A method of distinguishing individual plants within a row of plants, including directing radiation at the row of plants at an angle selected to illuminate a portion of the plant and cast a shadow at the plant center, collecting an image from the radiation reflected off of two or more contiguous plants with a detector, identifying a continuous foreground region indicative of a plant within the image, identifying points of interest within the region, classifying the points of interest as plant centers and non-plant centers, and segmenting the region into sub-regions, each sub-region encompassing a single point of interest classified as a plant center.
