — and bleed milky sap when torn. Size Fruit 2–3 cm Where Naturalised across North America and Europe. Risk Ripe fruit is fine. Unripe white fruit and the milky sap cause stomach upset and, in quantity, hallucination. [Identifying mulberry trees](https://orvik.app/plants/mulberry-tree-identification/) 10. ### Wild grape Handle with care Vitis species Hanging bunches of round dark fruit on a woody climber with forked tendrils, shredding bark and large lobed leaves. Cut a berry: grapes have two to four pear-shaped seeds. Size Fruit 6–15 mm Where North America and Europe. Risk Edible, but Canada moonseed is a deadly look-alike growing in the same hedgerows. Moonseed has a single flat crescent-shaped seed, no tendrils, and unlobed leaves attached inside the leaf edge rather than at the notch. Check a seed before eating any wild grape. In the record 226,757 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7467468) 11. no tendrils, leaves whose stalk attaches inside the blade rather than at the edge, and a single flat crescent-moon seed inside each fruit."> ### Canada moonseed Can injure you Menispermum canadense A grape mimic: dark bunches on a twining vine, but with **no tendrils**, leaves whose stalk attaches inside the blade rather than at the edge, and a single flat crescent-moon seed inside each fruit. Size Fruit 8–10 mm Where Eastern and central North America. Risk Contains dauricine. Convulsions and death have followed from eating a handful mistaken for grapes. This is the most consequential berry confusion in eastern North America. In the record 11,746 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3033951) 12. ### Pokeweed Can injure you Phytolacca americana A tall soft herb to three metres with a smooth magenta stem, big alternate simple leaves, and hanging spikes of glossy purple-black berries that stain everything crimson. Size Fruit 8–12 mm on spikes 10–20 cm Where Eastern and central North America; naturalised in Europe. Risk All parts are toxic and the root is the worst. A few berries cause severe vomiting and diarrhoea in a child; the folk tradition of eating boiled young shoots requires multiple changes of water and is not a beginner practice. In the record 195,553 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3084015) 13. ### Deadly nightshade Can injure you Atropa belladonna Single glossy black berries the size of a cherry, each sitting in a green five-pointed star of sepals, on a bushy plant with dull purple bell flowers. Size Fruit 15–20 mm Where Europe, western Asia; scattered escapes in North America. Risk Atropine and scopolamine. Two to five berries can kill a child. Symptoms are dilated pupils, dry mouth, flushed skin, confusion and hallucination. A genuine emergency. In the record 57,953 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from Germany [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3802655) 14. [Nightshade toxicity](https://orvik.app/plants/is-nightshade-poisonous/) 15. ### Black nightshade Can injure you Solanum nigrum and allies Small drooping clusters of dull black berries on a low branching weed with white star-shaped flowers and a protruding yellow cone of anthers. Size Fruit 6–10 mm Where Worldwide on disturbed ground. Risk Solanine, concentrated in unripe green fruit and foliage. Some populations are eaten as a cooked vegetable in parts of Africa and India, which is why the literature is confusing — treat the wild plant as toxic. In the record 363,094 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in November · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/9150405) 16. ### Bittersweet nightshade Can injure you Solanum dulcamara Clusters of translucent egg-shaped red berries on a scrambling vine with purple flowers whose reflexed petals expose a yellow beak of anthers. Arrow-shaped leaves with two basal lobes. Size Fruit 8–12 mm Where Europe and naturalised across North America. Risk Solanine. A common garden and hedgerow plant and one of the berries most often eaten by small children. In the record 746,681 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2932737) 17. ### White baneberry Can injure you Actaea pachypoda Porcelain-white berries each with a single black dot, on thick bright red stalks — the plant is called doll's eyes and looks exactly like that. Nothing else resembles it. Size Fruit 8–10 mm Where Eastern North American woodland. Risk Cardiogenic toxins. Six berries can cause cardiac arrest in a child. The unmistakable appearance is the only good news here. In the record 26,709 georeferenced records · half of them Aug–Sep · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371705) 18. ### Red baneberry Can injure you Actaea rubra Glossy scarlet berries in a tight cluster on slender green stalks, over large twice-divided toothed leaves. The stalks are thin, unlike white baneberry's thick red ones. Size Fruit 8–10 mm Where Northern North American woodland. Risk Same cardiogenic toxins as white baneberry. In the record 41,417 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371704) 19. ### Holly Can injure you Ilex species Bright red berries clustered along the twig of an evergreen with glossy spiny-edged leaves. Only female plants fruit. Size Fruit 6–10 mm Where Europe and eastern North America. Risk Saponins. Twenty berries can be serious for a child; two or three cause vomiting. One of the commonest Christmas poison-centre calls. In the record 1,043,006 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/10792217) 20. ### Yew Can injure you Taxus species A soft scarlet cup open at the end with a single dark seed visible inside, on a dark evergreen with flat needles in two rows. Size Aril 8–12 mm Where Churchyards, hedges and woodland across the northern hemisphere. Risk The red flesh is not itself toxic — birds eat it — but the seed inside contains taxine alkaloids that stop the heart, and the needles are lethal to livestock. Treat the whole plant as poison. In the record 338,087 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684902) 21. ### Virginia creeper Can injure you Parthenocissus quinquefolia Small blue-black berries on bright red stalks on a climber with five leaflets radiating from one point, turning scarlet in autumn and clinging by adhesive pads. Size Fruit 5–8 mm Where Eastern North America; widely planted in Europe. Risk Oxalate crystals. Mistaken for wild grapes; the five-leaflet leaf and the red stalks separate them. In the record 118,892 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3039194) 22. [Virginia creeper toxicity](https://orvik.app/plants/is-a-virginia-creeper-poisonous/) 23. ### Honeysuckle Handle with care Lonicera species Translucent red or orange berries in pairs at the leaf joints of a vine or twiggy shrub with opposite leaves and tubular fragrant flowers. Size Fruit 5–10 mm Where North America, Europe and Asia. Risk Most species cause vomiting and diarrhoea in quantity; a couple of berries is usually a stomach upset rather than a crisis. Honeyberry (Lonicera caerulea) is a cultivated exception grown as food. [Honeysuckle and pets](https://orvik.app/plants/is-honeysuckle-poisonous-to-dogs/) 24. ### Hawthorn Handle with care Crataegus species Clusters of small red pomes with a crown at the end, on a thorny tree with lobed toothed leaves. The flesh is dry and mealy with one to five hard stones. Size Fruit 8–15 mm Where Across the northern hemisphere. Risk Flesh is edible and traditionally made into jelly. Do not crush and eat the seeds — like apple pips they contain cyanogenic compounds. In the record 1,891,167 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3013395) 25. ### Rose hip Handle with care Rosa species A firm orange-red urn with dried sepals still attached at the tip, on a thorny shrub with pinnate leaves. Very high in vitamin C. Size Fruit 1–3 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere. Risk The flesh is edible. The interior hairs around the seeds are a mechanical irritant and must be strained out — they were the original itching powder. In the record 2,436,329 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in January · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8395064) 26. ### Chokecherry Handle with care Prunus virginiana Long hanging spikes of small dark cherries, each with a single round stone, on