Last fall I bought a house with a massively overgrown garden, in which one of the first plants to come up green in spring, was this. It started out in April as a soft, compact green mound of foliage about 18" in diameter, which I found quite pleasing. It seemed more likely to be a 'bought' perennial of some sort, rather than a weed, because in the entire garden, it is the only one of its kind, so I decided to let it go, and see what it turned into. Going on three months later, it has become a sprawling monster... At a distance, this: Hacking off one of the lower branches, about 3' long, I get this: Closing in on what appear to be buds at its furthest spire tip -- these look as though they might eventually produce white flowers, but have been at the bud stage now for about a week -- And the underside of the branch shows the dark green leaves to be more silvery on the underside, and the hairless stalks more green than the deep purple that they appear from above. I've been all over sites for both weeds and wildflowers for Ontario, searching tall plants with red or purple stalks, multi-lobed leaves, and potential white flowers, for a month, and have consistently drawn a blank on the thing. Has anyone out there any idea what it might be? The most remarkable thing about it, for me, remains that it is still the only plant of its kind in the garden.
Can you share larger photos? Also, a photo of the underside of the leaf might be nice. Lastly, if it comes to it, a photo of the opened flowers would be good. Thanks.
That's supposed to have compound leaves, and prickles along the stems; these look like simple leaves and DJWight said bare stems. (Edited: DJ actually said "hairless stalks"; maybe I misinterpreted that). Am I seeing long prickles, about 2-3cm long, here and there on the stem? @DJWight, when you add more photos, could you add them by clicking the Upload a File button? We can't increase the size of the ones here, or are they just small-size photos? It would help to take high resolution photos and let the system resize them, so we can get a better look.
I shall see about getting some better photos first thing tomorrow morning, and do a file upload as opposed to just linking from photobucket. I did trim these images fairly small... For what it's worth, there are no prickles on the stems, everything is smooth and bare. Thank you!
@Douglas Justice, after looking at some of these, I think you are right. In particular, I have now seen several botanical drawings of Artemisia vulgaris which seem identical to what I am looking at in my garden. It will be interesting to see what the flowers look like, once they arrive.
@DJWight, have you tried crushing the leaves to see if they have a scent? They would if they're Artemisia. I've posted some photos of a grownup Artemisia vulgaris at UBCBG: Artemisia vulgaris.
The third image shows it in full bloom. It does not produce the colorful ray flowers, unlike many other Asteraceae species, and the flower head remains green and boring.
Here's where the plant has progressed to, this afternoon. Mine seems thinner and more lightly flowered than most photos I've now seen, but looking at these from the UBC garden--@wendy Cutler, that's definitely the beast! When crushed, the leaves do have a scent, very faint. Not particularly like any other artemesia I'm familiar with. @Andrey Zharkikh - Even if the buds I'm now seeing come out as more than tiny white grains with a few yellow threads poking out, they will still be quite thin. Thank you, everyone! I think this one is solved. Now I just have to decide what I do with the thing...it's not unpretty, but takes up a lot of room and as with other monster plants already identified (I also have lots of motherwort here) I don't see needing it for medicinal purposes.
