various vine & creeping or spreading plants

[watermelonpunch]

Exhibit #1



Grows in a flowerbed along the northeast side of the house, that gets some morning sun, and then spends the day in shade, albeit it stays pretty bright into the afternoon - maybe because there's structures & pavement bouncing light.

This year it seems to be getting tiny white flowers. But last year I swear it got tiny hot pink kind of flowers.
Could be 2 different kinds of plants that look very similar.

It has a creeping way about it. Seems to spread underneath the soil, though very shallow.

Exhibit #2



Woody perennial vine.
Grows up a maple tree. The tree doesn't seem to mind, and it doesn't seem to be "overtaking" the tree or anything - even though this vine must be growing there for years.
Doesn't seem to grow very fast... Some of the vine branches are 10-15ft+, but it seems it takes multiple years for them to actually grow that long.
Will grow up itself in clumped arching. I haven't noticed it blooming this year or last.

More close-up pics of the leaves:





Exhibit #3

This is not growing far from the previous vine. And last year I assumed it was the same, and I cut it back because it's not near anything, and just seemed inappropriate. But now looking at it, this new sprout just doesn't really match exhibit #2 does it?



Exhibit #4

I don't actually know if this creeps, but it has a "ground cover" kind of thing about it. But I can't remember pulling it out, so I don't know if it had vine like runners or not.
It grows in the woodsy border of the yard, where ferns grow, under trees & bushes & whatnot.



Exhibit #5

This sort of spreads more than creeps. I've not been inclined to pull at it, so I don't know what its roots are like. I don't know if I planted it there or if it was there, or if it appeared. I think I saw it last year.

Talking about the hairy stuff - not the lamb's ear, fyi.



Exhibit #6

This has above ground runners.
I think it came as a hitchhiker on a transplant given to me of maybe the lamium I put in this bed.





Exhibit #7

Vine of some type. It's in shade most of the time - gets little if any sun there.
Sits on the ground in a clump or climbs up...



But I should say that the picture of it climbing up the tree.. I do not think it could climb the tree bark on its own necessarily...



You probably can't make it out in this picture, but it's actually growing on a piece of coated chain link fence that's still stuck to the tree. (We'd taken out a fence here, and my husband said it was too iffy to try and pry the part of the fence that was stuck into the tree, so we left it.)

The 2 photos are taken near each other... But I don't necessarily see any physical connection between the 2 plants... I think they're separate plants. But I'm almost positive they're the same type of plant. They look pretty much identical except one is on the ground & the other is climbing.

[MarcP]

As I'm sure you've guessed by my massive number of posts, I'm not good at this so don't take my word for anything.

#3 I don't know what the oval-shaped leaf is, and that's the one I'm sure you are interested in, but I think the heart-shaped leaf is oxalis.

# 4 Looks like garlic young garlic mustard to me. If so, it's very invasive.

#6 Since I almost always think I see strawberries, I'll pick this one for that guess even though it probably isn't.

#7 Kind of looks like Virginia creeper but the tips of the leaves seem a little different.

[watermelonpunch]

I appreciate guesses as much as anything. Even if it's wrong, after all, sometimes it can put you on the right track.

# 4 Looks like garlic young garlic mustard to me. If so, it's very invasive.

Ah Ha!!! I've been wondering why I don't notice the garlic mustard until it's tall and flowers!
And now I'm thinking back to last year, when my MIL pointed out what it looked like young & I had forgotten!

And yes, it's invasive. There are worse weeds I have, I have so many.
But I have TONS of garlic mustard I keep pulling out of that woodsy area this time of year.

At least now I know I can go on a tear through it, and the other weeds, because everything there on the ground I now know is weeds except for 2 ferns bunches. I want to encourage more ferns to grow in that area.

And yes, #3 I'm wondering about the vine. The oxalis I just think of as clover ... It grows in most of my flowerbeds, and I leave it for the bunnies unless it's right next to something. So it's in most of my pictures. ha ha

And yes, that #7 vine does look a bit like the virginia creeper in your picture, and I said looks kind of familiar.
But I think mine might be bigger. ? Very hard to judge in pictures sometimes.

