I spent quite a while looking around a rhododendron that now has large flowers faded to white, on the west side of Decaisne above Forrest, musing about ordering in dinner while I kept looking for the label. Anyway, underneath what might be Rhododendron vernicosum is this little weed with palmate leaves around 3 or 4 cm across, paired or in threes, and now I see that on some of the ones with three leaves, one of them looks like a maple leaf. So maybe these charming leaves are cotyledon leaves? But a maple seedling wouldn't put out an unpaired new leaf, would it? There is an Acer davidii in this plot, but I don't think this is an Acer cotyledon shape. Or something like Physocarpus seedling? There isn't one of those in this plot. There were none of these that were larger or had more leaves than what is shown here. I'm sorry to think that these might be cotyledons and there isn't really a plant that looks like this. But I'm not finding cotyledons that look like this either. There were so many of them, and they looked so charming.
Wow, thanks, Michael. I did see a Tilia growing on the Rhododendron trunk. There isn't one in that bed, but I suppose those seeds don't know the bed boundaries. And yes, when I query tilia cotyledon, a photo like these comes up. Here's the rhododendron, in case anyone wants to answer that. I looked up every rhododendron in that bed that had Garden Explorer photos, and R. vernicosum is the only one that seemed like it could match.
I must have been confused about where I was - I'm pretty certain that this is R. decorum, which I have been looking at in Stanley Park for two weeks trying to get up the nerve to identify.
