Lady Bells - Campanula rapunculoides, perhaps.

Calphotos

Lady Bells show up wherever they want to. Now, you have to decide if they are weeds or not ...

Steve

They are so pretty, but it sounds like they are hard to get rid of once they start. I may need to yank it.

I've had one of these pop up in my back yard this year as well, about 2-3 hours south of you. It's cool to see an identification!

I have a prairie winecups that volunteered and is growing across one of my paths. We've decided to walk on it, but it doesn't care. Is it a weed? Who knows.

Keep an eye on it - Campanula are very pretty but somehow my backyard was invaded by Campanula rapunculoides - Creeping Bellflower. A title on ehow pretty well sums up C. rapunculoides' behavior: "How to kill Campanula." How I would like to kill mine! It spreads by seeds - up to 15,000 per each plant - and rhizomes and I have been fighting a losing battle with it for over four years. It insinuates itself amongst all of your plants and, as the best way to get rid of it is to dig it out - you have to go at least 6 inches down to try to get all of the rhizome - and to use a strong herbicide, like Round Up - it is very, very difficult to eradicate without destroying the plants you wanted to keep as well. I hate it!

Seriously, I prefer bindweed to this nasty plant... I was hoping that maybe being underwater in my backyard during our rainy May would kill it off, but no such luck.

If you even suspect that it might be Campanula rapunculoides, if I were you, I would tear it out of the ground and destroy it completely, maybe stick it in the microwave for about 5 minutes to make sure it can't procreate! lol

Holly

Holly, I feel the EXACT same way about Aegopodium (sold as "snow on the mountain" and known also as "goutweed"). I am having SOME luck with weed whacking followed by solarization with clear plastic sheeting, it hasn't been enough time to tell if it will be sending up new shoots, though, so far in the solarized areas, not so much as a speck of green has come up in about 2 weeks. In the whacked areas that I don't have enough sheeting to cover with, it came back in just a few days.

I have also been trying herbicide, though, that seems to only kill foliage and it regenerates shortly thereafter. Perhaps constant application may starve the roots?

I suppose if you have huge swaths of land covered in the invasive monster (like I do, probably a 15'x20' area that is NOTHING but) you could rent a Dingo or Bobcat to dig it out. That's what I'm going to do next year if the current plan fails.

Zach, OakIris, and anybody else who's trying to kill "something" with an herbicide, I HIGHLY recommend you use Weed 'B Gon rather than Roundup! Shortly after moving into this house I started trying to kill the milkweed/dandelions and thistles that were in my front yard, and I used RU for about THREE YEARS, with very little success. They'd get knocked down and even start to LOOK like they were dying--and then they'd come raging back! (It did, of course, kill the grass that was close enough to get hit!) I tried some other "spot week killer" things too--don't remember exactly what they were--same result! When I mentioned to a neighbor, one day, the problem, she said her husband used WBG and he didn't have any problem. I looked it up! It's made for killing broad leaf weeds in grass, so I didn't have to worry about killing the grass--and that was enough for me to try it. It took a couple applications, but THAT SUMMER, I got rid of all the ones I had been trying to kill for YEARS! That sold me! I don't use RU for anything anymore! For the cracks along the pavement I use what used to be called Triox--can't remember what it's exactly called nowadays, something like vegetation killer or something, but it kills anything it hits, and is SUPPOSED to last for "up to" a year. It works!

So if you're contemplating using RU for something, I most seriously recommend you use WBG instead. When applied with a pressure sprayer, you can hit just the individual things you want to, with very little overspray, a/k/a, you really don't use very much of the stuff, and you don't need something "different" for when you have a few things to kill that are growing in grass! (The one disadvantage is that it does NOT kill grasses--any kind of grasses--including the weed ones!)

Zach, seriously, I do believe the only way you'll ever manage to really get rid of "The Snow" is to use an herbicide! I really doubt that covering it with plastic for a couple months will do much damage to the deep roots--tho if you find it to work (like, a year from now!), I'd love to know about it.