a small tree with oval finely toothed leaves. Astringent enough to make the mouth pucker. Size Fruit 6–10 mm Where Across North America. Risk Flesh is edible and traditionally used for jelly. The stones, leaves and bark contain cyanogenic glycosides; do not crush the pits, and keep livestock off wilted foliage. In the record 56,676 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3022668) 27. ### Juniper Handle with care Juniperus communis Hard blue-black berry-like cones with a waxy bloom and a three-part seam at the tip, on a prickly evergreen with sharp needles in whorls of three. Smells of gin. Size Cone 6–9 mm Where Across the northern hemisphere. Risk Common juniper is the culinary species, used as a spice rather than a fruit. Several other junipers are toxic, and juniper should be avoided in pregnancy. In the record 797,120 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in February · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684709) 28. ### Cranberry and lingonberry Vaccinium macrocarpon, V. vitis-idaea Firm sour red berries on a low creeping evergreen mat with tiny leathery leaves, in acid bog or heath. Cranberries float, which is how commercial harvesting works. Size Fruit 8–20 mm Where Bogs and heath across northern North America and Eurasia. In the record 16,740 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882841) 29. ### Wintergreen Gaultheria procumbens A single mealy red berry under a low evergreen plant with thick glossy oval leaves that smell unmistakably of wintergreen when crushed. The smell confirms it. Size Fruit 8–12 mm Where Eastern North American woodland. In the record 36,281 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jul · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882753) 30. ### Partridgeberry Mitchella repens A red berry with two dimples at the end — it forms from two fused flowers — on a trailing evergreen mat with small round paired leaves marked with a white midrib. Size Fruit 6–8 mm Where Eastern North American woodland. In the record 66,936 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Jun · most distinctive in March · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5338762) 31. ### Jack-in-the-pulpit Can injure you Arisaema triphyllum A tight club of glossy scarlet berries on a bare stalk in late summer, where the hooded pulpit flower was in spring. Leaves in threes on a separate stalk. Size Cluster 3–6 cm Where Eastern North American woodland. Risk Loaded with calcium oxalate needles. Eating one produces immediate intense burning of the mouth and throat rather than delayed poisoning — which usually stops anyone eating a second. In the record 73,262 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2867316) 32. ### Lily of the valley Can injure you Convallaria majalis Orange-red berries on an arching stem over two broad basal leaves, in the shady spot where white bells hung in spring. Size Fruit 6–12 mm Where Gardens and shaded woodland across the northern hemisphere. Risk Cardiac glycosides in every part including the vase water. A garden plant with lethal fruit at toddler height. In the record 476,918 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from Sweden [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/7459480) 33. [How deadly lily of the valley is](https://orvik.app/plants/is-lily-of-the-valley-deadly/) 34. ### Sumac Handle with care Rhus typhina, R. glabra An upright fuzzy crimson cone of tiny hairy fruit at the tip of a branch, over long compound leaves. Soaked in cold water it makes a sharp lemony drink. Size Cone-shaped cluster 10–20 cm Where Eastern and central North America. Risk Red-fruited sumacs are edible. Poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) has drooping **white** fruit and grows in swamps — its sap causes severe dermatitis. Red and upright is safe; white and drooping is not. In the record 118,017 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3190538) 35. ### Snowberry Can injure you Symphoricarpos albus Clusters of soft, matt, pure white berries that persist on a bare twiggy shrub through winter, popping when squeezed. Size Fruit 1–1.5 cm Where North America; widely planted in Europe. Risk Saponins. Rarely fatal but reliably causes vomiting, and its appearance and winter persistence make it one of the most-eaten berries by children in northern Europe. In the record 209,919 georeferenced records · half of them May–Aug · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8012439) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Why colour rules do not work The most repeated piece of foraging folklore is that white and yellow berries are dangerous, red berries are risky and blue and black berries are safe. It is roughly true as a statistical tendency and completely useless as a decision rule, because the exceptions are exactly the plants that kill people. - **Black and lethal:** deadly nightshade, black nightshade, moonseed, pokeweed. - **Blue and lethal:** Virginia creeper. - **Red and excellent:** raspberry, wild strawberry, cranberry, wintergreen, hawthorn, rose hip. - **White and edible:** white mulberry, some gooseberries and currants. The related "universal edibility test" — rub it on your skin, hold it on your lip, chew and wait — is worse than useless for berries. It was written for survival situations, it takes over a day per item, and it does not detect the toxins that matter here. Atropine, cardiac glycosides and dauricine produce no warning taste and no immediate reaction, which is precisely why they are dangerous. Do not use it. The only reliable method is identifying the plant. That means the leaves, the stem, the flower if it is there, the arrangement of the fruit, and the habitat, checked against a regional guide. ## The four confusions worth knowing by heart *Berry pairs behind most serious poisonings in North America and Europe, with the character that separates them.* | Safe | Dangerous look-alike | The test | | --- | --- | --- | | Wild grape | Canada moonseed | Cut a berry. A grape has 2–4 pear-shaped seeds; moonseed has one flat crescent. Grapes also have forked tendrils and lobed leaves; moonseed has neither | | Elderberry | Pokeweed, water hemlock | Elder is woody with opposite compound leaves; pokeweed is a soft herb with a magenta stem and alternate simple leaves | | Blueberry | Bilberry look-alikes, buckthorn | Blueberries have a five-pointed crown at the far end and a shrub with alternate simple leaves; buckthorn fruit has no crown and 3–4 stones | | Staghorn sumac | Poison sumac | Edible sumac fruit is red, hairy and stands upright in a cone; poison sumac fruit is white and hangs, and it grows in swamps | The moonseed case deserves particular attention because it is the one that has repeatedly killed adults. The vine grows in the same hedgerows as wild grape, produces bunches of the same size and colour at the same time of year, and the difference is inside the fruit. Cutting a single berry open takes two seconds and settles it, and there is no reason ever to eat a wild grape without doing it. ## A short list you can actually forage safely Beginner foraging works best when it starts with the species that have no dangerous look-alikes at all. In North America and Europe that list is short and it is enough. - **Blackberries and raspberries.** The whole *Rubus* genus is edible. There is no poisonous bramble. Learn these first. - **Wild strawberry.** The only look-alike is mock strawberry, which is bland and harmless. - **Blueberry, huckleberry, cranberry, lingonberry.** The *Vaccinium* crown is reliable and the genus contains nothing toxic. - **Rose hips.** Unmistakable, and every rose is safe. Strain the interior hairs out. - **Serviceberry.** An ornamental in half the front gardens in the northern US, ripening in June and almost never picked. Elderberry is worth adding once you can identify the plant confidently, with the discipline that the berries are always cooked and the leaves and stems never used. Everything else — the wild grapes, the cherries, the sumac, the juniper — belongs to a stage after you have someone local check your identification in person. ## If a child eats an unknown berry This is the most common real-world use of a page like this, and speed matters more than certainty. 1. **Call poison control immediately.