My theory is the top one is a giant knapweed, but when I google giant knapweed, I find nothing like it. I don’t think google is always the best with this stuff.

The second one has a pink orchid like flower and a strong herbal smell.

i think the smallest one is a knotweed.

The bottom one is kale like on top with small yellow flowers, deep burgundy stems, small coarse leaves.

We need better pictures. There’s insufficient information to Identify them here. Please can you show each plant in situ, not picked, and give close ups of foliage, flowers, if any, and overall habit . We also need a scale.

I don’t generally bring a camera to work, there’s nowhere safe to leave it. I figured the oddities of the plants might jump out to people. But so far, no one seems to have any ideas. I have been gardening for over 20 years and I have never come across them before. The top one is maybe 5’ with a growth habit like Angelica and big chunky square stems like cup plant which taper off to loose clusters of knapweed like buds. ,The second one is a a knotweed I think, a groundcover., probably no more than 6” tall with flowers. The flowers go from delicate pink to rust red. The third one is a normal mid sized plant about 2’ tall or less I would guess, with dense basal foliage, and a really strong ornamental ginger smell, like industrial bathroom cleaner, and the seed pods are fuzzy and sticky. the flowers were pink and striped which is something I have never ever seen in a flower here, I am not including regular striation patterns. The last one had no basal foliage per se, just a loose vase shaped cluster of wiry deep burgundy stems and tiny yellow flowers exactly resembling a brassica were it not for the weird spade shaped coarse leaves.

Sorry, but the pictures really are not adequate to identify these plants.

Ok. Three of them are entire sections of the plants from to root to tip. So they they don’t ring any bells for you.

It’s frustrating, if I just had a family to search in, it would narrow the field a bit. None of them except the knotweed one look at all familiar. The extremely strong cinnamon lemon fragrance and weird striped pink flowers you would think, would turn up in a search, but I am finding nothing.

You said they are in a garden you maintain. Tell us more about this garden and these plants and your place in it. You might not take a camera with you but you were certainly able to help yourself to ample samples. They look like native or naturalized roadside wild flowers - weeds in other words to most people, thus more obscure and harder to ID without better pictures. I would suggest locating a field guide to Ontario wild flowers and look there.

These are not, I would say, with 85 per cent to 90 percent certainty native plants. I know native plants. These do not correspond to any I know of for this area. This is a full sun garden that has received no to minimal maintenance for months, so I know they are established and self sufficient. Some of the plants are herbal or edible. It has en old garden vibe, kind of like an English garden. Some natives were included, but I recognized those. This is not meant to be a wild flower garden, it’s pretty formal.

Also, we don’t tend to get exotic weeds just popping up out of nowhere like you guys in warmer growing zones. This is not a garden where tropicals or even annuals are used, and these plants are far far too est. to have just shown up this year, other than the brassica look alike.

Do you not have a cell phone with a camera? (I realize the whole world does not revolve around cell phones, but they ARE pretty commonplace!!) Or no friends with one that could accompany you to this garden? Honestly, without clear, daylight photos of the plants in question in situ, at best all you will get are some guesses.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK is one of the most skilled members here for plant ID and if she says the photos are not sufficient for her skills, then the rest of us duffers have no hope!

‘Picture this’ is a plant ID app. I use it constantly!

Well I know at least one of them has never been formally identified by the gardeners around here,, these are people who have been in the field a long time. I thought if I broadened the search to people outside of the area it might remind someone of something in their area. I don’t know who planted them originally, maybe even they didn’t know lol.

i am pretty good at recognizing plants, plants in different life stages and I can’t place three of these in any kind of family with any certainty. Now that I have seen them, maybe I will be able to link them to something further down the road.

Poppy?

No. I know opium poppy, it would be a good addition to this garden. There are oriental poppies currently. I am fairly familiar with your usual cast of characters having worked in garden centres before.

Well whatever they are, they are obscure even if they are in a former herb or formal perennial flower garden. They still all look like naturalized roadside weed flowers to me, many of which are edible and medicinal if you are into that sort of thing.

Using your pictures and good descriptions, here are some wild guesses you can wander down.

I'll give you the tiny Knotweed, a Polygonum sp. though I am seeing hints the genus may have been changed to Persicaria. The top large leaf described as Cup Plant like is in the Asteraceae. Look in Rudbeckia, Helianthus and of course Silphium. The seed pods of the pink and white flower ginger smelling one remind me of some hibiscus - Sida specifically, Hollyhock and mallows. The leaves are all wrong though. My wild guess for the vase shaped wiry red stems is a Hawkweed, Hieracium sp., probably wrong, but definitely in the Asteraceae.

Yes, very very close, seed pods look right. I expect the giant one will flower soon if similar to the centauras we have here, which are already blooming. Thanks so much, it bugs me when I can’t put a name on something.

Wow, been wondering if I could get ripe seeds to germinate but the regimen looks ridiculous lol.

https://www.specialplants.net/shop/seeds/dictamnus_albus_var._purpureus/

Ok, and apparently the seeds can’t even be collected in the normal way, very Dr. Seussish type plant.

http://www.onrockgarden.com/plant_of_the_month/2017-08

https://ontheedgegardening.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/persicaria-affinis-darjeeling-red-himalayan-knotweed/

I think this might be the groundcover, or something similar.

I am leaning towards the burgundy stems being some kind of hawkweed, the hawkweed I am used to seeing looks very different but I actually saw something similar for sale... so there you go.

I think I have an Id for the big guy

https://uprisingorganics.com/flowers/scabiosa/scabiosa-giant-yellow.html