Hard to say without knowing what the plant was, but likely a good fraction of the offsets are on their own roots now and the "mother plant" is nonexistent. These offsets are one of the ways they survive if the main trunk goes down. You may kill some of the plants on a root by spraying a petrochemical, likely not all. I'm not sure squirting with a little RoundUp and calling it good will work on this type of plant anyway. Likely will have to be a concerted effort of soaking a rag in RU and covering lvs with a black garbage bag and coming back in 2 weeks to hit the next batch. Not a solution for this forum, surely. Lastly, anything you spray will drift if there is a wind. I can't imagine why you would put something like muriatic acid near your soil but feel bad about RoundUp. If you want to go organic, you may very well be pulling for months this year, months next year, weeks the year after that. Are there actually children in Phoenix that can be hired to pull sprouts? Dan

Invasives generally get started slowly - one or two, then they grow and have seeds, then you have a dozen or so. Then those have seeds - eventually you reach a point and the population explodes. Chinese privet was not a problem in the southeast for many years and then it was everywhere!

I don't think it looks quite like a Lady fern (the stems look too sturdy), definitely seems more like a Dryopteris. Although Woodwardia virginica is widely distributed in Alabama - but it prefers wet swampy areas. One source I find helpful when considering naturally occurring plants is the USDA Plants Database. It provides some distribution maps to see if what you think it might be is even found in your area (Shelby County in this case). While not perfect, sometimes it can rule out certain things. I do find that certain ferns are very hard to identify and this one would be no exception as it resembles several different kinds. Here is a link that might be useful: Dryopteris ludoviciana distribution in Alabama for example

Well, I saw Chucky again today for the first time in a while. He was disguised as a large rock sitting on a table (OK, maybe it's time to update the bifocals). I thought that perhaps a meteorite had landed ever-so-gently on the patio table, so I went to investigate. I didn't realize it was him until I scared him away. Interesting that several of you mentioned that they like living under sheds, because that's precisely where Chucky ran when he broke out of his rock-ish state. No wonder Mowse the Cat is always trying to slink under that shed! Actually, Chucky didn't seem as large as he did when I saw him before, so maybe this time it was Chuckina, or a Chucklette. In any case, I still haven't seen any noticable havoc wreaked, so I guess he likes my weeds better than my planted stuff...or he's dining at the neighbors'. So far, I kinda like having him around.