Uninvited pics

No, I don't want your pics of unknown plants in my email.

This week two separate strangers asked (over the contact form) if they could send me pics of plants to ID.

No.

Definitely not.

One of the reasons I haven't put my email address anywhere on my site is to stop complete strangers from sending me their uninvited pics. If I get a couple MB in my email I want it to be worthwhile, not oversized unknowns.

This is not an idle rejection; this is experience talking.

I've been on the net for 10+ years. I've deleted oodles and doodles of uninvited pics which completely blocked my inbox. It started back in the days when I still was on a dialup account, paying by the online minute, and it continued up to the week I deleted the last email address off my site.

I've been there, done that, got the T.

I've seen dozens of such plant pics. Most
- are unsharp
- are underexposed
- are overexposed
- are of irrelevant details
- don't show relevant plant parts
- are of plants I couldn't possibly be able to ID, seeing that they're from the middle of Australia (where I've never been), from the middle of the jungle (okay, I've been to the Amazonas, but let's just consider species diversity for a minute -- or no, let's consider that for a couple years instead, seeing that we're talking Amazonas.), or from other impossible places.
- or all of the above.

So I put up a strictly text-based contact form. (Of course, part of that was spammers and viruses, but uninvited pics did play a part in that decision.)

You can rest assured that I'm never ever going to give you my email address so you can send me your plant pics to ID.

If you have an unknown plant post pics of it to a website and invite comments on a relevant mailing list or newsgroup.
Or take your pics, or parts of the plant in question, to the botany dept at your local university.

But don't ask me.

Thank you for your consideration.