Skybird

The above message from Oakiris frightened me enough that I just went out and yanked it. It was very pretty. And if I had a pasture where I didn't care, I'd certainly leave it . But I don't really need any more invasive spreaders in my small yard.

Thanks all!

I know your frustration, Zach! I imagine all of us that garden have a plant nemesis or two that we could really, really, really do without. I admit that the idea of bringing in a backhoe or similar machine to remove everything in the beds and start over is quite appealing after a frustrating day of weeding. You work for hours on a bed and you can still see there are tons more weeds to be removed. And you know that in about a week or less all the little bits of the weed plant's root/rhizome/whatever that you missed will begin sprouting anew.

popmama - didn't mean to scare you, but I wish someone had scared me when I first saw this new volunteer with the pretty purple/blue flowers that suddenly appeared in my garden. I think it came with a peony that my brother dug for me out of the garden of the house we grew up in in R.I.. I remember we used to call something "Hammond's weed" ( named after a family that used to live in the house; I have no idea why my parents thought it originated with them) and I think it was the Campanula. Sigh. I didn't recognize it in time....

Round Up doesn't do much for me, either, Skybird. It makes weeds look a bit poorly for a while and then they seem to come right back (talking about perennial weeds like bindweed and dandelions) but it doesn't seem to have a problem with killing the plants you want to keep if you manage to get some RU on them by mistake.

I try not to use any herbicides - or pesticides - believing, respectively, in the power of weeding and a good spray of water instead. But, sometimes weeding doesn't do the trick and I get frustrated with not being able to eradicate an "unwanted" and I do think about using an herbicide. I can't seem to find one that is suitable, however. If all my weeds were in my lawn grass, I wouldn't mind just zapping them with an herbicide or even a butane torch - the less lawn grass the better as far as I am concerned - but who has such well-behaved weeds?!? Obviously, they much prefer to thrive in the nicely prepared soil of one of your flower beds.... That way, they can hide until they are too big to easily remove!

The problem with Round Up is that it has the potential to kill everything (or make the weeds sick and the "good plants" dead,) and the problem with Weed-Be Gone is that it won't kill the weed grasses that spring up everywhere in the beds, and, though it probably would kill the Campanula, it would likely also kill the "broad leaved" plants - the keepers - among which the grass and Campanula are growing. There really isn't a poison that will work for me unless I decide to kill everything in the beds and start over, which I cannot afford to do, either emotionally or financially. So, I just keep weeding and hoping that someday I will actually win the battle!

Holly

PopMama, I got curious enough to check out the Colorado
Noxious Weed list on this one—and it’s NOT on it! As of now, none of the Campanulas are on
it! But here’s a good info page I ran
into if you want to see more about it.
Check out the tabs on top for pics and other info. On the “legal status” tab it tells if a plant
is a Noxious Weed ANYWHERE in the country.
If it’s not, there’s just no “noxious weed” info there! (This is the USDA site some of us have
referred to recently, but it looks to me like they’re changing it—for the
better! There's more useable info than I
remember the site having!) Pics of it on
the “images” tab, and I agree that’s what it is—I hadn’t been familiar with it
before!

http://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=CARA&photoID=cara_004_ahp.tif

I way agree with OakIris that it’s a good idea to get rid of
it NOW, while you still can. I made a
mistake when I decided the Mexican Evening Primrose (Oenothera speciosa
‘Siskiyou’) that was here when I bought the house was SO Pretty that I didn’t
want to get rid of it—even tho I KNEW it was invasive. A couple years later—after it had gone UNDER
my 3’ wide sidewalk I decided maybe it wasn’t so pretty after all—and spent a
few years fighting it to finally get rid of it all! I KNEW it was invasive! It was pretty dumb of me to decide to let it
grow in the first place, pretty or not!

