Thursday, June 9, 2011

Help with another weed?

We have a bed of species daylilies against a shed, and each year a very pretty vine grows up at the back of the bed.  It's a perennial weed, with several vines coming up; I usually just pull, and they break off below the level of the lily leaves.  One year I let it grow, thinking it might flower.  I suppose it did flower, but it wasn't anything I noticed --however, really large seed pods formed.  They were kind of green and lumpy, somewhat spherical.  I was worried about it spreading, so I yanked the vines at that point.

It's back again, and I took a couple of pictures of it.  I'm wondering if anyone can tell what it is from these photos?  This first one is closer, showing the shape of the leaves.  The second photo shows a growing tip.  It has quite a thick stem, and those pretty little curly things.  Does it look familiar to anyone?



2 comments:

  1. When I went through the Master Gardeners' training last year, I kept hoping we would have a session on identifying weeds, but unfortunately we didn't. We certainly have enough variety in weeds here that I'd like to know, too, what I'm pulling out. I have no clue what this is, Renee, sorry; but if you've seen it grow in past years, at least you know it's not going to bloom. Last year I let some plants grow until they were nearly 6 feet tall, not sure of what they were. Then my Dad identified them as "Mare's Tail," a very common weed. I promptly hacked them all down:)

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  2. I am no help, either. I looked at your previous weed, too, and didn't know what it was. When we first moved here, there was a vine that looks similar to yours growing on the chain link fence between our yard and the next door neighbor's. She told me to pull it out because it's a bad weed. I decided to see what it was going to do. I'm thinking it had small white flowers, and it got a pod, too. I decided the neighbor was right, and pulled it out.

    You asked if the other milkweeds are invasive like the common one. They aren't here in zone 5, so they probably wouldn't be in your zone 4, either. I normally deadhead them so they don't go to seed, but didn't do that for one of the butterfly milkweeds. I don't seem to have any seedlings around. The swamp milkweeds have multiple stems, and the clumps may get larger, but they don't venture away from the plants like common milkweed. I have been pulling some of those up so they can't take over the flower bed.

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