Requests for Plant ID's

When I tried to access the Plant ID forum a message came up that due to the volume it had been closed to non subscribers. So please try and help the new gardeners who have not decided to become subscribers yet and not refer them to that site. Sometimes it makes the newbies feel unwelcome, which I am sure is not intended. With all the willing help that usually is given it may encourage a newbie to become a subscriber.

I have been 'forbidden' to become a subscriber at this time, the family told me that I am difficult enought to buy presents for as I always say there is nothing I need, so they like to get me subscriptions for sites or magazines that I will actually use. Gee it is a long time until Christmas, not sure I can hold out that long.

I don't know why you weren't able to get in, but there are other non-subscribers who have posted on there as recently as 20 minutes ago so unless it's been changed in the last 20 minutes I think whatever you ran into was a temporary glitch. I noticed that the whole site was a bit pokey a little while ago so maybe there was some temporary server overload or something.

I should also add that fairly recently, the admins were trying to encourage people to post their ID's in the ID forum instead of all over the place in other forums, so I'd be surprised if they made the ID forum subscriber only.

And just to make extra sure I'm not steering you wrong, I just logged out and went to the Plant ID forum and I can read all the posts in all the threads, vs the forums that are subscribers only all you can read is the first post in a thread. So I'm sure either you accidentally went into the wrong forum, or it was a temporary glitch.

Sorry, guess it is the search feature that is for subscribers only. I had checked the list of forums but missed the Plant and Tree Identification one, and I thought my new glasses were working great! Eventually found the right one now from a post from you,ecrane3, in another place, and have marked it as one to watch. Thank you all for steering me to the right place. Of course the plant or weed I wanted identified, from a friend of my daughter, has been discarded so can't photograph it now.

I guess maybe you were looking in the Plant Files database rather than the ID forum? You can use the general and specific search features there (but not the advanced one), although there are limits on how many searches you can do per day so if you'd already looked up some things maybe that's why you got that message.

Now that you know where the ID forum is, you could try posting there anyway with a description of what your plant/weed looked like, I've been really surprised when people are sometimes able to ID things based on a fairly minimal description!

PS You can buy yourself a subscription for just a few months, that way you can still enjoy all the stuff around here and then the family can buy you a full year's subscription for Christmas!