Sorry, but I can barely tell it's a plant from that picture.

brandon7 has a point. But mop head Hydrangeas would be that general shape and colour at this time of year. Can I discern some brown flower heads on there?

Sure looks like a mophead Hydrangea to me.

Sara, are you able to see something the rest of us can't? Floral's deductions seemed reasonable, but you seem awful sure for nothing but the picture I come up with when clicking on the link! Am I missing another link or something?

You can see enough of the general aspect for that to be a good guess.

'looks like' is the operative term! That would be my working hypothesis. With that kind of photo a guess is as good as we can get and I think that Floral went right there.

I think Flora is right also.
Mophead hydrangeas have that 'look' this time of year. I have about 25 hydrangeas, mostly lacecaps, but a few mopheads. That 'look' is the same as if I had my glasses off looking at one far away.
Mike

These kinds of posts remind me of Name That Tune, except with plants. I can ID that plant with 10 pixels..... I'd be terrible on Name That Tune, but would rather try that than trying to positively ID the plants in some of the pictures that get posted on GardenWeb.

As I said earlier, I completely followed and agreed with floral's reasoning, but wondered, because of the way the formandfoliage's post was worded, if there was something that would result in more certainty than that which floral originally stated.

There are different ways of identifying plants. I remember doing both close up ID of trees (vascular bundle scars, buds, etc) and far-off ID of winter trees (deciduous). If you do it enough you get to where the far-off aspect is as clear to you as the close-up, especially with some plants. You are simply using different characteristics to determine your ID. Once again, all I said was 'looks like'. Don't know why that sounds so certain. I would use that as my working hypothesis and then attempt to test it if at all possible.

Sara

ps and Mike that analogy of 'without my glasses' is a good way to think of it!

It was a Mophead hydrangea. Thank you everyone for responding. I was shocked to discover yesterday that the shrub was gone.

It was dug up, and either tossed out or transplanted elsewhere.

weird thread