I just went to add a picture and received a message saying "A friendly note form Plant Admins and moderators".........is everyone receiving that message or was it specifically for me?

Everyone received it. It's just a friendly reminder for us all. Your photos are great Paul.

Thanks Dave........

This brings me back to a question I have asked before but I will revisit it. I just added some pictures of a weeping red bud. There were already 2 pictures there that I took at a nursery last year. They were the best I had at the time but now I have far better pictures. I have requested that the first two pictures be deleted. Good idea?

My opinion is the more the merrier.

We get those requests from time to time from members and I too will delete some of my older ones if I truly am not that happy with it and have a better shot. I aim to try and add different angles/views so I don't have too many that look the same but that doesn't always happen. So don't delete them if they add something to the database selections but it's up to you of course.

Paul, I wrestle with that question internally. I think it's helpful to have a wide variety of pics, especially if there's an old pic, then a newer one of a same plant in better health. I've asked for a couple old pics to be deleted before, but at this point lean more toward leaving them up.

More importantly I think is the 'thumb thing.' As much as I might like a macro pic, I don't thumb them if that will cause the number of thumbs on that pic to make it the #1 pic, that shows up in the database listing. For that, I always try to vote for the most clear pic that shows the most of a particular plant, the ideal specimen with enough leaves/flowers/whatever to recognize the average plant by comparison. A flower macro is not what I prefer, but I'm sure there are those who would vehemently feel differently. Obvious exceptions would be something recognized only by its' flowers, like daylilies, roses, Plumeria, Hibiscus, where the only difference is usually the flowers of each cultivar and the leaves are pretty much the same for thousands of plants.

Also, no offense to you and your altruistic willingness to take pics in commercial setting, which are no doubt helpful since the 'for sale' version is what people can most easily recognize if shopping for a plant, but I also try to vote for someone's personally loved plant over pics like that. I hope you will continue adding these great pics, and I'm glad to have a chance to say why I've rarely thumbed any of them, and how much I appreciate having them available for so many plants. We can see the 'twig for sale' all the way to the mature plant, for so many plants. Thank you, and well done!!

But back to your question, if those are the kind of pics you would replace, that's worth doing, IMVHO. After enough pics to fully represent/recognize a plant, the others are just so much scrolling. If your newer pics show any detail or overall appearance not already in the older pics, I would just add them and not delete the older ones.

Thanks Tiffany for your thoughtful comments. If we all approach this from a little different angle we will achieve a nice mix. I have posted many pictures from my own garden, Iris, Hosta, Roses, etc. but there are many gorgeous interesting things that I don't grow and am not familiar with. I enjoy visiting nurseries and have lucky to have several good ones near by. I even enjoy reading the fertilizer labels.

That's an excellent point about the ramifications of thumbs on data base pics. For the data base, it's only logical that we should be thumbing the photos that depict the plant for identification and descriptive purposes, rather than just beauty. If that is not purpose of the data base, than what is it?

I agree with others here that photos of the whole plant and plant parts other than just the flower are needed in the data base. If I want to add a new pic to the data base, but it doesn't add something significant to what is already there, then I might hesitate to add it. But different shot angles, even of the same flower, for instance, can be very useful.

I would also encourage contributors to caption their photos with significant data, like if the pic was taken in the wild and where. I guess it's just me, but I am irked when people say they don't have any time to add a simple sentence that can mean so much.

Leftwood said:That's an excellent point about the ramifications of thumbs on data base pics. For the data base, it's only logical that we should be thumbing the photos that depict the plant for identification and descriptive purposes, rather than just beauty. If that is not purpose of the data base, than what is it?

The answer to that question is as variable as the people who use it. It's quite clear that different people have different expectations from the database. The surprising part is how many feel like their expectations are being met.

In a similar vein, as for the thumbs, members ought to feel free to give them for whatever reasons they believe to be appropriate. I'm often surprised by the images that get thumbs versus those that don't, but it's more likely a failing on my part than on that of the thumb giver.

Right-On Kent......

Ditto to Kent's post.

KentPfeiffer said:

The answer to that question is as variable as the people who use it. It's quite clear that different people have different expectations from the database. The surprising part is how many feel like their expectations are being met.

In a similar vein, as for the thumbs, members ought to feel free to give them for whatever reasons they believe to be appropriate. I'm often surprised by the images that get thumbs versus those that don't, but it's more likely a failing on my part than on that of the thumb giver.

I think sometimes it's simply a matter of someone seeing a picture in the random image or in the newly added photos on the home page & the image strikes whomever as worthy of a thumbs up. Frankly, if I went through the db & thumbed every photo I think worthy of thumbing --- it would take the rest of my life to accomplish.

I agree 100%!

If identification and description is not the purpose of the data base, then I am definitely out of line and have misled myself.

I am very sorry.


Edit for spelling correction.

It's certainly one of the more important purposes Rick. I also use our database photos to home in on plants I'd like in my garden. Another use is to see how various plants look in various climates, in any given year. Siberian Iris blooms are known for having differences in appearance in response to climate. The fact that most of our pics are taken by gardeners and not re-sellers is another plus.

I like closeups. With my poor health, I also have bad memory. I don't recognize a lot of the plants in my own photos unless there are closeups of them. Then I can have a chance of remembering sticking my camera in their faces.

Some flowers, I need to know their growth patterns. Like pampas grass. A lot of people like to trim them down very short. But I found their colors were very beautiful in their winter colors. My stonecrop was just as interesting during dormancy as it was in full bloom. And I want to see different stages of growth for some things like my elderberry flowers. Especially when I first start growing something and only know what a mature plant/bush will look like. I want to know what the seed pods look like, how it looks when it is on its last legs, how the berries are supposed to look. I have received and planted the wrong mail order plants. Sometimes not discovered until a year later when blooms look nothing like I expected.

Maybe I need a plant to be a focal point, but all I've ever seen are the flowers. And then there are the coneflowers. Echinacea looks great in bloom. But the petals look pretty bad very quickly. For people that don't do a bit of research, they might be shocked that such praise is given these flowers that don't look picture perfect for their entire growing season.

Evan is very correct that some plants and flowers may look different with different climates or different soils or with and without correct fertilizers. I lived with a friend for a month. Right across the street, the nice gentleman hired a crew of landscapers to plant hosta all around his sloping south side of his home. I knew instantly that was a mistake because I got that same hosta from my neighbor who was very disappointed in their looks growing them in full sun. They looked like totally different and perky plants under my juniper bush where they got very little of the west sun.

I talked to the guy across the street and learned that the hostas were his wife's idea. I told him my experiences and my neighbor's woe. It only took a couple months for him to decide to dig up all the hosta. He wanted to dig it up as soon as he talked to me, but the wife had to see it with her own eyes.

Sometimes a word will come to me and I have to peruse the database until I see the plant I'm after, having only a word to go by. Which is more often common names, like my stonecrop. I don't personally believe there can be a right or wrong way to make use of all the experiences of gardeners collected in a database. I didn't think about how hairy borage can be until I tried it in a salad. I was too busy looking at a single flower, not the entire plant. I learned to pay more attention to the details of all my edibles instead of focusing on the parts I planned to eat while ignoring the unpleasant parts.

I wonder about other people importing pictures to the data base that I might post, but I might not think they are of the quality that should be in the data base. Maybe just posted for a point in a converstion in the tread.

Tom, I don't know whether you are concerned about the quality of the photograph or that of the specimen, but I am interested in seeing not only the perfect plant but also what that plant is likely to look like if I try to grow it.