agree with carol from the other forum, some skullcap, maybe scutellaria serrata. check out the images at the link below. it is very showy! Here is a link that might be useful: alabama plants

Oh boy!! Well, at this point I'm concentrating mainly on getting the garlic mustard out and only pulling others when they're right in with the GM. Hopefully the 2nd isn't as prolific as the GM, or I'll be in another world of hurt next year! I'm still dealing with the remnants of Jerusalem artichoke as well! Yeesh! OH BTW - could #1 maybe be an Actaea? I'm really hoping not to have to pull it - I've got a bit of it in there and it's actually kind of pretty in a group - I'm gonna keep an eye on it, and see if it blooms and what they look like.

Just wondering if it's an interesting native plant or something that will take over if I leave it alone. It's both.

When you pull one of these weeds, if the roots smells like carrot, it is Queen Anne's Lace. If the plant is hemlock, it will have a replusive musty smell sometimes described as smelling like a mouse. What does a mouse smell like? Normally, but I will not say always because there are some different species of QAL and they don't all look the same, the QAL has tiny hairs on the stems. The stems can be solid green or solid green with teeny tiny red pinstripes. The poisonous hemlock has some purple splotches on its stems. Some QAL, but not all, have a dark flower, variously described in different sources as red, maroon, black or purple, in the center of each flower cluster, but this can be iffy and inconsistent and is not necessarily a reliable indicator. The species of QAL that grows wild at our place never ever has had the oddly colored flower, only the creamy white ones. If you have the QAL, when the plants go to seed (don't let them!), the seed heads curl inward on themselves forming something that looks a little like a bird nest. Also, the poisonous hemlock usually needs wet ground to grow but QAL can grow in wet or dry ground. And, poisonous hemlock gets taller and more spread out, though the QAL flower heads will spread out a lot and have less tight flowerheads as the seeds mature, so the flower spread isn't always reliable.