** In the United States, (800) 222-1222; in the UK, 111; in most of Europe, the national poison centre number. The call is free and they would far rather advise on a harmless berry than be called an hour late about a dangerous one. 2. **Take a sample of the plant.** A shoot with leaves, fruit and if possible flowers, in a bag. Photograph the whole plant in place as well, including how it grows. 3. **Do not induce vomiting** and do not give salt water, milk or activated charcoal unless told to. Syrup of ipecac has been withdrawn from that role and current guidance is against it. 4. **Note the time and how many.** Both change what happens next. 5. **Watch for the specific signs.** Dilated pupils, flushed dry skin, confusion or hallucination suggest atropine — deadly nightshade or jimsonweed — and are an ambulance call. A slow or irregular pulse suggests cardiac glycosides, from lily of the valley, baneberry or yew, and is equally urgent. Prevention is easier than any of this. The berries most often eaten by small children are the ones at their height in gardens and parks: snowberry, bittersweet nightshade, honeysuckle, holly, yew and lily of the valley. Those six are worth learning purely so you know what is growing where children play. ## Foraging responsibly, and legally **Rules vary and matter.** In the United States, foraging is prohibited in most National Parks without a permit, restricted in many state parks, and illegal on private land without permission. In the United Kingdom, the Wildlife and Countryside Act allows picking fruit growing wild for personal use on land you have access to, but not uprooting plants, and Sites of Special Scientific Interest have their own rules. Check before you pick, not afterwards. **Do not pick from contaminated ground.** Roadside verges accumulate vehicle pollutants, field margins carry pesticide drift and industrial sites carry heavy metals. Dog-walking routes are worth avoiding at knee height for reasons that need no elaboration. **Leave most of it.** Berries are the winter food supply for birds and mammals, and a hedgerow stripped in September is a hedgerow with nothing in it in January. Taking a third and leaving the rest is the conventional and sensible rule. **Do not spread invasives.** Several plants on this list — Himalayan blackberry in the western US, buckthorn and bush honeysuckle in the Midwest, Japanese knotweed in the UK — are invasive, and moving fruit or seed around moves the problem. ## What this key can and cannot do 30 entries covering the berries people actually encounter and ask about in North America and Europe: the good ones, the dangerous ones, and the pairs that get confused. That is a small slice of what fruits in a temperate hedgerow, and the omissions are deliberate — buckthorns, viburnums, currants, gooseberries, bearberries, dogwoods, nannyberry and dozens of others are absent because they need the whole plant to separate and a picture of a berry cannot do it. The honest framing for any tool of this kind: **a key narrows possibilities, and a person confirms them.** For berries the gap between those two things can be fatal, which is why every entry here names the plant rather than the fruit and why the look-alike line is often the most important sentence in the entry. If you want to learn to forage properly, the fastest route is a local walk with a foraging group or a botanical society. An afternoon with someone who knows the local flora is worth more than any number of photographs, and it is how the reliable identifications get built. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 28 of the 30berries here: **5,317,661 georeferenced records** across the 21 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 16 families, the oldest of them collected in 1945. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded berries in this key hold 68% of all the records between them: Raspberry and black raspberry alone accounts for 799,549, while Canada moonseed has 11,746. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 20% of these records come from France, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 4,282,564 georeferenced records for these 21 berries fall in June–August alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these berries are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in July. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in June–August. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these berries recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 9 of the 21berries here peak outside the warm half of the year — Juniper, Black nightshade, Blackberry among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 28 named berries in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Raspberry and black raspberry | [Rubus idaeus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2993094) | species | 799,549 | 86,576 | May–Jul | July | the United Kingdom | | Wild strawberry | [Fragaria vesca L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3029817) | species | 798,077 | 106,452 | May–Jul | April | France | | Juniper | [Juniperus communis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684709) | species | 797,120 | 88,541 | Jun–Aug | February | France | | Bittersweet nightshade | [Solanum dulcamara L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2932737) | species | 746,681 | 131,508 | May–Jul | August | the United Kingdom | | Lily of the valley | [Convallaria majalis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/7459480) | species | 476,918 | 77,411 | Apr–Jun | May | Sweden | | Black nightshade | [Solanum nigrum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/9150405) | species | 363,094 | 148,250 | Jul–Sep | November | France | | Blackberry | [Rubus fruticosus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8436459) | species | 255,561 | 194,247 | Mar–Jul | February | France | | Snowberry | [Symphoricarpos albus (L.) K.Koch](https://www.gbif.org/species/8012439) | species | 209,919 | 76,170 | May–Aug | December | the United Kingdom | | Pokeweed | [Phytolacca americana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3084015) | species | 195,553 | 182,318 | Jul–Sep | October | the United States | | Virginia creeper | [Parthenocissus quinquefolia (L.) Planch.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3039194) | species | 118,892 | 162,515 | Apr–Jun | April | the United States | | Sumac | [Rhus typhina L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3190538) | species | 118,017 | 90,351 | Jun–Aug | October | the United States | | Jack-in-the-pulpit | [Arisaema triphyllum (L.) Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2867316) | species | 73,262 | 126,312 | Apr–May | May | the United States | | Partridgeberry | [Mitchella repens L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5338762) | species | 66,936 | 80,632 | Mar–Jun | March | the United States | | Deadly nightshade | [Atropa belladonna L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3802655) | species | 57,953 | 9,083 | May–Jul | June | Germany | | Chokecherry | [Prunus virginiana L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3022668) | species | 56,676 | 100,872 | Apr–Jun | May | the United States | | Elderberry | [Sambucus canadensis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/6369819) | species | 50,560 | 81,636 | May–Jul | March | the United States | | Red baneberry | [Actaea rubra (Aiton) Willd.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371704) | species | 41,417 | 46,011 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Wintergreen | [Gaultheria procumbens L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882753) | species | 36,281 | 42,400 | Apr–Jul | March | the United States | | White baneberry | [Actaea pachypoda Elliott](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371705) | species | 26,709 | 38,412 | Aug–Sep | September | the United States | | Cranberry and lingonberry | [Vaccinium macrocarpon Aiton](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882841) | species | 16,740 | 11,030 | Jun–Aug | July | the United States | | Canada moonseed | [Menispermum canadense L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3033951) | species | 11,746 | 17,069 | Apr–Jun | May | the United States | | Blueberry and huckleberry | [Vaccinium L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2882813) | genus | 2,513,864 | 483,291 | May–Jul | July | Sweden | | Rose hip | [Rosa L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8395064) | genus | 2,436,329 | 10,017,950 | May–Jul | January | the United Kingdom | | Hawthorn | [Crataegus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3013395) | genus | 1,891,167 | 281,545 | Apr–Jul | March | the United Kingdom | | Holly | [Ilex L.L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/10792217) | genus | 1,043,006 | 403,501 | Mar–Jul | March | the United Kingdom | | Yew | [Taxus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2684902) | genus | 338,087 | — | May–Aug | March | the United Kingdom | | Serviceberry | [Amelanchier Medik.