One warning with the Caesar weed...the seeds stick to anything that brushes against it, so be sure you deadhead quickly. And let us know if that works for you. Tasselweed is a favorite of mine in meadows, etc. The butterflies love it. I bought seeds for an improved variety one year, and it was gorgeous. The flowers were slightly larger and the most electric red-orange you can imagine. They sort of wove their way through the sunflowers and other plants like little red jewels. Now that I'm remembering them, I'm going to have to look for seeds again. Marcia (whose encyclopedia is missing quite a few volumes, believe me!)

Thanks caliloo - wow you are good! I'm 99% sure #4 is Fried Green Tomatoes - but I never would have remembered on my own. Guacamole sounds right too. #2 is a bit early, I agree. I'll try and post a pic in a few weeks. I don't mean to second guess you, but are you pretty sure #3 is Francis Williams? I have another FW planted just a few feet away - I certainly didn't mean to plant the same plant so close together. Thanks again for your help.

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.

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.