OakIris, I definitely agree that if you use an herbicide, no
matter which one you pick, they all have some sort of a problem or
disadvantage. I, also, try not to use
them whenever possible, but there are times when, for me, there’s no other
option. Here are a few pics I took
yesterday! My front yard is, literally,
turning into the new Aspen Pando! I’ve
been fighting my neighbor’s aspen trees ever since I moved in here, and, in
this case, the only alternative to using an herbicide is to BOMB my neighbor’s
aspens—which would inadvertently include his house! It’s not possible to pull them out—no matter
how often you pulled them. The roots
from his trees are still in MY yard, and the suckers will keep coming up into
perpetuity! Here’s the situation! (Yeah, my grass looks awful! I didn’t want to mow until I got them sprayed
so there’d be as much foliage as possible, and with the rain we had it wasn’t
possible to spray them, and I finally just got it done yesterday! Right after I sprayed them—decided I wanted
to Document them! Tonite I’m gonna water
the heck out of them to get them sucking up as much of the WBG as possible.)

From the neighbor’s side of my yard! The dandelions, other assorted milkweed, and
other assorted WEEDS are from the Weed Lot Neighbors BEHIND me! Before that house was foreclosed and left
standing empty for a year+, I had had virtually ALL the weeds—except aspen
trees!—gone from my grass!

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/PXqT8lNzQ9syFNJAVkrt4KdtHZHTh5d06Slth8pk5yQ?feat=directlink

Looking toward my neighbor’s yard! Location of HIS trees in text on the pic!

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/X3ooWHX8AfOdgHkMo0R0GadtHZHTh5d06Slth8pk5yQ?feat=directlink

From a little bit in front of his trees looking toward the
street. The stump is “my pine” that died
last year!

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/kiJS55iy80IyQpRB3bE0cKdtHZHTh5d06Slth8pk5yQ?feat=directlink

And a “side” view to show how BIG they actually are! You really can’t see that in the other pics!

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/5LHffPo37QgpixQcyypCrKdtHZHTh5d06Slth8pk5yQ?feat=directlink

No other options!

Also, I have found a way to use WBG in my perennial
beds—even when the weed is right in the middle of a good perennial plant. A few years ago I took these pics so I could
show people how I do it if it ever came up around here. In this case, too, there was no other
option. Or, I guess you could say there
was an option, but that option would have been to dig the whole plant up in
order to be able to get the whole root of the weed—which was a thistle—out of
the ground, and then to replant the whole—big—plant! That wasn’t gonna happen!

Here’s a pic of the thistle in the MIDDLE of my (good)
plant.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Ilh2INAPjBhE1nsFp34gMsK0nZGRGfHLEy4-V3DuEj0?feat=directlink

What I do is to cut a small hole (just big enough for what I
need to do) in the corner of the bottom of a plastic bag (I use non-zipper ones—they’re
cheaper and easier to handle), and then I pull the entire weed up into the bag,
“secure” the bottom of the bag where the hole meets the ground—usually by
pushing the plastic slightly into the soil, and then, after being sure ALL of
the weed is inside the bag I spray enough to wet all the foliage with a
pressure sprayer (I think it would be really hard to keep the spray in the
baggie with a spray bottle). Then I
leave the top of the bag open for a day or so, so the plant can keep “growing”
and draw the herbicide down into the roots, and then I usually close the top of
the baggie and let it Stew In Its Own Juices!
Kind of like Zach’s solarization system!
I leave the baggie in place till I’m sure the entire plant is dead—or
until it starts to grow again, in which case I give it another spritz of
WBG. With this particular “weed,” one
application (of WBG, not RU) was enough to send it to that Great Weed Cemetery
in the Sky—or wherever it is! With
bindweed (I only have an occasional “individual” one at this point) I wrap the
vine around my fingers into a little “role” and tuck it into the baggie. (One other thing! If you use an herbicide and accidentally get
it on a “good” plant, if you rinse it off immediately it won’t do any harm. Just rinse it off BEFORE it dries!)

Here’s a pic of the thistle “in the baggie,” about to Meet
Its Maker!

