Features
You don’t need to be a botanist to love South Africa’s trees
From curiosity to confident identification
That’s exactly what TheTreeApp is designed to help with: turning a confusing identification challenge into a series of simple observations to help you explore, discover, and treasure South Africa’s trees with confidence and delight.
Combine your observations — leaves, bark, flowers, fruit — and quickly narrow hundreds of possible species down to just a few.
No guesswork. No overwhelm.
Discover our unique features
Here’s an overview of what makes exploring, discovering, and treasuring the trees around you easier, smarter, and fun:
SmartSearch tree ID
Use clues, not guesswork, to identify the trees around you. Focus on the features you can see. Enter leaves, bark, flowers, or thorns and the app connects the dots in seconds, narrowing down hundreds of possible trees to just a few in seconds.
Location filter
Set your location using your current location, from our interactive maps, or choose one of South Africa’s nature reserves, and instantly see the list of tree species that grow naturally within a 12.5km radius of you.
Sort, search or filter trees
Already know the tree you’re looking for? Search for it using its scientific or its name in 11 of South Africa’s official languages, or sort them alphabetically, by family or botanical names.
Dynamic trees counter
Watch your tree search narrow in real time. As you enter features like location, leaves, bark, and seeds, the counter updates instantly to show how many possible tree matches remain.
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Glossary
No more confusion. Clear, approachable explanations of botanical terms that demystifies tree terminology, making learning about and ID-ing trees much easier.
Language settings
Tree names, your way. Switch seamlessly between a tree’s scientific names and it’s name in 11 South African languages to search and explore using the names you know best.
About Trees
From leaf tips to roots and everything in between! Your botanically accurate beginners’ guide to trees, their key features and how to use them to identify any tree you see.
Log your tree spotting
Track your trees. Add photos, notes and GPS locations to create a growing archive of your tree sightings, trips and tree IDs.
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Leaf & Lore
Bite-sized stories, science, myths and more. Exclusive weekly drops that bring the hidden life of trees to light.
Full species descriptions
Rich species-by-species guides with over 6000 full-colour photos and botanical illustrations, key ID features and full descriptions, distribution maps, plus interesting facts, uses and myths that bring each of our 1177 trees to life.
Detailed distribution and reserve maps
See exactly where trees thrive. Explore distribution maps and 2000 reserve maps to see what trees grow there naturally, or to plan your next adventure around the specific trees you want to spot.
