Puzzling referrals

Wednesday 25 February 2009 - Filed under Plants

A lot of people get the benefit of funny analytics about how people arrive at their site, they find that someone googled “is my grandpa a ninja?,” but not me. My analytics reveal exceptionally straight laced hard core gardening nerds like me. I guess as quirky as it gets is “shoes in closet,” which gets a surprising number of searches that leads people to an out of focus iPhone photo of my closet, and the occasional “sewing room.” My typical search terms, though, look like this.

• kalanchoe thyrsiflora
• rhus typhina tiger eyes
• choisya ternata aztec pearl
• sutherland gold elderberry
• pittosporum tobira

That part is not surprising. What does surprise me is that my highest hit flickr photos are a) pictures I questioned making public at all because they’re not good, but b) don’t seem like the kind of plants that would top the popularity charts.

My most popular, clockwise from top left below: 1) It was too sunny for a good picture in the case of the cutleaf staghorn sumac. 2) The mexican orange ‘aztec pearl’ picture is just a sorry small one in my yard that I just took for my own inventory. 3) My highest hit New Zealand Flax picture is completely out of focus, I don’t remember why I posted it. 4) Pittosporum tobira ‘Wheeler’s Dwarf’ is a fine little plant, but it gets a lot more action than I would expect for something so plain.

I see trends in popular plants, at least among my own sets, and every once in a while, something that has been long ignored will get a run and make a come from behind victory of sorts, and I find myself rooting for my favorites. Does that make my life sound sad? Instead of sports, I’m making imaginary games out of flickr stats. I am a lot of fun at parties. But, making a move and securing second place, a picture of the gorgeous Sambucus racemosa ‘Sutherland Gold.’ That’s a plant worth the attention. This one, the best I’ve ever seen in real life, sadly is not mine. This one appears to have been hard pruned, which produces the best leaves. I let mine grow into a shrub, and the leaves were small and unimpressive. It had grown very tree like with a single leader trunk. I fully intended to cut it to the ground in January, but forgot until I saw it starting to leaf out last weekend, and then cut it down. I may have killed it, but that’s pretty hard to do with elderberries in this region. Even if it doesn’t make it, it was worth the risk in the hopes that it grows up to be like this one.

2009-02-25  »  megan