Question for the Hive Mind: Unknown Weed

This plant had leaves similar to those of the strawberries it was growing among; I didn't realize it was something else until it had gotten noticeably taller than the strawberries, and started blooming. I suppose I don't actually have to know what it is, but I'm curious, and a bit of poking around online didn't help. Anyone know?

Question for the Hive Mind: Roadside Weeds / Wildflowers

The second and third of these are technically not roadside plants, but the first one is:

I don't recall ever seeing it before, but they're everywhere all of a sudden.

UPDATE: it's a Vernonia (ironweed), possibly V. baldwinii. Thanks to Claude and joeym.

The other two plants were in a heavily wooded park in Iowa City about a week ago. The first, I'm fairly sure, is some kind of Arisaema. I don't know if it's possible to narrow it down to a species from these pictures or not.

UPDATE: Everybody seems pretty convinced that this is Arisaema triphyllum (jack in the pulpit). Thanks to Ed Kramer, joeym, and anonymous.

The other plant from the park has flowers reminiscent of both chicory (Cichorium intybus) and meadow campion (Silene latifolia), but it's not either of those. Something related?

UPDATE: Looks like this is a Lactuca sp., possibly Lactuca floridana. Thanks to The Phytophactor and Review for their help.

Any guesses on any of these?

Question for the Hive Mind: Solanum sp.

I found these berries growing in an alley next to somebody's shed or garage or something last year at around this time (1 October) and thought they were sort of neat, so I took pictures, but then I didn't post the pictures because I didn't know what they were. I checked Wikipedia recently, and based on that, I'm pretty sure about the genus (Solanum), but there are quite a few possibilities for the species, including S. americanum, S. nigrum, and S. ptychanthum.


I realize that it would probably be easier to make an ID if there were a picture of the leaves too. (At the time, I figured I'd be easy to identify from the berries alone and didn't think I'd need anything more than that.) If it can't be determined from these photos, does anybody at least know which of the three species in question would be most abundant in Eastern Iowa?

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

I was taking the picture for the weed (prickly lettuce / Lactuca serriola? Sonchus asper?), but Sheba jumped in there as I was doing so. It's not a particularly good picture of either one of them, but she had a nice facial expression, I thought.

Questions for the Hive Mind: Assorted NOID Weeds

These are a few NOID plants I've seen recently: none of them felt substantial enough to hang an entire post on, but maybe five of them combined will feel like more of a post, is the theory. Holler in the comments if you know something, or even have a guess about a genus or family. No penalties for guessing wrong.

NOID Plant Number One.
Plant Number One was blooming in early September (the photo is from Sep. 3), and continued for a while afterward. When I first saw it, I thought it was some kind of weird yellow clover, because the flower heads had that same sort of shape and texture, but the flowers themselves are actually not clover-like at all. It's fairly common around here; I saw some in people's yards, and quite a few along the roadside in unmowed ditches and stuff. I didn't get a picture of the whole plant, unfortunately (I tried, but I had trouble getting decent pictures due to wind), so I'm hoping that someone can identify it based on the flowers alone.

UPDATE: Plant #1 has been pretty definitely established as a species of beggarticks (or bur-marigolds, or tickseeds), Bidens sp., though pinning down which one is difficult. I'm personally leaning toward B. tripartita, but B. radiata, B. frondosa, and B. tripartita are all strong candidates. Figuring out which, specifically, is complicated further by the fact that Google searches for Bidens turn up lots of stuff about the Vice-President.

Plant Number Two.
Plant Number Two feels incredibly familiar to me, like I ought to know what it is, but I looked for it on-line when I took these pictures (the date on this photo is Sep. 26), and whatever I'd thought it was (don't remember it now) was wrong. It's a vine, which at first glance sort of resembles a grape vine (and I've seen a lot of spots where it's growing alongside and intertwining with grape vines, actually), but the shape of the leaves, and the leaf margins, are wrong for that, plus the seed pods (fruits?) are really wrong:


It seems to be very shade-tolerant, too, compared to grapes; I've seen it in a completely wooded area, where it couldn't have gotten much, if any, direct sunlight. It doesn't seem to like disturbed land, roadsides and such: with a few exceptions, I've only seen it growing in spots that obviously hadn't been mowed or tended in any way.