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3023817) | genus | 293,125 | 179,522 | Apr–Jun | April | France | | Wild grape | [Vitis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/7467468) | genus | 226,757 | 250,130 | Apr–Jul | April | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How can I tell if a wild berry is poisonous? You cannot tell from the berry. Colour rules do not work — there are edible red berries and lethal black ones — and the survival "universal edibility test" does not detect the toxins that matter, because atropine and cardiac glycosides give no warning taste. The only reliable method is identifying the plant: leaves, stem, flower, how the fruit is arranged, and habitat, checked against a regional guide or by someone who knows the local flora. Are there any berries with no poisonous look-alikes? Yes, and they are where to start. The entire Rubus genus — blackberries and raspberries — has no toxic member and no dangerous mimic. Wild strawberries, blueberries and their Vaccinium relatives, and rose hips are similarly safe to learn. Those four cover most of what a beginner will find and are the standard first foraging targets for that reason. What is the difference between wild grapes and moonseed? Cut a berry open. A wild grape contains two to four pear-shaped seeds; Canada moonseed contains a single flat crescent-shaped seed. Grapes also have forked tendrils and lobed leaves attached at the notch, while moonseed has no tendrils and leaves whose stalk attaches inside the blade. Moonseed has killed adults who mistook it for grapes, so cut a berry every time. Can you eat elderberries raw? No. Ripe black elderberries are a traditional food when cooked, but raw berries, and all leaves, stems and roots, contain cyanogenic glycosides and cause vomiting and diarrhoea. Red elderberry is more toxic still and its seeds should not be eaten at all. Cook the fruit, strain out the stems, and never use any green part of the plant. My child ate a berry from the garden. What do I do? Call poison control immediately — (800) 222-1222 in the US, 111 in the UK — and take a shoot with leaves and fruit with you, plus a photograph of the whole plant. Do not induce vomiting or give anything to drink unless instructed. Note the time and how many were eaten. Dilated pupils, flushed skin and confusion, or a slow irregular pulse, mean call an ambulance rather than waiting. Which garden berries are dangerous to children? The six worth learning because they are at toddler height in gardens and parks: snowberry, bittersweet nightshade, honeysuckle, holly, yew and lily of the valley. Deadly nightshade and pokeweed are less common but far more serious. White baneberry is unmistakable — porcelain-white berries with a black dot on thick red stalks — and six of them can stop a child's heart. Is it true that if birds eat a berry, people can? No, and it is a dangerous belief. Birds tolerate many compounds that harm mammals, and the yew is the clearest case: birds eat the red flesh freely and pass the seed intact, while the seed itself contains alkaloids that stop a human heart. Pokeweed, holly and nightshade are all eaten by birds too. What birds eat tells you nothing about what people can eat. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows berries down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [How to tell if a berry is poisonous](https://orvik.app/food/how-to-tell-if-a-berry-is-poisonous/) - [What are these berries?](https://orvik.app/food/what-are-these-berries/) - [What are elderberries?](https://orvik.app/food/what-are-elderberries/) - [What elderberries look like](https://orvik.app/food/what-do-elderberries-look-like/) - [Red berry bush identification](https://orvik.app/plants/red-berry-bush-identification/) - [Berry tree identification](https://orvik.app/plants/berry-tree-identification/) - [Identify a berry tree](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-berry-tree/) - [What are goji berries?](https://orvik.app/food/what-are-goji-berries/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [What mushroom is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mushroom-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What wildflower is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [What caterpillar is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/caterpillar-identifier/) - [What spider is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/spider-identifier/) - [What beetle is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/beetle-identifier/) - [Is that a butterfly or a moth, and which one?](https://orvik.app/tools/butterfly-moth-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [America's Poison Centers — (800) 222-1222](https://poisonhelp.org/) - [North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox — poisonous plants](https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/) - [Royal Horticultural Society — potentially harmful garden plants](https://www.rhs.org.uk/prevention-protection/potentially-harmful-garden-plants) - [USDA PLANTS Database](https://plants.usda.gov/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/wild-berry-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0). --- **Wildflower Identification Chart — Count the Petals** > Free wildflower identification key for 30 common North American and European wildflowers. Filter by petal count, colour, arrangement and habitat. Source: https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/ · updated: 2026-09-04 1. [Orvik](https://orvik.app/) 2. [Free tools](https://orvik.app/tools/) 3. Plants & trees Plants & trees # What wildflower is this? Colour is the worst filter available: half the flowers in a meadow are yellow. What a botanist uses is **how many petals, how they are arranged, and what the leaves look like**. Count the petals first — three, four, five, six or many — and the family often follows before you have looked at anything else. Entries **30** Filters **5** Updated **2026-09-04** Cost **Free, no account** Narrow it down Clear all Search wildflowers by name Petal count Count on a fully open flower. Fused petals count as the number of lobes. 3 petals 4 petals 5 petals 6 petals Many — a daisy-like head Irregular — two-lipped or hooded Colour Yellow White Pink or red Blue or purple Orange Green or brown How the flowers sit One flower per stem A tall spike or raceme A flat umbrella of small flowers A dense head or cluster Whorls up the stem Where it grows Meadow, field or roadside Woodland Wet ground or pond edge Dry, sandy or rocky ground Lawn, garden or waste ground Season Spring Summer Late summer and autumn Showing all 30 wildflowers 1. ### Dandelion Taraxacum officinale A single yellow head of many strap-shaped ray florets on a hollow leafless stem that bleeds white latex, over a rosette of deeply back-toothed leaves. Size Head 3–5 cm Where Everywhere in the temperate world. Confused with Cat's ear and hawkbit, which have branched, solid, slightly hairy stems. A dandelion stem is always hollow, unbranched and hairless. In the record 479,234 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5394163) 2. [Dandelion botany](https://orvik.app/plants/dandelion-scientific-name/) 3. ### Ox-eye daisy Leucanthemum vulgare A classic white daisy with a flat yellow centre on a single tall stem, over spoon-shaped toothed leaves that clasp the stem. Size Head 3–6 cm Where Meadows across Europe and naturalised throughout North America. In the record 871,936 