Plant Information on the Internet: A Cautionary Tale

Recently, I noticed that many readers were coming to my blog from a website I had never heard of, so I clicked through to check it out. The link took me to a blog that claims to provide “the most comprehensive gardening information, as well as hints and tips to help the gardener at every skill level.” I found myself looking at a photo of Amsonia blooms from my garden. The photo was part of an article entitled “The 11 Best Fall-Blooming Flowers for Your Yard,” with Amsonia listed as #6. Huh??

The problem here wasn’t with the use of the photo from my blog. I don’t object to others using my photos as long as they provide proper credit, and the amsonia photo included my watermark and a link back to my blog.  The problem was with the information provided. If the person who wrote this article had bothered to read my post on Amsonia, she would have known that it blooms in early summer, not in fall. The article on Best Fall-Blooming Flowers advised that “The small bunches of whitish-blue flowers look great scattered across your yard and garden. They give a cool, calming texture that fits perfectly with fall!” Really?? I’d love to see how that would work. It might be possible to scatter the dwarf variety Amsonia x ‘Blue Ice’ through the garden, but most Amsonia varieties are big architectural plants that are a challenge to divide.

The blog that used my photo as part of its misinformation does not allow for comments, so I was not able to correct the errors in that way. I did fill out a contact form advising about the wrong information, but I received no reply and the post has not been corrected. I can only hope that all the readers of the “The 11 Best Fall-Blooming Flowers for Your Yard” who have clicked through to my blog have actually read the post on Amsonia so that they don’t try to use the plant in the way advised. Unfortunately, the blog providing this bad information seems to have a large readership, and I wonder how many readers who haven’t clicked the link to my blog will go out and plant Amsonia for fall flowers.

The lesson here is to beware of plant information on the internet; you can’t trust everything you read there. Here are some suggestions for evaluating online sources of plant information:

1. Most university and botanical garden sites are trustworthy sources of information. The Missouri Botanical Garden plant finder is an excellent source of information for those who garden in climates similar to that of the garden.
2. I also find the USDA plants database a good source of information about native and naturalized plants (including which naturalized plants are not native, but invasive).
3. If you are interested in learning about a particular genus of plant, national societies devoted to that genus can be a wonderful resource. For example, the American Hemerocallis Society daylily database provides information about every daylily cultivar registered with the society.
4. Some plant nurseries have extensive information about plants in their online catalogs. Nurseries that specialize in particular types of plants can be particularly helpful. For example, Perennial Pleasures has excellent information about phlox for northern gardens. Be aware, however, that putting information up on a nursery’s website is sometimes a job assigned to relatively inexperienced workers, and mistakes do get made.
5. Some garden bloggers are recognized authorities about particular types of plants or particular climates, and their blogs can be excellent sources of information. For example, Noelle Johnson, who blogs at AZ Plant Lady, is a trained horticulturist and an expert on desert plants. Carolyn Walker at Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has excellent information and advice about (mostly) shade plants. If I were looking for information about succulents, I would certainly trust any information from Debra Lee Baldwin at Gardening Gone Wild. Beware, however, of blogs that claim to be providing expert advice but which provide no information about the author’s credentials.
6. Bloggers who are writing about their own experience with a particular plant can also provide helpful information. (This is what I was doing in my post on Amsonia.)  But beware of blog posts that are not written by experts and don’t seem to be based on the blogger’s own experience.

There is a lot of great plant information available on the internet – but not all of it is great, and gardeners need to be vigilant in separating the great from the not.