For foliage, overdraw is far more performance demanding than adding polygons. By all means, add polygons if you can reduce the empty areas on a polygon where there is no vegetation texture being drawn. Overlapping planes with alpha'd textures also increases overdraw, so keep that in consideration as well.
looks sweet :) I would round of the harsh angle where the leaf connects to the stems, it breaks the illusion a little. wouldnt worry about spending those extra polygons, in a game situation this would rely on LOD quite heavily for performance and overdraw is usualy the bad guy anyways. keep em comming!
indeed, reducing overdraw is far more important than polycount when it comes to vegetation, overdraw is a bitch for performance. so some extra verts to minimize empty space is the way to go, keep the flowers as they are. looking sweet for the first tree! I think it is too dense though, leave some air in between branches-…