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8848598) 4. [Daisy species and names](https://orvik.app/plants/daisy-names/) 5. ### Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia hirta Golden rays around a raised dome of chocolate-brown disc florets, on a bristly hairy stem with rough sandpapery leaves. Size Head 5–9 cm Where Across North America; the state flower of Maryland. In the record 67,351 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3114225) 6. ### Purple coneflower Echinacea purpurea Drooping rose-pink rays around a spiky orange-brown cone that stands well proud of them. Coarse, rough-hairy leaves. Size Head 7–12 cm Where Prairie and open woodland of the central and eastern United States. In the record 16,111 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3150935) 7. ### Goldenrod Solidago species Dense plumes or wands of hundreds of tiny yellow heads in late summer, on unbranched leafy stems. Blamed for hay fever it does not cause — its pollen is heavy and insect-carried. Size Plumes 10–30 cm Where Across North America and naturalised in Europe. Confused with Ragweed, which flowers at the same time with inconspicuous green flowers and is the actual hay fever culprit. In the record 1,344,809 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5388868) 8. ### Common yarrow Achillea millefolium A flat-topped cluster of tiny white daisy heads over very finely divided feathery leaves that smell strongly aromatic when crushed. Size Head 5–10 cm across Where Across the northern hemisphere. In the record 1,788,213 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in August · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3120060) 9. ### Queen Anne's lace Handle with care Daucus carota A flat lacy umbrella of tiny white flowers, very often with a single dark purple floret at the exact centre, over a hairy stem and carrot-scented ferny leaves. Curls into a bird's nest as it seeds. Size Umbel 5–12 cm Where Roadsides across Europe and North America. Risk Its family contains poison hemlock and water hemlock. Hemlock stems are hairless and purple-blotched; wild carrot stems are hairy and green. Never eat a wild root on flower shape alone. In the record 881,697 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in October · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3034742) 10. ### Common milkweed Handle with care Asclepias syriaca Spherical clusters of small dusty-pink crown-shaped flowers on a stout stem that bleeds white latex, with opposite oval leaves. Warty pods full of silk-tufted seeds follow. Size Cluster 5–10 cm Where Eastern and central North America. Risk Cardiac glycosides. Toxic to livestock and pets; the sap irritates skin and eyes. In the record 142,383 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in October · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3170247) 11. [Milkweed toxicity](https://orvik.app/plants/is-milkweed-poisonous/) 12. ### Chicory Cichorium intybus Sky-blue daisy heads with square-tipped fringed rays, sitting almost stemless against a wiry, nearly leafless stalk. Flowers open at dawn and close by early afternoon. Size Head 3–4 cm Where Roadsides across Europe and North America. In the record 373,208 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5392252) 13. ### Common blue violet Viola sororia Five unequal petals — two up, two side, one lower with a spur behind — in violet-blue with a white throat, on a leafless stalk over heart-shaped leaves. Size Flower 1.5–2.5 cm Where Eastern North America; related species across Europe. In the record 9,322 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5331238) 14. ### Trillium Handle with care Trillium species Everything in threes: three petals, three sepals, three broad leaves in a whorl, one flower per plant. Unmistakable and slow — a trillium takes seven years to reach flowering size. Size Flower 5–8 cm Where Woodland across eastern North America. Risk Picking the flower removes the leaves too and can kill the plant. Protected in several states and provinces. In the record 227,631 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2742182) 15. ### Bloodroot Handle with care Sanguinaria canadensis A single white flower with eight to twelve petals wrapped in one deeply lobed leaf, appearing before the trees leaf out. The root bleeds orange-red sap when broken. Size Flower 3–5 cm Where Eastern North American woodland. Risk Toxic. The sap is a caustic escharotic and has caused serious injury when used as a home remedy on skin. In the record 84,107 georeferenced records · half of them Mar–Apr · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5334192) 16. ### Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta A one-sided arching spike of nodding narrow violet-blue bells with cream anthers and strongly rolled-back tips, over strap leaves. Carpets whole woodland floors. Size Spike 20–40 cm Where Ancient woodland in Britain, Ireland and western Europe. Confused with Spanish bluebell, which stands upright with bells all round the stem, blue anthers, and no scent. It hybridises with and displaces the native. In the record 364,734 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5304283) 17. ### Wild lupine Handle with care Lupinus perennis Upright spikes of blue pea flowers over palmate leaves whose leaflets radiate from one point like fingers. The sole larval host of the endangered Karner blue butterfly. Size Spike 15–30 cm Where Sandy soils of eastern and central North America. Risk Seeds and pods contain quinolizidine alkaloids and are toxic to livestock. In the record 10,272 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2964435) 18. ### Fireweed Chamerion angustifolium A tall magenta spike that opens from the bottom upwards, four petals per flower, over narrow willow-like leaves. Colonises fire sites and bomb craters, which is how it got both its names. Size Spike 20–40 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere, especially on burnt or cleared ground. In the record 40,228 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in January · mostly from the Netherlands [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3188783) 19. ### Common evening primrose Oenothera biennis Four broad lemon-yellow petals with a cross-shaped stigma in the centre, opening at dusk in a few minutes — fast enough to watch — and fading by the next afternoon. Size Flower 3–5 cm Where North America and naturalised across Europe. In the record 92,511 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Aug · most distinctive in September · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3188924) 20. ### Butterfly weed Asclepias tuberosa Flat-topped clusters of vivid orange crown-shaped flowers on a hairy stem with alternate narrow leaves — and, unusually for a milkweed, no white latex. Size Cluster 5–8 cm Where Dry open ground across the eastern and central United States. In the record 58,231 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in June · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3170305) 21. ### Wild bergamot Monarda fistulosa A ragged pompom of tubular lavender-pink two-lipped flowers on a square stem with opposite leaves smelling strongly of oregano. Square stem plus opposite leaves plus scent means the mint family. Size Head 4–6 cm Where Across North America. In the record 56,267 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5341411) 22. ### Selfheal Prunella vulgaris A short blunt head of hooded violet-blue flowers among purplish bracts, on a square stem, low enough to survive mowing. One of the commonest lawn wildflowers. Size Head 2–4 cm Where Lawns and grassland across the northern hemisphere. In the record 1,216,166 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Jul · most distinctive in July · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5341297) 23. ### Foxglove Can injure you Digitalis purpurea A tall one-sided spire of thimble-shaped purple flowers, spotted inside the lower lip, over a rosette of soft grey-green downy leaves. Size Spike 30–100 cm Where Woodland edges across Europe and the US Pacific Northwest. Risk Cardiac glycosides. Every part is toxic and the first-year rosette has been eaten in mistake for comfrey. In the record 557,582 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5414995) 