Plant Number Two also looks like it's probably invasive, based on the size of some of the clumps I've seen.

UPDATE: #2 has been thoroughly identified as Sicyos angulatus, which goes by various cucumber-related names (burr-cucumber, oneseed burr cucumber, star cucumber). I was both right and wrong about it being invasive; it's apparently from North America originally, but they're invasive elsewhere.

Plant Number Three.
Plant Number Three suddenly appeared in the garden under a tomato plant; I first noticed it on Oct. 6, when I took this picture, but presumably it'd been growing for a while before that. I have no plans to eat it, but it looks like it might be edible, and we don't really have any idea what the previous owners of the house had planted in this garden two years ago; it could be a volunteer of a leafy green something or another. Or it could just be a regular weed, I suppose. I really have no idea.

UPDATE: #3 is apparently Oenothera biennis, the (inedible!) common evening primrose. Most of the photos that come up when you search for the species are of the flowers, and therefore not that useful to me, but I found a couple of the first-year foliage which were pretty obviously the plant in question.

Plant Number Four.
Plant Number Four's photo was taken on October 9, but it could have been taken at any time between April and October; these are pretty common, and they're especially common in the alley where I found this one. At first, I thought it was rhubarb -- it has the same big, broad leaves and low, rosette form, plus there's rhubarb growing further up the alley from this plant. But the leaves are different: thicker and more substantial than rhubarb, duller in texture, and rhubarb leaves get much bigger. Whatever it is, it seems to favor disturbed areas, it's not fussy about light, and it can handle really crappy soil: I see a lot of it growing in gravel, or right next to tree trunks.

UPDATE: Disappointingly, plant #4 turns out to be burdock, Arctium sp. (I have some reason to think it's probably A. lappa, but that's far from certain.) I was kind of fond of it, from the leaves.

Plant Number Five.
Plant Number Five is my favorite. I found it in a parking lot in Iowa City, growing straight out of the concrete. It's tiny: maybe four inches across, four inches tall? I could tell there were flowers, but couldn't make out any of the detail you see here with my naked eye.

Well, I wear glasses, and look out of both eyes, so I guess it's my casually-dressed eyes, to be accurate. Anyway.

I think it was on the north side of the building, and fairly close to the building, so probably not a lot of light. I've only ever seen this one plant, so I don't know what kind of habitats they might prefer. The picture was taken on Sep. 15. The leaves have weird, irregularly-spaced bumps on them that might be a pest of some kind, or might just be a natural bumpiness. No clue. I like it mostly because it comes close to being pretty. Doesn't quite make it, and you have to be down right next to it to see anything, but it feels to me like the plant is at least trying for pretty.

UPDATE: #5 is looking like Dyssodia papposa, or "fetid marigold." It's also native to North America. Apparently it smells bad, but I didn't notice anything at the time. Of course, there was also a lot of wind that day.

So that's the set. All the photos will open much larger in a separate window, if needed. Any guesses what I've found here? Thanks to Don, Lee, Garden Groans, 2 different Anonymouses, Errant, and Paul for their help.

Pretty pictures: Pink

Today we have various thoughts from the plant kingdom about the idea of "pink." In a couple cases, it's maybe more my questionable judgment, and the plant was actually thinking of "purple," but whatever. I had a whole bunch of pictures that I needed to do something with, having just sifted through almost the whole photo backlog, and this sort of post is a really efficient way of getting through a lot of photos in a hurry, even if they're not seasonally-appropriate, as some of these aren't.

Asclepias syriaca flowers in extreme close-up. Some insect life visible if you look closely and/or open the photo full-size in a new window.

Polygonum persicaria. I don't think anybody actually likes this plant, but it's awfully familiar, at least. And technically pink, so it counts.

Lamium NOID. Shortly after taking this picture, I was looked at suspiciously by two women talking to one another over their backyards' fence. I expect that the suspicious looks happen all the time, but I'm not normally in a position to see them, so it was noteworthy.

