I no sooner finished writing the post on the volunteer “sunflowers” then they reveal themselves to be something far less desirable. I should known better than to attempt to guess the species at the two-leaf stage, but I got a little carried away. My supposed-sunflowers grew freely for a couple more days before they turned out to be what Jim calls pokeweed.
So I spent my 20 minutes in the garden today pulling it up.
On my knees sorting foliage, I did have the good fortune to discover another one of my favorite volunteers mixed in with the pokeweed in the asparagus bed. I carefully worked around that, pulling the weeds and laying them down for a mulch layer. I found 10 or 12 datura plants.
We’ve never planted datura or moonflower in our yard, but we’ve had some growing for the last four or five years. They are a really pretty plant available at gardening centers. The large dark green, roughly heart-shaped leaves grow profusely in a bush-like shape and the flowers are lovely white trumpets that open in the evening. They have a pretty reliable chance of re-seeding themselves too. Once again, the spot where they have come up in the past has been greatly disturbed by the construction so I am happy and thoroughly surprised to find the moonflowers returning to our backyard.
