Birds love it but it will seed around. The young leaves are cooked the same as turnip greens, sometimes by themselves , sometimes mixed with turnip greens. Poke weed is said to be poisonous but there is no recorded incidence of it ever killing anyone or, as far as I know, making anyone sick. Maybe the cooking process chemically changes the alkaloids it contains? I have even heard of people cutting and frying the stalk the same as fried okra.

It looks like a Trifolium species, i.e. a clover, but without seeing the whole plant it's difficult to give a definite id. To get rid of it use any method for broad leaved weeds. Personally, I remove weeds by hand - pulling or digging.

JM, they should be good to go in southern Connecticut. The ones being sold at your local garden centers are likely to be hardier cultivars (those with the native American tribal names). Are you looking for a bush or a TREE though? They range in terms of their ultimate height by cultivar and depending on your particular zone (they may be more shrub than tree like). The milder the zone, the more frequently you will see them tree like (Long Island, in and around NYC, the Jersey shore, etc..) The colder the zone, there may be seasonal dieback that ultimately maintains it as a shrub. So too, in many southern areas, many growers prune them vigorously on a yearly basis, in order to maintain them as shrubs.

Unfortunately, there is nothing that will get rid of any weed "forever"!! The reason this one - Oxalis corniculata or creeping wood sorrel - keeps reappearing is due to a seed bank that just keeps producing. It can also spread stoloniferously. But it does respond very well to manual removal. You just need to keep at it to reduce that seed bank in the soil and that is best done before you see any signs of flowering. It takes more than just a single season to effect full control but you will see improvement almost immediately. And mulching will also help to retard the spread and the easy seed germination.