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/abquB3E3LFGyx5o5jGytvcK0nZGRGfHLEy4-V3DuEj0?feat=directlink

In other situations with weeds just “near” perennials, I’ve
used things like cottage cheese type containers with the bottom cut out—or
anything that’s the right size that I can cut the bottom out of. A couple times I used a club cracker box—just
folded the flaps on the bottom up into the box, put it over the weed, firmly
into the soil, sprayed, waited a day or so, and then closed the flaps on the
top of the box! (It kind of looked like I was trying to grow Club Crackers in my garden!!!) When I was desperately
trying to get rid of the Mexican Evening Primrose, I took a large sheet of
cardboard and held up against the (big) plants that were immediately next to
the primrose—firmly on the ground, sprayed them, waited a couple minutes for
them to dry, and pulled the cardboard out.
So anything that will keep from getting the spray on the “good” plants
works.

I’ve heard stories where some people claim the herbicide can
somehow transmigrate from the roots of the weeds you’re trying to kill into the
roots of the good plants you want to save—but I’ve sure never had that happen,
and as you can see, I’ve done it, literally, in the middle of a “good” plant!

So it is possible, and I do it in cases where “pulling” just
isn’t an option.

Hope some of this helps if you ever get to the point where
you feel you don’t have any other options.

Skybird

P.S. There IS a “Grass
B Gon” that’s supposed to kill grasses but not broadleaf plants, but I’ve never
tried it.

You look as if you have a fight on your hands with the Aspen and other assorted weeds, Skybird. In an ideal world, we would each be surrounded by fellow gardeners and all the weeds would be under control, lol.

I don't have to deal with Aspens, but bindweed, dandelions and weed grasses abound here. I have managed to get rid of almost all of the thistles, but with so many seeds freely available, a few continue to pop up. There are several houses in this neighborhood - one right next door to me - where the weeds are pretty much allowed to grow unchecked, thus the "freely available" seeds. There is a small park at the end of the block that was yellow with dandelions this spring - rather pretty to look at but everyone knows what happens when the flowers go to seed and the wind blows....

I have only myself to blame for the Campanula, I guess, since I have never seen it in any of my neighbors yards - though I did see it a few blocks away in my neighbor's mother's yard, lol, does that count? (In a few years, if I can't get rid of mine, I probably will see it elsewhere in my immediate neighborhood, too. :-( )

Here is a statement in an article on the Harlequin Garden site that sums up C. rapunculoides pretty well:

"One of the most notorious Flowering Bullies is Campanula rapunculoides or Creeping Bellflower, though most people know it as “Cancer of the Garden”. In summer this bellflower is seductive in its pretty, star-shaped, bell-like flowers of a violet or blue-violet color. They are arranged along one side of thin 2—4′ stalks. At the same time, below ground, the roots are running rampantly and rapaciously. Too often, kind gifts of plants from old neighborhoods contain root pieces of this uncontrollable tyrant. I was given a nice iris, only to discover a year later the flowers of this campanula blooming right next to it. Even though I recognized it, I was sure no campanula would survive long under my harsh, dry conditions: WRONG !! It suffered and dwindled and hid underground/ Until we had a wet year when I found/ It pushing up stems far and wide, so I vowed to give it no mercy whatsoever, forever."

Cancer of the Garden indeed! I need to take a picture of the mess it has made in my backyard as a warning to others! It is most definitely a noxious weed in my part of Westminster, but I guess it is a good thing that it is not listed as a noxious weed here in Colorado because that means it has not yet made its escape out into the wilds.

The above paragraph was in an article on "Flowering Bullies" - Aegopodium "Snow In Summer" is definitely included in the article, Zach! (I bought one of those plants many years ago before I knew better, but it didn't survive. I missed a nasty one there!) Here is a link to the article for those that would like to read about other plants that are a problem here in Colorado gardens: http://www.harlequinsgardens.com/mikls-articles/flowering-bullies/

Mexican Primrose wasn't mentioned as one of the bullies, and though it has not - yet - been invasive in my garden, I have heard horror stories about it from others, too, Skybird. I have had a small patch of it in my front yard for about 10 years now, sometimes it seems to die down to about 3 plants, and sometimes there are more, but the patch doesn't seem to grow and I haven't found any seedlings popping up elsewhere in the yard...I consider myself lucky so far but I definitely keep an eye on it!

