Can you show us pictures so we can id the Cinquefoils for certain? The Cinquefoils I'm familiar with are not very much like strawberry leaves.

Okay children, I know how much you love your pictures, and I'm a newb here so excuse me if I did something wrong posting these.

Anyway, the first few are super obvious that they are strawberry... cuz of the flower... but then in the later photos it is not so obvious, and in fact I am certain they are weeds (common cinquefoil). I had them in my garden last year and they grew quite vigorously but no flower so I never knew it except they seem to thrive better than the actual strawberries.

The thing is now they are popping up in places where strawberries are likely since a lot of the fruit was picked off by birds and whatnot, or were too small, or rotted before I had a chance to pick myself, etc.

I have a few more pictures I can put up, but please don't make me.

None of the pictures - which are very welcome, thank you - shows CInquefoil. The clue is in the name. Cinque foil has five leaflets. Common Cinquefoil is no exception and it also has smooth rather than 'furry' leaves. All the plants look like Strawberries to me.

Hmm, that's hard to believe, perhaps I have the weed name wrong then, but it sure as heck cannot be strawberry. There are many varieties of cinquefoil and that was the best ID I could come up with.

I just saw some growing by the sidewalk infront of my work where no landscaping was ever done and other weeds have taken over that particular spot as well. There is no way any strawberry could be growing there, not in this area, not for miles.

Whatever it is, it's VERY similar looking to strawberry and given enough time I'll wager it will pop out yellow flowers to give itself away as the imposter that it is!

Maybe your weed is Indian strawberry, Duchesnea indica? What I would do is pull up one plant, set it next to a genuine strawberry, and compare them point by point - pubescence, branching, leaf color top and bottom, even taste the leaf. Chances are you will some odd little feature that works.

Indian strawberry still produces fruit, I'd prefer that if it were the case, but I've never seen this weed fruit, I think it just produces a dry seed pod or something unremarkably useless to people.

I'll resort to your thorough comparison once I see the yellow flowers, since I still can't be sure which are which.

I know there are many cinquefoils (ie Potentilla species), but they all have the five leaflets. Duchesnia prodces a red fruit a little like a strawberry but it is tasteless and seedy. The leaves are smooth, not pubescent. You could mistake it for a wild strawberry, possibly, but not a cultivated one.

I believe all the plants pictured are strawberries, but not necessarily garden cultivars. They could be seedlings or they could be from runners. I don't know why you are so certain they 'sure as heck cannot be strawberry. ' Strawberry seed is distributed by animals an birds. They can turn up anywhere.

I'll have to change the title of this discussion if possible as I've been seeing more and more of this mystery weed all over the place; growing on a sandy beach this weekend for instance.

Someone suggested Angelica, but the closest looking one (sinensis) appears to use wrong images for the few that match. And although "rough cinquefoil" does look similar in some images, floral_uk you might be right about it being a potentilla... norvegica.

But identifying the "not strawberry" is only half the challenge, I still need to distinguish it from real strawberries prior to flowering.

Well you can be absolutely certain it isn't any form of Angelica. It bears no resemblance whatsoever. And anyway A sinensis grows at high altitude in East Asia, not in the US.

Where in the world are you?

Is there a state university Cooperative Extension Service office within a reasonable distance of you?

kimmq is kimmsr

I'm in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

I didn't want to go to too much trouble with this weed identification except to NOT pull out any strawberry plants by mistake.

I have an update, except I did not take a photo of this mystery weed (which I'm calling potentilla) with the yellow flower because I found a better way to distinguish it....

...it grows a stem and upper layer--obviously not strawberry! Also I noticed that older strawberry leaves tend to turn yellow-red and this weed has never changed leaf color.

To "floral_uk": believe it or not this is a photo of one of the original plants that I had uploaded pictures of earlier in this discussion.

You are right that is a Potentilla, not a Strawberry. But we will have to agree to differ on the original pictures. I am seeing different shaped and textured basal leaves on this plant from the original photos and I am not seeing any runners. Did you mark the plant?