Weed inventory

By and large, I like my weeds. I prefer to call most of them “volunteers”. In fact, letting some local plants go to flower is one sure way to invite beneficial insects into your garden. But I don’t know what the majority of them are called, and neither do my gardening neighbors. So I thought I’d do a quick inventory, and see if anyone else can help me identify them. I found a couple of local websites that claimed to aid in weed ID, but they were all worthless, for various reasons (most could use an intensive course in user interface design). Do you recognize any of these?

I love this one. It has big, gray leaves, and is very soft.

This one’s a little difficult to pick out of the background. You can enlarge the picture. It has fine leaves, similar to marigolds. My neighbor said it gets tiny white flowers. Very lush.

This might be my favorite. Everyone asks about it. I also saw it at the Heard Sanctuary, but couldn’t find anyone to ask about it. It reminds some of us of a euphorbia, but it’s not really a succulent.

Actually, I know this one, but wanted to include it, in case you don’t. It’s purslane. It is succulent. It’s also edible.

OK, I lied. I know this one, too. It’s a common sunflower. You see why I call these volunteers? They’re lovely! We had a huge one just to the left of this one, but it was blown down in the big wind storms we had last month.

This one’s very delicate and lovely. It gets blue flowers that only come out in the cool of the mornings. It dies back in the winter, but this one came back in the same spot as last year.

These are one of the most common weeds in my garden. I wouldn’t mind them at all, except that they get really scraggly looking. So I usually leave them until they look like they’re on their last leg, then they pull very easily.

Ignore the grassy one, I’m trying to show you the oak-leaf weed. I don’t get too many of these, but they grow right next to the concrete and are hard to pull out. So I mostly don’t.

OK, this is truly a weed in my garden. It’s the most common and most annoying. Nutgrass?

No weed inventory of my yard would be complete without mentioning the grass. I don’t even know what kind of grass we have, but I’m sure you can tell just by looking at the runner creeping toward my hoja santa. I will be so happy when we have dug up the rest of our yard and become truly “no-mow”.

Got any interesting volunteers? Send me a pic; I’ll post it.