Mystery weed in the back lane of our office...
OK, I’ve searched high and low and I can’t find a picture of any wild plant to match this weed, which I found in the back lane of our office recently. The pictures are taken with my phone.
(NOTE: Scroll down to the bottom of this post if you want to know what it turns out to be!)
It looks like a member of the Compositae or Asteraceae family
I can safely say I have never seen its like before. It seems to be a member of the Compositae family (now called Asteraceae) but that’s as close as I can get to an identification. Looks like it should be a something-weed or a something-bane…
It was about shin high (maybe eight inches or 20cm?) and flourished during a wet spell in September, but now the dry weather means it has shrivelled and is dying away.
Any ideas?
I would like to know what it is. Any suggestions?
ADDED LATER: Well done Ron (see comments below) – who recognised it as Galinsoga parviflora (also known as Tridax parviflora), a herbaceous plant in the Asteraceae (daisy) family.
The following information is from the Wikipedia entry.
The plant is called Guasca in Colombia, Mielcilla in Costa Rica, Galinsoga in New Zealand and gallant soldier in America.
It was brought from Peru to Kew Gardens in 1796, and later escaped to the wild in Britain. In Britain its name Galinsoga is sometimes rendered as “gallant soldiers”, and then sometimes altered to “soldiers of the Queen”.
In Colombia it is used as a spice herb in Ajiaco or Cuban potato soup. It can also be used as an ingredient in leaf salads (I wish I had tried some).
Galinsoga is effective in the treatment of wounds. The juice helps blood to coagulate faster and also acts as an antibiotic agent.
So it’s an alien, but a friendly one…
I note that it’s named after a person – Ignacio Mariano Martinez de Galinsoga, who founded the Spanish Real Academia Nacional de Medicina and was director of the Jardin botanique de Madrid.
Also see my blog post Who would you name a plant after?
The Squirrelbasket 
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve taken against it. Some weeds are pretty and welcome. This seems to have attractive little flowers but its leaves look sinister. Try http://ispot.org.uk/ for ID.
Esther
Aw, give the poor thing a chance. Given good nutrition and an education it could have made something of itself – maybe a posh daisy or a starry aster…
Thanks for commenting 🙂
I suggest you post it on ispot if you don’t get a satisfactory reply here.
http://www.ispot.org.uk
Thanks Paul, I’ll remember that if I don’t get an answer – and for all the other times I’m puzzled…
🙂
Hi Pat,
I think it’s a stitchwort of some sort – the cleft petals are the indicator. If the leaves and stem are fuzzy – hard to tell – it maybe a garden escapee called Dusty Miller (Cerastium Tormentosum).
Possibly!
Thanks for the suggestion Ron. I forgot to mention it could be a “something-wort”.
However, although my pictures aren’t very good, you will see it hasn’t got cleft petals (like a campion) but a disk like the centre of a daisy and sparse white petals around it. In fact, a bit like another mystery plant I had earlier – a Bidens…
But at least I will recognise stitchwort in future, having now Googled some pictures. Pretty!
Have a good day 🙂
I do recognize it, but clueless on its name…
Try this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinsoga_parviflora
Woo! Well done Ron!
I had a feeling it wasn’t a native…
What a lovely name – “gallant soldiers”!
Mystery solved xxx
‘Gallant soldiers’ presumably from the mis-hearing of, or play on, Galinsoga, but it seems these would be hermaphrodite and self-fertile soldiers, see for example http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Galinsoga+parviflora (well, sometimes a soldier is away from home for long periods, so it would be a useful adaptation)..
Trying to work out the meaning of the name had me puzzled till I saw on Wikipedia that it says “The name Galinsoga was dedicated to Ignacio Mariano Martinez de Galinsoga, who founded the Spanish Real Academia Nacional de Medicina and was director of the Jardin botanique de Madrid.”
parviflora means small flowered, I believe.
It’s all so interesting, isn’t it? I love botany, love Latin.
I’m also amazed at how quickly people came up with the answer when I posted the question on the blog and on Twitter.
It has rained overnight, so I am hoping the little plant may have revived.
Best wishes 🙂
After opening my e-mail, I saw the question posted…I should have visited your site first…I just spent 2 hours going through my old wildflowers of the world book to see if I could make a connection…duh..I did and then researched the info on the computer and found the information..and then came to your site..Yes Ron is the man..I have several species of that ” wildflower ” in my butterfly garden and didn;t know the name until now..Thanks I really enjoyed the time spent and even found a few others in “my” garden I did not know their names….loved the challenge..
thanks again..weedbychoice
Apologies, but once I had posted the question on the blog and on Twitter I had several answers within half an hour!
I’m still not quite sure what the best way is to tell everyone “it’s OK, you can stop looking now!”
Still, it’s interesting to do the research, anyway. We learn something new every day…
Best wishes 🙂
Just looked in my Wildflowers book (Blamey and Fitter) and thger is another very similar escape. g. quadriradiata, ‘shaggy soldier’ which, as the name suggests has longer hairs on the stem, also slightly smaller flowers. There are other differences, but you’d need a hand-lens or very good macro on the stem and flower discs and scales to be sure.
I think I will stick with parviflora for now. Amazing, though, that it must have come from Kew. I wonder if it is spreading out gradually from London and has reached this area, or if it was just a stray seed carried on a car tyre… Maybe someone down here for the Michael Jackson tribute concert or our nomadic photocopier engineer? We’ll never know…
🙂
Hi Pat, I am still enjoying your posts.Thought you might like to visit my blog to see update on Flowers of Crete. Glad you found what the weed was.
Rita.
I see you have added a couple of new ones recently on http://ritaroberts.wordpress.com/flowers-of-crete/ .
But I still think I like that little white Androcymbium rechingeri best. I see it’s usually classed as a Colchicum but it’s not a bit like the common pink Colchicum autumnale or “naked ladies” we often grow in this country.
I love the name Colchicum, too, as it always reminds me of the land called Colchis in Jason and the Argonauts…
Best wishes 🙂
Is it not Bidens pilosa. What could be the difference between Bidens pilosa from Tridax perviflora or T. procumbens, it’s puzlling. Its not given as synonyms yet describe similar flower under diff. names in diff. sources.