Holly

Oh, Skybird. I know exactly what you mean with those dang aspen suckers! I pull at least a dozen of them out of my gardens every week! The ones in the grass I just mower over since I could pull and spray and spray and pull every single day and there would be new ones the very next morning anyways. Since mowering over my tomatoes and penstemons once a week would likely be detrimental to their health, I am reduced to pulling them... constantly.

Same story with the chokecherry that is choking out my backyard! Oh, and we have a riparian area out behind the house, we have coyote willow coming up in our yard, too. I'm thinking of paying the 10$ fee to Audubon Rockies to put a "designated wildlife habitat" sign on my house! CPW charges 7$ for a day pass to visit State Parks... I reckon I could charge 3-5$ to come over to see my place....

As for the solarization...ahh, well, it's fun to pretend right? After about 3 weeks, I am now starting to see green leaves popping up in the areas previously covered in plastic. However, I also saw an old jug of Weed-B-Gone in garage... Killing Aegopodium might be a good project since it's too hot to plant things right now.

My neighbors seem to have no problem letting their lawn go to pot (not the abandoned "neighbor", the ones on the other side, that live there). In early spring, their "grass" is a sea of yellow dandelions. I can live with that, it gives me a good rule of thumb to plant potatoes by and I actually got some kind of satisfaction and enjoyment from a morning out with the dandelion digger. What I can;t stand is the fact our "shared" lawn (we both have side-lawns that are really one conjoined grass area) is at this point, AT LEAST 75% field bindweed and it has started creeping over to our side. One thing I DO NOT have in my garden areas is bindweed, a myriad of other weeds, to be sure, but that is one thing I have lucked out on (that and Canada thistle). I may have to go out one night and super-spray their grass for them.

You are very lucky that bindweed is not yet in your yard, Zach. It was here in mine when I first moved in 20+ years ago and it is still here in my yard despite my efforts to get rid of it. I have almost gotten rid of the thistle - again, here and running rampant when I first moved in - except for an occasional one that still pops up. And then there are the dandelions. Surrounded by yards and a park full of dandelions, needless to say I have them in my yard, too. At least the flowers are pretty and they attract beneficial insects, such as lady bugs.

As we all know, it is difficult to impossible to get rid of weeds when your neighbors cheerfully share their wealth of weed seeds with you and everyone else in the neighborhood. But, we keep trying!

Holly

To the west side of my property, over which the prevailing wind blows, is an acre of prairie dog colony festooned with patches of thistle, cheat grass, bindweed, and this year, barley fox tail. It isn't irrigated, so its often just mostly bare ground, but not this year with all the rain.

Mexican primrose is a horrible weed in California, but I haven't seen it take over here like it does there. A couple neighbors nearby put it in and it died out in 1 or 2 years.

Hey David, at least foxtail barley is a native prairie grass, lol, silver linings? Probably not...

Cheatgrass.... *shudder* sounds like the Parks and Rec greenbelt behind my house. The entire field is entirely filled with introduced and in many cases noxious and invasive weeds. Smooth brome, orchardgrass, crested wheatgrass, alfalfa, yellow sweetclover, bindweed, several kinds of thistle, knapweed, curly dock and burdock, teasle, mullein.... and on and on and on.... I found some burdock seedlings in my back yard a couple days ago, I'm not sure how I've managed to fend off the other's.

Oh, Holly, I get a few bindweed seedlings here and there in my vegetable garden, but, they don't get more than 1/2" before I pull them out. I planted borage and German chamomile a few years ago, still getting seedlings from them every year.

I mulch with wheat straw, I pull out wheat seedlings by the dozen..s at least twice a week depending how often I've watered.

Hey, weeding gives me something to do while I'm spending time in the garden. It's too hot to plant anything and none of the vegetables are doing anything productive, so I've got to stay busy somehow right? Course, I discovered yesterday that SOMEONE has moved into the abandoned house, and I don't mean someone brought a U-Haul of their belongs and is going to be my new neighbor, I mean some kind of vagrant/transient individual has set up shop in there. So, now I have to shift gears and and totally demo and rebuild my fence, I already went out to buy new latches and locks for the gate.