i think a huge number of people started out learning from SoM etc; particularly people who read tsugumo when they began.
Well, that is exactly who I was reading when I first started learning! When he says things like "Now let's talk Secret of Mana 3, which is quite possibly the most beautiful game I've ever seen" A beginner like me thinks "hmmm, I wonder what it was that they did so well?"
Which is why, Gil, the flowers look very similar as they were literally the second tile I made. I was heavily under the influence of the tutorials at the time, trying to figure out just how an organic shape was pulled off using pixels. As Yosh64 stated before, they still don't work that well, and all the better reason to revise the vegetation.
As I continue to learn more, I hope my methods will help remove the similarities that exist between this and the other works that aided in teaching me the basics.