Does anyone know of a good garden plant identification website or book? Something organized by flower type or leaf shape (similar to an Audubon Society field book) would be excellent. I just purchased a house, and I think the previous owner was a bit crazy -- there are literally hundreds of plants scattered about, some of them planted in the middle of the lawn even. So far I have an approximate identification for about half of them :) To make matters worse, the previous owner did not leave her house for at least 3 years prior to my purchasing it, so it's nearly impossible to tell weeds from garden plants. I live in SouthWestern Ohio (6a/b climate), so anything specific to the region would also be a great help. I know there are plent of resources for looking up plants if you know something about them, but all I have is a visual description of leaf/flower! If nothing else, I'll post some pics of the really difficult ones once they bloom, but I'd love to have something I can carry around the yard and ID plants with. Thanks! Andrew
Just post good photos that show most of their parts. Fully developed plants with flowering going on--or fruits if these seem to be the focus, such as would be the case with an apple tree--are far more useful than shots of spring shoots just out of the ground that sometimes get put up.
See if there is a Master Gardener program near you, and see if you can't get someone to come over and look at things with you. That will get some of the more obvious ones and then, as Ron said, feel free to post here and we'll give it a shot with the rest. And yes, please, clear photographs of several parts of the plant are most helpful. Can't tell you how many blurry pics of sprouts we get.
