identify plant?

Can anyone identify this plant?

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planted a Japanese Maple, and out of the blue this started to quikcly grow underneath it.

Reply to
alice
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I don't know, but those are interesting leaves. Where do you live? If that's a native plant, it might help others to know your location.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

It's one of the polygonum/persicaria family, a fast growing weed :-)

Janet.

Reply to
Janet Baraclough

So it is a weed? Meaning it grows fast and is usually undesireable and potentially takes away from other plants around it?

Reply to
alice

Any plant you don't want in a certain place is a weed. That could mean dandelions, or it could mean the Four O'Clocks you intentionally planted two years ago, whose fat seeds are still sprouting all over the place.

Your next step would be to do a google search using the words Janet provided, and see if you can get a more accurate ID on the plant. You will need to know where you live, since the plant MIGHT be particular only to certain region. Your city and state should be on your driver's license, or anything you get in the mail.

The reason to research it further is that some "weeds" are useful. So, you need to read more about its habits.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

If you like it, it's not a weed. You may want to see how it behaves and if it is potentially invasive, which it is not in my USDA Zone 8b, but is definitely perennial. I love mine, but I have a cultivar. Don't know which at the moment, but the foliage of mine is much darker purple with darker center splotches with picotee on the edges of creamy color.

I love it mixed in with Japanese ferns.

Reply to
jangchub

The message from alice contains these words:

I think that's a bit unfair to weeds :-) They aren't all fast or huge, some of them are designed to be part of a mixed population of plants and don't do much harm to others (think of meadows, and woodlands, or hedges piled with with glorious honeysuckle) . Some of them are attractive plants; I'm glad to have clover, daisies and speedwell in my lawn although others consider them weeds. I have two varieties of persicaria growing in my garden which I nurture, propagate, and pass on to others. Last week when the garden was open for charity, one of the visitors said my persicaria "Red Dragon" is an invasive thug and i should get rid of it before it took over. She was horrified to hear that I love it. The other , whose name I forget, is very close to the wild version, pink flower spikes and heartshaped leaves, and grows happily in my bog garden.

If you like your plant where it is, keep it...at least until you find something you like better.

Janet

Reply to
Janet Baraclough

It appears to be Pennsylvania Smartweed.

Reply to
beecrofter

beecrofter expounded:

Ah, I thought it was a smartweed, I got loads of it in horse manure a few years ago. Polygonum pensylvanicum. Nothing I'd want in my garden, at least in the quantities it usually arrives in!

Reply to
Ann

How fortunate

My free gift with horse nanure was bindweed and dodder.

Reply to
beecrofter

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