What is this horrid perennial with taproots? This is it as a baby...it gets about 1-2 ' tall. Thanks, Laura Ralph www.aliveandwellorganic.ca
Yes, it does look kinda like a symphytum, but it has pulmonaria-like white spots on the leaves...and looks neither like the groundcover one or the big one (sorry I don't feel like looking up the specific epithets right now...) ???
Re: Vine ID My view is [WIKI]Pentaglottis sempervirens[/WIKI], the flowers look the same and it has huge taproots. The foliage here provides plenty of material for the compost heap. Only doubt was maybe the pictured one is not bristly enough.
I was going to say alkanet, too, as it's rare that I get an ID before anyone else, but I also found the thread locked, which I know sounds like sour grapes, but it's been a day when small triumphs would have been welcome. It will grow where other things won't, dry shade, for example, and I think it a pretty shade of blue.
nic, I was just mentioning to Ron in a different post, how Pentaglottis has over run the woodland garden at Glendoick near Dundee, Scotland. It has gobbled up and smothered many of the small interesting plants that we saw a few years ago..... A tragedy.
Yes, I'd agree that it's what Margery Fish describes as a thug, but I still think it's pretty. Shame about Glendoick, I suppose they just don't have as many staff they used to have, and you can't do everything. I've never been, although it's not that far. My neighbour has it under a huge flowering cherry, where nothing else will grow except sleeping cats, so I can admire it without having any responsibility for it.
I think the thread was closed by accident by the original poster, as there wasn't anything in the moderator log about an admin or mod closing it.
Sorry if I accidentally closed the thread - I'm thrilled that you were all so keen to ID it. Thanks so much for your amazing ID skills. I definitely would never plant this plant in shade or otherwise! It is a real pain to try to eradicate due to its roots and it self sows way too readily and ends up all over the place. Hopefully a tree care company will drop off some chips at the site (Eagles Estate Heritage Garden on Deer Lake) soon so I can sheet mulch the stuff. Also, I never put any of its seeds in our huge compost windrow, but the little brute seedlings are now popping up from the compost (from the soil off of the roots of other weeds, I assume). Laura Ralph Head Gardener TLC - The Land Conservancy of British Columbia www.conservancy.bc.ca
Laura, Glendoick I mentioned above has a woodland garden full of many rare trees and shrubs that the Cox family have collected/planted over 3 generations since 1920. It has "one of the world's largest collections of dwarf Rhododendrons. It is concidered a mecca for Rhodo collectors world wide" http://www.glendoick.com/index.php?page=visiting On our last visit a few years ago, underneath many rare Rhodos were masses of small unusual plants. This May virtually all that was underneath was this blinking Pentaglottis, it was just a sea of blue flowers. I dread to think what precious plants they have lost under this weed. Good luck with trying to eradicate your.