24. [Foxglove toxicity](https://orvik.app/plants/is-foxglove-toxic/) 25. ### Jack-in-the-pulpit Handle with care Arisaema triphyllum A green or purple-striped hood arching over an upright club, with the leaves in threes on a separate stalk. Becomes a tight cluster of scarlet berries in late summer. Size Spathe 5–8 cm Where Eastern North American woodland. Risk Calcium oxalate crystals cause immediate intense burning of the mouth and throat. In the record 73,262 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–May · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2867316) 26. ### Common milkwort and lobelia Lobelia species A spike of two-lipped tubular flowers, split so the upper lip has two lobes and the lower three. Cardinal flower is the same shape in brilliant scarlet and is hummingbird-pollinated. Size Spike 10–40 cm Where Wet ground across North America. In the record 329,293 georeferenced records · half of them Jul–Sep · most distinctive in December · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2756426) 27. ### Marsh marigold Handle with care Caltha palustris Glossy waxy golden-yellow cups over rounded kidney-shaped leaves, in standing water or saturated ground in early spring. The petals are actually sepals. Size Flower 2.5–5 cm Where Wet ground across the northern hemisphere. Risk Contains protoanemonin, which blisters skin and irritates the gut. Do not eat raw. In the record 821,926 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in April · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371685) 28. ### Buttercup Handle with care Ranunculus species Five glossy petals with a lacquered shine caused by a mirror-like layer of cells beneath the surface — the reason a buttercup reflects yellow under the chin. Size Flower 1.5–3 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere. Risk Protoanemonin blisters skin and irritates the mouth. Livestock avoid it in the field and it is inactivated by drying in hay. In the record 5,971,221 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3033294) 29. ### Red clover Trifolium pratense A dense round head of small magenta pea flowers, over leaves of three leaflets each marked with a pale V. Fixes nitrogen, which is why it improves the ground it grows in. Size Head 2–3 cm Where Grassland across the northern hemisphere. In the record 1,602,820 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/8324121) 30. ### Common vetch and pea family Vicia and Lathyrus species Pea-shaped flowers — a big upper banner, two side wings and a fused keel below — on scrambling plants with compound leaves ending in curling tendrils. Size Flower 1–3 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere. In the record 3,525,224 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2974751) 31. ### St John's wort Hypericum perforatum Five yellow petals with black dots along the margins and a burst of long stamens. Hold a leaf to the light and it is peppered with translucent oil glands that look like pinholes. Size Flower 2–2.5 cm Where Europe, and invasive across North America and Australia. In the record 908,616 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in November · mostly from France [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189486) 32. ### Common mullein Verbascum thapsus A tall unbranched candle of yellow flowers over a rosette of enormous felted grey-green leaves as soft as flannel. Biennial — the rosette one year, the spike the next. Size Spike 50–200 cm Where Disturbed ground across the northern hemisphere. In the record 342,759 georeferenced records · half of them Jun–Aug · most distinctive in November · mostly from the United States [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/3171949) 33. ### Wild geranium and cranesbill Geranium species Five rounded pink or lilac petals with darker veins, over deeply palmately lobed leaves, followed by a long beaked seed capsule that gives the plant its name. Size Flower 2–4 cm Where Across the northern hemisphere. In the record 4,252,055 georeferenced records · half of them Apr–Jun · most distinctive in May · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/2889949) 34. ### Ragwort Handle with care Jacobaea vulgaris A flat-topped mass of small yellow daisy heads, each with about 13 rays, over deeply cut ragged leaves. Host to the black-and-orange cinnabar moth caterpillar. Size Head 1.5–2.5 cm Where Europe, and invasive in North America, Australia and New Zealand. Risk Pyrrolizidine alkaloids cause cumulative irreversible liver damage in horses and cattle. Dangerous in hay, where animals cannot avoid it. In the record 794,871 georeferenced records · half of them May–Jul · most distinctive in February · mostly from the United Kingdom [check on GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/species/5388602) Nothing in this key matches every filter at once. That usually means one observation is off — a colour read in shade, or a size guessed rather than measured. Clear the filter you are least sure about and look again. ## Count the petals before you look at the colour Petal count is the first branch of every serious plant key, because it reflects deep evolutionary structure rather than surface appearance. Colour changes with soil, light and cultivar; the number of floral parts does not. *What the number of petals tells you about the family.* | Count | Usually means | Examples | | --- | --- | --- | | 3, or parts in multiples of 3 | A monocot | Trillium, iris, lily, orchid, spiderwort | | 4 | Mustard or willowherb family | Wild mustard, garlic mustard, fireweed, evening primrose | | 5 | The largest group by far | Buttercup, geranium, milkweed, St John's wort, mullein | | 6 | A monocot with parts in twos and threes | Bluebell, lily, tulip, daffodil, star of Bethlehem | | Many, in a flat head | Daisy family — each "petal" is a whole flower | Dandelion, daisy, goldenrod, coneflower, thistle | | Irregular, two-lipped or hooded | Mint, pea, snapdragon or orchid family | Bergamot, lupine, foxglove, violet, lobelia | The daisy family deserves a warning, because it looks like a single flower and is not. A dandelion head is a hundred or more separate complete flowers packed together, and each yellow strap is one of them. That is why a daisy family plant does not have a petal count in the ordinary sense, and why the filter above gives it its own category. ## The characters that settle it after the petals Once the petal count has narrowed the family, four more observations usually reach the species. **Leaf arrangement.** Opposite, alternate or whorled, checked on the stem. It is fixed within a species and it is the second question in every key. **Stem cross-section.** Roll the stem between finger and thumb. **Square means the mint family**, almost without exception, and combined with opposite leaves and an aromatic smell it is close to diagnostic. **How the flowers are grouped.** A single flower per stem, a tall spike, a flat umbrella, a dense head or whorls up the stem — the arrangement is a family character rather than an individual quirk. **Habitat and season.** Botanists lean on these far more than beginners expect. A yellow five-petalled flower in standing water in March is a very short list; the same flower in dry sand in August is a different short list. Smell is worth adding. Crushing a leaf identifies the mint family, the carrot family and several others instantly, and it costs nothing. ## The look-alikes that matter **Queen Anne's lace and poison hemlock.** The most consequential confusion in this key. Both are flat white umbels in the carrot family. Wild carrot has a hairy green stem, a carrot smell when crushed, and usually a single dark floret at the exact centre of the umbel. Poison hemlock has a smooth hairless stem blotched purple, a musty unpleasant smell, and no central floret. Hemlock is lethal, and people have died from mistaking the root for parsnip. **Native and Spanish bluebell.** Native bluebells nod on a one-sided arching stem with cream anthers, strongly rolled-back tips and a strong scent. Spanish bluebells stand upright with flowers all round the stem, blue anthers and little scent. The hybrid is displacing the native across Britain. **Goldenrod and ragweed.