Anyone know what this plant is?

[TheNeverEndingOver]

Hi all,

Does anyone know what this plant is? I absolutely love it. I’ve asked google images and my family but neither know!

thanks

This is what my special app has identified it as.

Can I ask which app this is please? do you pay for it?

There are quite a few piers cultivars, some have brighter red than your photo. They like somewhat acid soil but that's fine if you're growing in a pot, just use ericaceous compost. I've got couple, they're really good plants.

Thank you so much - much better than Google reverse image!

Thank you, that’s great to know - I’m very keen on getting one so very useful to know the right compost

App is called Picture This. £40 a year. Worth every penny!

Thank you - I've a lot to learn about gardening and this could prove very useful 😊

If you’re using an app (any app), they may be right 90% of the time, but when they’re wrong they’re very wrong. So use them as a starting point, research the suggested plant, and ask lots of questions - does this plant have the right growth form (eg bush vs creeper)? Does it flower at the right time? Does it grow in the UK? Are the leaves the right shape and arranged correctly (opposite or alternating) on the stem?

This board is the best app - you usually get the results from a few artificial 'intellegencies' and some human intelligence for free.

An alternative to an app is to study it closely, take some photos of it, and then go to a garden centre and see if they have anything in stock that looks like it. You can then find out what it is from the label on the one in the garden centre. I've done that with random unidentifiable conifer varieties in the past.

You can even ask the staff at the garden centre.

Well it depends. Garden centres aren't what they were, and many of the staff aren't proper plant experts any more. You can strike lucky though.

Lots of people seem to hate apps. I think it's a bit like when Google maps appeared and London cabbies. They had a specialist knowledge learned over years and then that info was now at anyone's fingertips.
Horticulturalists are hopping mad about them but the apps are generally very accurate and for people like me who know nothing about plants they are hugely useful. Plus they have never been wrong identifying my 1 acre sub topical garden.

I think it's not so much luck, as doing your research and going to a decent indie nursery rather than Dobbies et al. But I was being a bit provocative - I work in a plant nursery. I don't have an hort qualifications, so I'm not an expert in that sense, but I am certainly more accurate than a plant identifying app.

Really?!

Whenever people quote apps on here, they seem to make absolutely absurd mistakes. But then, people who know nothing about plants generally can't tell when the app is wrong.

Me too - I volunteer in a community tree nursery for my sins.😂

There aren't all that many independent garden centres / nurseries around any more are there? There were several round here, all of which have either closed altogether with the land sold for development, or been taken over by a garden centre chain and are now full of whatever plants the lorry from Holland brings every fortnight.

Ours is indie. There are several within my local area, but perhaps we're lucky.

We do get deliveries from Holland (and Italy), but we also propagate lot of our own (we grow all of our own veg and stock 15-20 varieties of tomatoes plus 10 or so each of courgettes, squash and cukes each year). And we grow on a lot of what we have delivered in - there's plenty of skill in turning a one-year-old whip into a trained standard tree or an espalier.

We all have to learn plant Latin names from day one. I am not so good as some on this board (@MereDintofPandiculation!) at remembering formal botany, but I am good at identifying things at a glance, because when you are working on a big site you have to be able to remember which of ten polytunnels contains the specific variety of hellebore someone wants, or where you last saw the shrub that's been requested. Plant apps seem to me to fail on really basic grounds - I get the impression most of them are simply doing a visual match. They really need extra steps of processing, where they rule out categories of possible matches based on things like whether the leaves are pinnate or whether the stems are hairy, or whatever. I don't get the impression they do this.

They are generally accurate but not always. But people who know nothing about plants won’t recognise when they’re wrong, which is fine when they keep the answer to themselves but not so fine when they pass on the wrong answer to other people.

There are identifications that apps can’t possibly get right because they depend on features that can’t usually be seen on a photograph.

Even independents can rely on the lorry from Holland. What is worth searching out is the independent nursery that grows its own plants. Better still if they have a few varieties named after them!

Plant apps seem to me to fail on really basic grounds - I get the impression most of them are simply doing a visual match. They really need extra steps of processing, where they rule out categories of possible matches based on things like whether the leaves are pinnate or whether the stems are hairy, or whatever. I don't get the impression they do this. Yes, that’s how I understand them to work. They’re simply pattern matching, doesn’t matter to them whether it’s a plant, a bird, a face or a fingerprint.

They may work on a subset of images, eg “N European”.

But no checks of acute sepals, glandular hairs on petal edges, chaffy scales between florets, forked hairs on underneath of leaf or anything like that

Wouldn't named varieties be lovely?!

One of the things I love about my job is when we see plants right through from the start. I only do bits of propagation to help out when my colleagues whose business it is are needing a hand - but it's so satisfying. Even so, it's lovely to see something you've potted up as a tiny plug plant and grown on, repotted, and now it's a lovely big tree that looks really gorgeous.

I think one of the most difficult things to explain to someone who doesn't know much about plants, is how you can know so quickly that they're wrong. As you say, a plant app can't really appreciate features - like habit or movement - that are so distinctive in real life. I had someone recently who wanted to buy a pleached holly to match ones she already had; she had pulled out one holly and one eleagnus, next to it. She thought it was a variegated holly, and really wouldn't believe that it wasn't, because I'd barely glanced at it, and to her, they looked so similar it would have needed a long look to tell the difference.

I like the ones that have a decade's worth of old misshapen shrubs & trees kicking around at the back... and reduced to silly money because nobody else wants them. 😂

Even so, it's lovely to see something you've potted up as a tiny plug plant and grown on, repotted, and now it's a lovely big tree that looks really gorgeous. I have several maples, including two huge snakebark ones, that I grew from seed, and which for the past 10 years or so have been producing seed in their turn. (And now our house is in the Conservation Area, and I’m not allowed to touch them without Council permission).

I think one of the most difficult things to explain to someone who doesn't know much about plants, is how you can know so quickly that they're wrong. I had a long argument with the neighbour behind us who wanted me to cut down the “bramble” that was half way up a 60ft tree. Actually a “Kiftsgate” rose. I’m patience personified when explaining plants to someone who knows they don’t know much, but I struggle to be polite to someone who clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about telling me I’m wrong.

I expect the apps will get better, some will doubtless be developed which have more accurately labelled, specialised training data which uses location and seasonal data.

Think it's a pieris looks like mine.