Cyclamen persicum NOID. I don't see the frilly-edged Cyclamens for sale very often. Not that I necessarily want one. I just think it's interesting what is and isn't popular.

Torenia 'Catalina Pink.' This is arguably more purple than pink, but the tag said it was pink.

Ipomoea NOID. If loving morning glories is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Zinnia 'Profusion Cherry.' I had sort of intended to get some Zinnias this year, or at least some Zinnia seeds. As with all my other outdoor-related plans, that didn't work out.

Cyclamen NOID. This is probably my favorite photo from the batch.

Portulaca grandiflora, second-generation flower. These have not yet taken off like I'd hoped, but considering how late I started them, I suppose I can't be too disappointed. I should still be able to collect enough seeds to try again next year.

Weigela NOID. Came with the house. The husband and I are both kinda meh about it, but it'd be a lot of work to take it out, and neither of us have any ideas for something we'd rather see in that spot, so it stays.

Hibiscus moscheutos 'Dave Fleming,' at the ex-job. I've seen hardy Hibiscus varieties I covet, but this isn't one of them. It's big and bright enough that I find it sort of alarming. Not the sort of Hibiscus you want to run into, walking around the back yard at night.

Unfinished business: ferny-carroty NOID weed revisited

So, a couple months ago, on April 1, I posted a question for the hive mind regarding this plant:


Well, they've grown a lot since then, and I think we need to revisit the ID, because it looks decidedly unlike either of the guesses I got at the time (which were tansy, Tanacetum vulgare, and Queen Anne's lace, Daucus carota).

I'm thinking poison hemlock, Conium maculatum, maybe?

Close-up on the flower, with a bonus housefly. (The fly actually kind of makes the picture, for me; I especially like it in full-size view. In case you're wondering, the fly didn't leave because it was a cold day. I'm guessing it didn't have the energy.)

Considerably less-great picture of a large stand of whatever they are; the tallest ones were probably about 7-8 feet (2.1-2.4m) tall; there are at least a couple spots like this in town, where whatever they are is the dominant form of plant life.

A somewhat better picture of a lone plant, showing the habit as well as I can show it.

If it is hemlock, then I'm a little unsettled. I'm envisioning some kind of Johnny Hemlockseed, walking barefoot around the periphery of town with his little bag of hemlock seeds at his side, scattering the seeds in the town's various ditches and around the edges of the cornfields, squirrels and birds chittering happily alongside.

It's especially weird because I can't recall ever seeing this anywhere else, and a lot of the plants I can remember seeing elsewhere are either not here, or are here in very tiny and isolated patches. Like, if there's mullein (Verbascum thapsus) within the city limits, I haven't found it yet. Likewise for deervetch (Lotus corniculatus), cow vetch (Vicia cracca) and crown vetch (Securigera varia), all three of which are up and down the sides of the road everywhere else. On the other hand, we have alfalfa (Medicago sativa) growing in the ditches and uncultivated areas, here and there, which I haven't seen much of anywhere else. It had not previously occurred to me that weed populations might be so . . . specific, I guess, to different towns.

But I digress. Do we think hemlock? Are there other suggestions?

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Not a particularly interesting week for Sheba or Nina. Nina never has interesting weeks, as far as I can tell (though it's not like she has especially boring ones, either: I imagine Nina's inner emotional life is very, you know, zen), and the most notable event to happen to Sheba involved her slipping backwards out of her harness while I was taking pictures of weeds along the side of the street, which got exciting mainly because a van happened to be coming down the street at the same time.

She didn't actually go anywhere, and the driver stopped anyway so she wouldn't have been hit even if she had, but I didn't know, while it was all happening, that she wasn't going to get hurt. Also, in the process of trying to get her under control, the camera slipped out of my hand, also into the path of the oncoming van, and for a few seconds there I was just positive that either Sheba would be killed, the camera would be ruined, or both. In the end, though, Sheba was fine, the camera wasn't run over or even detectably scratched by the fall, and the plant turned out not to have been a weed at all, but instead some NOID garden escapee. Oh well. It's pretty regardless:

(The one on the side of the road)

(Close-up of same)

(A bunch of them that I, a couple days later, discovered planted along someone's house)

(Close-up of above)

(UPDATE: Thank-you to Don, for identifying the plant as Campanula glomerata, in the comments.)

