O internet brain trust, you found me the caterpillar in record time! Can you do the same with a weed?
There's a lot of it, anyhow...
Never seen this one in the yard before, but it popped up everywhere after I mulched a large bed in the backyard, leading me to believe that the seeds may have come in on the mulch (although it’s a low and unobtrusive thing, so it may just have gotten lost in the crabgrass and I only noticed it because it was the first thing to show up in the mulch.) I haven’t caught it flowering. It’s not smothering anything, it pulls easily enough, but it is entirely too vigorous, and I suspect it on principle.
It is found only in the shaded areas of the yard and does not venture into sun. My attempts to locate it in lawn weed ID systems fail utterly. The leaves are really genuinely lance-shaped, with the little flare to keep it from going all the way through your enemy’s torso and everything, but I don’t know if that falls under the “lance-shaped” leaf category, so…y’know.
Advice on whether this is a delightful native that honors me with its presence, a scourge that I shall curse from the bottom of my heart, or whether I must now nuke my garden from orbit would be grateful appreciated!
Originally published at Squash's Garden. You can comment here or there.
