I find that this Cactiguide.com site is a good one to get started looking for something on.. Half way down the page it has a "Identifying by cactus habit" , and then it is nose to the grindstone checking things out till you find what you are looking for. One can also do it by family. I do not always find their picture spot on because their is a lot of variation with in the pictures. I will then take a name and google it, go to the images and search further. This is often very boring and tedious if you are looking for immediate gratification. two days ago, I was looking for a astragalus species (3 - 4thousand in the astragalus family ) and all I had was a speckled seed pod and a location. No picture of the plant till afterwards . It took me about 6 hours but I got it . I did that differently. I went to the LBJ wildflower site and went through their 6 pages of astragalus in their database and looked for ones that their description mentioned New Mexico, and then went to the Gov. database linked on their page and it has map of the ranges (since I knew where it was collected) and the map can zero in to county distributions. If the right county or one close by was mentioned, I then googled images (also linked on the LBJ site) of that species to see if they had photos of the seed pod. I was lucky that it was a very distinctive seed pod. I did this with all the species that were from central New Mexico. I think there were over 20-30. It was Astragalus lentiginosus douglas ex hooker var diphysis. I sent the info to the woman who gave me the seed (NOT the woman who collected it). She sent me a photo of the plant after the fact that she got from the collector and I was right! I really felt I deserved a pat on my back. I was then able to find a photo of a population a couple miles from the collectors house and it was an exact match. I sent the info to the collector. It was a hard ID but it sure feels good to do it right. Keep your eye out for different Databases. You will get the hang of it if you just try to do a bit of detective work. Here is a link that might be useful: Cactiguide.com habit search

Ken, they aren't moths, they are skippers. ==>> i kinda figured i was making improper overly broad suggestions.. but i just wanted you guys to talk about them.. rather than just throwing out names.. figuring maybe i might actually learn something... the jury is still out on that..lol.. ken

It is clearly not a evergreen so not a daphne. And the leaves have a slight serration as well. I am not at all convinced of the hydrangea suggestion. There are very few variegated cultivars and they tend not to bloom profusely even in very hydrangea conducive climates....and zone 5/6 is not one of them. Also the variegation is not consistent with those I have seen. They have much more of a distinct, defined border.

We haven't got enough info to id the nearby tree. Two disembodied leaves with no scale and no pictures of twigs, bark or the whole tree aren't sufficient. If we could have more pictures of the tree and also more pictures of the seedlings we might stand a chance of naming both. Also can you pull up a seedling and see if it has a seed or fruit on the bottom?