Motherwort is a common sight at old homesteads and farms - like my place which was a farm for much of its 160 years. As non-native herbs, I have motherwort, catnip, burdock, teasel, self-heal, yellow dock, mullein, toadflax, elecampane, mugwort, dandelion, ground ivy, plantain, and more that grow here with reckless abandon. The odd one missing, stinging nettle. Most old places around here have that one growing wild too but not my place. I had to add it. Old places in this part of the country easily range in the 100-200 year old category - a time people definitely brought along and planted whatever they needed. Some of it is still here. New herbs this season that I've started? Hmmmm...... nothing new. But my wintersowing of maralroot was my biggest success. I think everyone of the seeds sprouted. (I already had maralroot in the gardens but wanted more.) The grecian foxglove has done well. Been blooming like crazy. The roseroot and eastern prickly pear coming along and getting bigger. My fringetree (I'm at it's Northern range) is finally putting on size. It's been a pee wee for 5 years and I'm pretty happy that it has finally gotten to be around 3' tall. My oodles of marshmallow ("Erfurter" grown from seed years ago) is uber vigorous. The gasplants were stunning this season. And I started a bunch more skullcap with wintersowing. It's been loving the monsoons we've been having here. My native woodland garden has been doing well - bloodroot was quite vigorous this season. Black and blue cohosh making up for the hard and dry time last season. The twinleaf, meadow rue, mayapple, spikenard, jack-in-the-pulpit, trillium (multiple kinds), wild geranium, solomons' seal, etc. all doing well. Reminds me, I've had to look for the goldenseal. It has been growing well but last year's drought (a tough one for a normally moist part of the country) killed off or damage many plants. About half of my elderberries died last summer but I have some young new plants to add come fall. (I sometimes coddle the bareroot plants I get in pots for the summer and plant them come fall.) And to the OP, certainly visit us on the Herbs forum. Most people talk about culinary herbs but discussions about all kinds of herbs are welcome. The forum is pretty active and cordial. Hope to see you there! FataMorgana

No, it's the only one like it around, except for all the darn sprouts. The other tree you see in the photo is a Chinaberry in the neighbor's yard. There are several of those on the hillside and they're blooming right now. Definitely not a pecan, hackberry, live oak, red oak, cedar elm, redbud, sycamore, cottonwood, etc. I'm pretty familiar with most of the native varieties. This looks pretty exotic to me! And STILL has me stumped darn it! I give up! I'll call it my exotic umbrella chinese-pepper sumac!

Sorry about the photo not showing, I don't know what's wrong with it. Thanks for your ID Razorback. I think you are correct but the odd thing is that this particular plant appears more like the British versions I see online than the North American versions. The British version seems to have more semetrical leaflets which form the shape of a 5 pointed star, but in all the North American versions, the leaflets closest to the stem seem to be much smaller than the other 3 leaflets. I've opened a photobucket account to post the picture again: Let's see if that works for us... Barb Southern Ontario, CANADA zone 6a

Oh my! Thank you all so much for the time and the photos and the help! Sooo helpful! I went back and did a Hosta Library comparison of Elegans vs. Big Daddy, and I think Big Daddy is the winner. All but the second photo of Blue Daddy look like my plants. It would make perfect sense, too, since Big Daddy was widely available around here when these were planted, and they seem bluer and more corrugated/cupped than most of the Elegans I've seen. Most of the Hosta Library photos look exactly like what I have in my garden... the flatter overall shape, the leaf cupping, the corrugation, the leaf shape. Any difference in the Elegans vs. Blue Daddy flowers...color, size, timing? To be clear, I'm not sure when these (#1) were planted or what size they were when they were put in the ground. The previous owners did it, then we moved them and gave them better soil when we relandscaped the place two years ago. I'm guesstimating their age at 5-6 years, based on when we guess they put their other landscaping in. I'm not sure what size the plants were when they planted them. I do think #1 is Frances Williams. (This is the one that I planted/potted last year, taking a very large chunk from a mature hosta.) Since posting, four more leaves have developed that edge burn. I tucked it even further into the shade, but I'm still noticing the burn. Colors-wise, they look more like your photos of OBL, frogged. With the burn, though, that's basically telling me they're FW, right? Goodness, though.... if #2 is Big Daddy, I may have to rethink where I have them. I didn't realize they would get quite that big. I'll have to put some thought into it, because right now I have a set of three off each side of our walkway-- the main plants you see as you walk toward our house. I feel really foolish not looking into whether they were Big Daddy. Some time ago someone local said Big Daddy was difficult to grow and took forever to mature, so I figured there was no way the former owners (not gardeners at all) would have had eight happy Big Daddy hostas. Heck, *I* even had a young Big Daddy and gave it away because it seemed to be taking forever to do anything. And josephine... your Hadspen Blue is *beautiful*. Someone recently gave me Blue Jay, and I'm trying to figure out where to put it in the landscape so I can see it often and appreciate the color... how do Hadspen and Blue Jay compare, blue-wise? I love that color.