A time for weeds to flourish…

Wild willowherb (Epilobium)

As has been said many times, a weed is just a plant in the wrong place. My garden is full of them at the moment, growing from gravel and cracks in paving stones and from pots, but I usually leave them for a while to identify them before having a bit of a tidy-up at the end of summer.

Delicate willowherb seeds...

Here are some of my recent pictures. If these strays were 10 times bigger we might think better of them and make them part of our planting schemes…

Goose grass, also called cleavers (Galium aparine)

Black aphids on goose grass

Wood avens (Geum urbanum) is so hard to get rid off - the rosettes of leaves break off at ground level rather than allowing you to pull out the root. And letting them go to seed like this doesn't help...

Flower of wood avens...

Some kind of sow thistle (Sonchus), I think...

A very small self-seeded St John's wort (Hypericum) in a paving crack...

Red clover (Trifolium pratense)...

White clover (Trifolium repens)...

Self-heal (Prunella vulgaris)

Unidentified weed in a pot...

(ADDED LATER: Eventually I think I did identify it. See here)

Another weed I couldn't identify in a pot...

... until it turned into this, which is clearly a member of the Cruciferae family, maybe even a brassica... then I realised (LOL) - I had planted some French breakfast radishes and they had gone to seed!

And finally, some more of that dainty willowherb we started off with...

POSTSCRIPT:
In a comment elsewhere Paul has kindly identified the little willowherb for me – here’s his picture of Epilobium obscurum for comparison. The common name is “short-fruited willowherb” but in W Keble Martin’s Concise British Flora in Colour it’s also called “thin-runner willowherb”…

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