But you're here for the Sheba picture, right? Okay. This is probably the best Sheba picture to date, because she's actually in focus, not blurry with motion, and looking more or less at the camera.


It was taken maybe six weeks ago, give or take, when she and I were sitting in the back of the car after she'd gotten a bath. (It was a coldish day, and I was hoping the heat of the back of the car would dry her off faster. Didn't really work, but it was still fun -- for me, anyway.)

Weeds of Interest

These aren't quite roadside flowers, in that I didn't take the pictures along the sides of roads, but the spirit is there, because they're weedy and yet also sort of pretty, or at least interesting. It's unclear whether or not there will be roadside flower pictures this summer, because until the car's air conditioning is fixed or it's an unseasonably cool day, I don't see myself going anywhere I don't absolutely need to go.

But anyway. I am like 99% sure that this first one is a Euphorbia, but I can't figure out which Euphorbia. At first I thought it was the invasive leafy spurge, E. esula, but the more I looked at pictures of E. esula on-line, the more the bracts on this plant seemed a little too rounded, and the flowers too dense. Also I saw some in someone's yard that looked like they could have been planted there deliberately (it was kind of ambiguous; they were in a couple spots around the trunk of a maple tree, which could have been deliberately placed to look natural or naturally placed in a way that happened to look planned). So then I was no longer sure. In any case, they were all blooming in April at some point, and although these particular plants have since all been mowed down, I think they're kind of neat.

The first two photos are a couple weeks before the last three, which is why they look different. I'm pretty sure they're the same plants.







I've been noticing this second plant for years, without having any idea what it was, and I'd actually taken a picture of it recently to post here at PATSP so I could find out. And then a few days ago, I was reading something on-line that was completely unrelated to Iowa weeds (a large collection of information about odors used in perfumery, particularly those from plant sources, and actual structures of the specific chemicals responsible for the various odors, which is information nobody ever includes, so I was in chem nerd heaven -- do check it out), I ran into a picture and mention of something called wild chamomile, which looked just like the plant I'd been noticing for years but had never been able to identify.

Turns out it's Matricaria discoidea.


Matricaria is unusual in a number of interesting ways: first, it's one of those plants that is "native" to North America but may not be native to North America. It has historically been found mainly in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and in Northeast Asia, but there is reason to think that it may have been brought over from Asia when humans crossed the Bering Strait and colonized the Americas, between 16,000 and 13,000 years ago, and may not actually be native to North America at all, in the long-term sense. (As we have seen, whether something is "native" to a given area or not depends to some degree on the time frame you're interested in.)


If the pre-Native Americans brought it with them, it was probably deliberate: it has been used medicinally for a number of different things (fever, postpartum anemia, infection, stomach upset), and the plant is also edible. Flowerheads have a pineapple / chamomile odor when crushed, which is responsible for the common name of "pineapple weed."


It's also noteworthy for being a successful invasive in Europe, though I don't get the impression that it's a very serious problem -- Matricaria is what is called a "ruderal" species, which means that it's one of the first species to colonize recently disturbed lands. Once other species begin to grow in the area, Matricaria is crowded out and more or less disappears. (Around here, I mostly see it growing in gravel driveways or alleys, where little else will.)


When I found out what it was, I of course had to check the smell out for myself. I can see where the "pineapple" part of the description comes from, but it's a very different type of pineapple smell than something like Salvia elegans. I'm not sure I would have come up with "pineapple" as a descriptive word if I hadn't already known it was called pineapple weed. I haven't been willing to try tasting it yet, partly because some sites warn that the flower heads can be really bitter, and partly because I have no way of knowing what's been sprayed on the plants I find around town.

I always did like the plant, but having a name for it and knowing more about where it comes from makes me like it a lot better.

Pretty pictures: Road trip / September roadside flowers

The flower pictures in this post are from Saturday, September 12, and were taken either in Fairfield, Iowa, or along the gravel roads between Fairfield and Richland. This was supposed to be an errand-running kind of trip, but both the husband and I lived in the area for substantial parts of our lives, and the places we intended to go were mostly closed, so little erranding was achieved.


