Could be polygonum, not a tree or even shrub really. More of an herbaceous plant, but having, as you mention, quite fibrous stems. It is very agressive, spreading by rhizomes-underground horizontal stems. Roundup will kill it, but it will take several applications, as new stems will continue to appear in new places for a while even after spraying. It sounds like you have little if any desireable vegetation in the way, which will make spraying it easier. There probably is another herbicide that will work faster, but Roundup will get it eventually, and is of very low hazard to the applicator and others who will use the area. +oM

Hi, It looks to me like the small leaves in the center of the big plant are the crown, not another sucker. Many growers don't like the self-watering pots, but my violets love them. I guess I'm lucky to buy them from a vendor that makes the pots right and they function perfectly. The catch is that you have to add extra perlite and vermiculite to the standard peat mix recipie. Peat by itself holds too much water and the roots can drown and rot in a self-watering pot. Sounds like what happened to your plant. If you change to a regular plastic pot, remove some of the older leaves, bury the "neck" and use the common 1/3 peat, 1/3 perlite, and 1/3 vermiculite mix the roots may be able to grow better. New ones will form from the neck area also, and over time the roots should anchor the plant so it isn't wobbly. It looks like your plant could benefit from a little more light too (when the leaves stand up instead of lying flat the cause is usually too little light). Good luck - I think it's great that you have a nice new baby to raise!

If this is the same plant, a lady in my violet club has Gillian. She brought it to a meeting for show and tell. It was a beautiful plant with large white flowers and she said it lives on a side table under a regular reading lamp (think beside her sofa) and she said it hasn't stopped blooming in months. She had rooted babies from a leaf and gave me one. Mine is a small plant that hasn't yet bloomed but it has not had suckers either. I do have some mini plants that all they seem to do is sucker and I don't get much bloom from them...as they are small, it is hard to keep up with cutting the suckers off. Also recently I bought an evergrace at Lowes, it was loaded with bloom and I got 5 good sized suckers from it that I potted up for plants and several more that were just small and I tossed in trash. Maybe it being a space violet? I think some variety plants just sucker more than others and the suckers take the strengh of the plant to grow so less energy goes to blooming. It does take a little time for a sucker to root and grow enough to bloom. Hope it works out for you. tish

My Marie Bugnet doesn't sucker but Frau Dagmar is a suckering fool. She suckers out into the lawn and comes up in cracks in our asphalt street. I dug up 15 from one bush this year and could do it again. Yes Henry Hudson does too but not quite as bad. The pavement series of rugosas sucker quite a bit also. Would I plant them as a hedge across the front of my yard? No!!! Frau Dagmar is taller than Marie in my yard when mature. It would look good the first year but soon you'd be fighting the suckers. The first thing I'd do would be to prepare the beds for next spring's planting. Unless you're going to remove those trees that shade the rest of your roses, I'd move them to the new beds so they at least get morning sunlight. Otherwise, except for the few that do get sunlight, you're going to lose the rest to shade or ground ivy. If kept deadheaded and pruned they should fill out and would make a nice show from the street. Have you raised them out of the holes yet?