As you know, we went out last weekend and grabbed a few things for the garden. We picked up five small bushes because their flowers and shape drew us. Unfortunately the garden nursery staff didn’t know the actual name of the plant.
This is not the first time that I got a plant that I didn’t know the name, and yes, I know it’s quite important to do so in order for you to conduct basic research to know the needs of the plant. How else do you expect something to thrive if all you know about it is that it’s green and flowers from time to time?
My go-to method of identifying a plant is to ask. Of course. But before doing that, what I’ve found pretty effective is to take a picture of the leaves or flowers (or both) and upload it to Google Image Search. Just click the camera icon in the search field, select the upload tab and upload your image. I find higher resolution bigger images work best. In most cases, I get a close enough match to help me drill down further to eventual identification.
This is what I’ve done this morning with these new bushes. I noticed that their flowers open in the morning, so I snapped a quick picture on my way to the car this morning, came to the office, uploaded it and started the search. It wasn’t very long that I was led to the plant’s Turnera subulata Wikipedia page.
Thank you very much Google for making our live’s easier!
How do you go about identifying your plants? Do you have any tips and tricks you can offer? Please share your knowledge.