However, being unable to do what we came to do, and having gone so far to do it, we tried to make the best of it by driving around the area a bit. For example, we visited the "American Gothic" house in Eldon, IA. You can't go in the house, but you can take pictures of the outside. They also have a small museum full of "American Gothic"-related items. Mostly these are parodies, though there was a tiny bit of stuff in there which might come up if and when I do a Pelargonium x hortorum profile, and they also had a print of a lesser-known Grant Wood painting of a woman with a Sansevieria:


They also have a gift shop (naturally) and a staff of two really bored, sort of aggressively friendly people who will descend on you like locusts if you drive up and talk your ear off with speeches about the house and Grant Wood and the people in the painting (Wood's sister and dentist¹) and how many visitors the center has had since they opened and how long ago that was, and so on and so forth until you just want to get away. They apparently have the whole thing completely memorized, though, so you can't interrupt them; you just have to kind of let the tape run until it's over, and then they'll let you look around.

If you're interested, they also have a prop pitchfork on the premises for anyone who wants to try to recreate the painting. The husband and I did try (without the pitchfork: we felt silly enough as it was), though getting the perspective remotely right is nearly impossible. One of the staffers offered to take our picture, and we let him, but he stood so far away from us that we're barely even visible in the picture: it's like 75% house and 25% us, which I suspect reflects our relative importance in the staffer's eyes. So I advise anyone who's planning to try this to bring your own photographer, ideally someone slightly shorter than whoever is going to be in the picture, and for the love of God have them stand close.

We also drove around a little bit in Ottumwa, IA, (pronounced: uh-TUM-wuh) though even the parts of Ottumwa that don't smell like assorted pig fluids are kind of unpleasant (lots of tattoo parlors, strip clubs, pawn shops, that sort of thing), and the pig-fluid stench made the husband nauseous for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. One feels bad for Ottumwa, and Ottumwans: there are still some people there who are trying very hard to make it pleasant, but they are failing. I saw evidence of gardening, for example, and a few brave souls were trying to operate restaurants downwind of the Cargill Meat Solutions plant (translation: slaughterhouse).² But it's really kind of a lost cause. And no, I didn't take any pictures.³

But anyway. Flowers.

From what I'm able to see from the road, there are exactly five plants blooming right now in East-Central and Southeast Iowa. One of them, Canadian thistle, I didn't get pictures of, because although the flowers are quite lovely, the plants are ugly, and dangerous to stand close to, and distributed unevenly. Another, Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota), I've taken pictures of before, and the few flowers that are left this time of year aren't very pretty, so I didn't feel compelled to do that again.

Which leaves three.

I've posted pictures of goldenrod (Solidago spp.) before, but it's more or less unavoidable out in the country now, so I'm going to again. It's a good thing it doesn't actually cause hay fever (that would be ragweed, which is also blooming now), because it is everyfuckingwhere right now. I mean, I like it, but that just makes me lucky, because you can't get away from it.


Then the asters are beginning to bloom now as well, here and there. My best guess for an ID would be Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, but I don't really know. Some kind of Symphyotrichum would seem likely, in any case.


The real star at the moment, though, are the Heliopsis, though. They've been blooming their little heads off for at least a month already, but like the goldenrod, they are everywhere, and they also manage to be even brighter and more noticeable than the goldenrod.


It's stuff like this that makes me think I must have been an extraordinarily dull and unobservant child: surely if this was going on along the side of the road, I would remember seeing it?


And there are entire fields of the stuff, here and there. All the uncultivated land seems to be claimed by either the Heliopsis or the Solidago right now. Though the Solidago I actually remember seeing, as a kid.


I suppose it could be worse. No doubt there are people who have lived their entire lives in Iowa without yet noticing the Heliopsis.


-

¹ They're apparently not meant to be a couple, though everyone interprets the painting that way, which is interesting, considering how the woman is clearly a good thirty years younger than the man. Wood's sister was apparently kind of mortified by this.
² I find the name "Cargill Meat Solutions" darkly hilarious, as it implies the existence, somewhere, of a "Cargill Meat Problems" plant.
³ You're welcome.