** Goldenrod is blamed for autumn hay fever it cannot cause: its pollen is heavy, sticky and carried by insects. Ragweed flowers at the same time with inconspicuous green spikes and is wind-pollinated, and it is the actual cause. **Dandelion and its relatives.** Cat's ear, hawkbit and hawksbeard all produce a yellow head on a stalk. A true dandelion has a hollow, unbranched, hairless stem and one head. Anything branched or hairy is something else. ## Picking, and why mostly not Wildflower picking is regulated in more places than people realise, and the ecological case against it is stronger than the legal one in most cases. **Legally:** in the United States, collecting plants in National Parks is prohibited, most state parks restrict it, and many states protect specific species — trillium and several orchids among them. On federal land other than parks, limited collection of common species is often allowed. In the United Kingdom, the Wildlife and Countryside Act makes it an offence to uproot any wild plant without the landowner's permission, and picking above-ground parts of unprotected species on land you have access to is generally permitted. **Ecologically:** some species cannot survive picking at all. A trillium takes seven years to reach flowering size and its three leaves come off with the flower, so picking one commonly kills the plant. Orchids depend on soil fungi and never transplant successfully — digging one up destroys it and achieves nothing. The conventional guidance is the one-in-twenty rule for common species in unprotected places, taking no more than one plant in twenty and never the last few. For anything uncommon, photograph it and record it instead. A record in iNaturalist is worth more than a flower in a jar, and it lasts longer. ## Photographing a wildflower so it can be identified Four photographs cover almost everything a botanist would ask to see, and taking them is quicker than describing the plant afterwards. 1. **The flower face-on and close**, showing the petal count and the centre. 2. **The whole plant from a metre back**, showing height, branching and how the flowers are arranged on the stem. 3. **The leaves**, including where they join the stem — arrangement is a key character and it is the shot most often missed. 4. **The stem and the base**, showing whether it is square or round, hairy or smooth, and what the basal rosette looks like. Include the habitat and the date. "Wet meadow, southern Wisconsin, early June" narrows a candidate list more than any close-up does, and it is the information an identification service asks for first. 30 entries here cover the wildflowers people most often photograph in North America and northwest Europe. There are over 20,000 native vascular plant species in North America alone, so anything unusual will not be here. iNaturalist and regional native plant societies identify submissions free, and a good set of four photographs usually gets an answer within a day. ## What the observation record shows Every entry in this key that carries a scientific name is matched against - [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/), the international register of biodiversity records, and against - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/). That puts a hard number behind 30 of the 30wildflowers here: **11,653,807 georeferenced records** across the 24 entries that resolve to a single species, spanning 17 families, the oldest of them collected in 1956. The snapshot was taken on 2026-09-04. That evidence is not spread evenly, and it is worth knowing before you trust a narrow result. The five best-recorded wildflowers in this key hold 55% of all the records between them: Common yarrow alone accounts for 1,788,213, while Common blue violet has 9,322. A common thing is common in the data too, so when a filter narrows to one frequent entry and one rare one, the frequent one is usually the answer — and the record count is the quickest way to see which is which. The same skew applies geographically: 23% of these records come from the United Kingdom, so the key describes what is reported there far better than it describes anywhere else. ### When these are actually reported *Half of the 9,525,845 georeferenced records for these 24 wildflowers fall in May–July alone. The bars are the raw share by month, which mostly measures when people go looking; the line divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, so a value above 1.0 means these wildflowers are reported more than the season alone explains, and it peaks in July. Source: GBIF, snapshot 2026-09-04.* Half of every record for this group falls in May–July. A raw month count measures two things at once — when the organism is about, and when people are outdoors with a camera — and the second effect is large enough to give almost anything a summer peak. The line on the figure divides each month by the baseline for every species in every Orvik key, which answers a different question: relative to when people record anything at all, when are these wildflowers recorded? Values above 1.0 are the months that belong to this group rather than to the season. On that measure 7 of the 24wildflowers here peak outside the warm half of the year — St John's wort, Queen Anne's lace, Ragwort among them. Those are the ones a seasonal rule of thumb gets wrong. ### Records behind each entry Sorted by how much evidence exists, not by how likely you are to meet one. The peak month is the effort-adjusted figure, and it is left blank wherever the sample is too thin for the month-to-month wobble to mean anything. *GBIF and iNaturalist record counts for the 30 named wildflowers in this key, snapshot 2026-09-04. Rows above species rank aggregate everything beneath them and are not comparable with the rest. Free to reuse with a link to this page.* | Entry | Accepted name | Rank | GBIF records | Research-grade | Half fall in | Peak, adjusted | Most reported from | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Common yarrow | [Achillea millefolium L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3120060) | species | 1,788,213 | 368,490 | May–Jul | August | the United Kingdom | | Red clover | [Trifolium pratense L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8324121) | species | 1,602,820 | 242,096 | May–Jul | May | the United Kingdom | | Selfheal | [Prunella vulgaris L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5341297) | species | 1,216,166 | 208,475 | Jun–Jul | July | the United Kingdom | | St John's wort | [Hypericum perforatum L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3189486) | species | 908,616 | 162,557 | May–Jul | November | France | | Queen Anne's lace | [Daucus carota L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3034742) | species | 881,697 | 216,237 | Jun–Aug | October | France | | Ox-eye daisy | [Leucanthemum vulgare Lam.](https://www.gbif.org/species/8848598) | species | 871,936 | 176,928 | May–Jul | June | the United Kingdom | | Marsh marigold | [Caltha palustris L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5371685) | species | 821,926 | 95,096 | Apr–Jun | April | the United Kingdom | | Ragwort | [Jacobaea vulgaris Gaertn.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5388602) | species | 794,871 | 91,213 | May–Jul | February | the United Kingdom | | Foxglove | [Digitalis purpurea L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5414995) | species | 557,582 | 109,968 | May–Jul | February | the United Kingdom | | Dandelion | [Taraxacum officinale Weber ex F.H.Wigg.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5394163) | species | 479,234 | 302,157 | Mar–May | April | the Netherlands | | Chicory | [Cichorium intybus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5392252) | species | 373,208 | 183,229 | Jul–Aug | September | the United States | | Bluebell | [Hyacinthoides non-scripta (L.) Chouard ex Rothm.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5304283) | species | 364,734 | 28,706 | Apr–May | April | the United Kingdom | | Common mullein | [Verbascum thapsus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3171949) | species | 342,759 | 189,703 | Jun–Aug | November | the United States | | Common milkweed | [Asclepias syriaca L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3170247) | species | 142,383 | 192,937 | Jun–Jul | October | the United States | | Common evening primrose | [Oenothera biennis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3188924) | species | 92,511 | 76,638 | Jul–Aug | September | France | | Bloodroot | [Sanguinaria canadensis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5334192) | species | 84,107 | 105,247 | Mar–Apr | April | the United States | | Jack-in-the-pulpit | [Arisaema triphyllum (L.) Schott](https://www.gbif.org/species/2867316) | species | 73,262 | 126,312 | Apr–May | May | the United States | | Black-eyed Susan | [Rudbeckia hirta L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3114225) | species | 67,351 | 112,670 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Butterfly weed | [Asclepias tuberosa L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3170305) | species | 58,231 | 78,604 | Jun–Jul | June | the United States | | Wild bergamot | [Monarda fistulosa L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5341411) | species | 56,267 | 86,500 | Jul–Jul | July | the United States | | Fireweed | [Chamerion angustifolium (L.) Holub](https://www.gbif.org/species/3188783) | species | 40,228 | — | Jul–Aug | January | the Netherlands | | Purple coneflower | [Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench](https://www.gbif.org/species/3150935) | species | 16,111 | 54,156 | Jun–Jul | July | the United States | | Wild lupine | [Lupinus perennis L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2964435) | species | 10,272 | 13,082 | Apr–May | May | the United States | | Common blue violet | [Viola sororia Willd.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5331238) | species | 9,322 | 7,143 | Apr–May | April | the United States | | Buttercup | [Ranunculus L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/3033294) | genus | 5,971,221 | — | May–Jul | May | the United Kingdom | | Wild geranium and cranesbill | [Geranium Tourn. ex L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2889949) | genus | 4,252,055 | — | Apr–Jun | May | the United Kingdom | | Common vetch and pea family | [Vicia L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2974751) | genus | 3,525,224 | 494,538 | Apr–Jun | May | the United Kingdom | | Goldenrod | [Solidago L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/5388868) | genus | 1,344,809 | 769,516 | Jun–Aug | September | France | | Common milkwort and lobelia | [Lobelia Plum. ex L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2756426) | genus | 329,293 | — | Jul–Sep | December | the United States | | Trillium | [Trillium L.](https://www.gbif.org/species/2742182) | genus | 227,631 | — | Apr–May | April | the United States | This table is assembled from open data and is free to reuse with a link back to this page. The snapshot behind every Orvik key is published as one downloadable file on the - [open field data](https://orvik.app/data/) page, with each source's licence terms. ## Questions people ask about this How do I identify a wildflower? Start with petal count, not colour. Three or six petals usually means a monocot such as a lily or trillium; four means the mustard or willowherb family; five is the largest group; many petals in a flat head means the daisy family, where each "petal" is a whole flower. Then check leaf arrangement, whether the stem is square or round, how the flowers are grouped, and the habitat and season. Why is colour a bad way to identify flowers? Because it varies within species with soil chemistry, light and cultivar, and because it is not evolutionarily informative — half the flowers in a summer meadow are yellow and they belong to a dozen unrelated families. Petal count, leaf arrangement and stem shape are fixed characters that reflect the plant's actual relationships, which is why every botanical key starts with them. What is the difference between Queen Anne's lace and poison hemlock? Wild carrot, or Queen Anne's lace, has a hairy green stem, smells of carrot when crushed, and usually carries a single dark purple floret at the centre of the umbel. Poison hemlock has a smooth hairless stem blotched with purple, smells musty and unpleasant, and has no central floret. Hemlock is lethal and the confusion has killed people, so never dig or eat a wild root on flower shape alone. Is it illegal to pick wildflowers? It depends on where and what. Collecting in US National Parks is prohibited and most state parks restrict it; several states protect specific species including trillium and orchids. In the UK it is an offence to uproot any wild plant without the landowner's permission, though picking above-ground parts of common species is generally allowed. The ecological case matters more: a trillium takes seven years to flower and picking one usually kills it. Does goldenrod cause hay fever? No. Goldenrod pollen is heavy and sticky and is carried by insects, not wind, so very little of it reaches anyone's nose. Ragweed flowers at the same time with inconspicuous green spikes, is wind-pollinated, and is the actual cause of most autumn hay fever in North America. Goldenrod gets blamed because it is the conspicuous yellow thing flowering when people start sneezing. What has a square stem? The mint family, almost without exception — bergamot, selfheal, catnip, dead-nettle, sage, thyme and hundreds more. Roll the stem between finger and thumb: if it is square and the leaves are in opposite pairs and something aromatic comes off on your fingers, you are in Lamiaceae. It is one of the fastest family identifications in botany. Can I transplant a wildflower into my garden? Usually you should not. Many woodland species depend on specific soil fungi and simply die when moved — orchids essentially always do. Digging plants from the wild also removes them from a population without adding to one. Buy nursery-propagated native plants or collect a small amount of seed with permission instead; both work better and neither damages the site. ## Still not sure? Point a camera at it A filter narrows wildflowers down to a shortlist. Orvik reads the photo itself and names the species, with the look-alikes ranked underneath so you can check the call yourself. - [Get Orvik free](https://orvik.app/app/) ## Keep reading on Orvik - [How to identify flowers](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-flowers/) - [Name this flower](https://orvik.app/plants/name-this-flower/) - [Flowers and their names](https://orvik.app/plants/flowers-and-names/) - [Flower identification apps](https://orvik.app/plants/flower-identification-app/) - [Names of poisonous flowers](https://orvik.app/plants/names-of-poisonous-flowers/) - [Identify a plant by leaf shape](https://orvik.app/plants/identify-plant-by-leaf-shape/) - [Types of weeds with names](https://orvik.app/plants/types-of-weeds-with-names/) - [Scientific names of flowers](https://orvik.app/plants/flowers-scientific-name/) ## Other free Orvik tools - [Is this plant poisonous to dogs or cats?](https://orvik.app/tools/plant-toxicity-checker/) - [Identify a tree by its leaf](https://orvik.app/tools/leaf-identifier/) - [Identify a tree by its bark](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-bark-identifier/) - [What succulent is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/succulent-identifier/) - [How old is this tree?](https://orvik.app/tools/tree-age-calculator/) - [When do I start these seeds?](https://orvik.app/tools/seed-starting-calculator/) - [What kind of rock is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/rock-identifier/) - [Which mineral is this?](https://orvik.app/tools/mineral-identifier/) ## Where the data comes from - [USDA PLANTS Database](https://plants.usda.gov/) - [Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center — native plant database](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/) - [Plantlife — UK wildflower law and identification](https://www.plantlife.org.uk/) - [iNaturalist — community identification](https://www.inaturalist.org/) - [GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility](https://www.gbif.org/) - [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/) --- HTML version: https://orvik.app/tools/wildflower-identifier/ Structured data for this site: https://orvik.app/api/v1/openapi.json · https://orvik.app/llms.txt Free to quote and reuse with a link back to the source URL above (CC BY 4.0).