Some of it looked kind of unhappy when I took a walk a few minutes ago... one of them that's not pictured. There's what I think are 3 separate plants in the same vicinity. The one that looks unhappy gets more sun than the others, and the position where it is, I know is very sandy. It's right in the spot where I dug a bucket of sand out last year. Like plain sand!


Strawberries... I'm going to look through leaves pictures for that.
Wish it was nice strawberries!! I want to plant strawberries to eat!

[!potatoes!]

#2 is oriental bittersweet. also fairly invasive.

the last one definitely virginia creeper.

[purpleinopp]

Marc, I think you're pretty accurate with these!

Pic 3 - that does look like a bulb Oxalis. With weedy Lonicera.

#4 - the scalloped leaves in the middle do look like Alliaria petiolata. What does a torn leaf smell like? The big heart-shape leaves may be Polygonum, like silver lace vine, hopefully not. A much worse problem than garlic mustard.

#6 - if there are no thorns, probably Duchesnea indica, mock strawberry. With thorns, I'd suspect a weedy berry vine. Looks like some Lamium in the upper left corner, maybe Euonymous at the left edge, or Vinca (first #6 pic.) More Oxalis.

#7 - looks like one of the Parthenocissus, VA creeper isn't the only one, I have no idea how to tell them apart. Might be some Galium, lower left, first #7 pic.

[watermelonpunch]

Yes thanks peeps for all the input.


#7 seems most likely Virginia Creeper... now that I've found some younger leaves, and looked at a lot of pictures.
Now if there's varying varieties, I don't know. Just going to have to keep taking more photos I suppose.

Now, I'm wondering if it's also one of the vines growing up a tree in the back of the yard, on the opposite end.
Because it's higher, it's far more difficult to determine, because I can't get a good shot of a leaf straight on properly. I just can't tell if it has the 5-leaf leaves.

Here's some pictures of that:





.......................

I hadn't mentioned anything about #2 because I didn't want to bias anyone initially.
I was hoping someone here knowledgeable about vines would jump on it and ask more questions. LOL

I've been trying to figure out, since last year, whether #2 is Oriental Bittersweet or American Bittersweet.

I found this guide:
http://www.glsc.usgs.gov/_files/factsheets/2007-2%20Identifying%20Bittersweet.pdf

This vine last year never produced any fruit that I could find. Which was a big disappointment because then I would've been able to find out for sure.
Apparently that's the best way of distinguishing the 2.

If it's Oriental, it seems unusual that it hasn't really taken a bigger hold, considering I did not prune it significantly last year, and I'm 99% sure nobody cut it back in at least 2-3 years before that. (Judging by what my neighbors have told me about the flowerbeds & yard previous to our moving in. LOL)
That said, could be in less than ideal situation. Could be that other things are even more competitive in this area. I dunno. :/

On the one hand, inspection of the full leaves, based on length to width ratio, and leaf tip length, would indicate Oriental.
That said, that method of identification is supposedly not the best method apparently.

Then, on the other hand, the leafing out seems involute, which would be American Bittersweet, as Oriental is conduplicate.
And this apparently is a more reliable means of distinguishing them.

That's not to say that I am an expert on leafing out. :/

So I've tried today to take macros of some of the leafing out.
My camera's macro isn't exactly the tops. :/ But here they are:





Is that involute? It looks like the diagrams of involute to me... ?

This is the only picture I could find of an oriental bittersweet leafing out:
http://appalachianohioweeds.org/2013/05 ... nt-page-1/

And it does have more of a swirling action going on there... which would be more consistent with conduplicate leafing out.

There's not really a swirl to the leafing out on my vines.

But how to be sure?

I see what I think could be pollen on them. Which could mean they're males and won't ever produce fruits for me to judge them by!

So how about the pollen? If it's yellow that's American... white is Oriental.

I think the stamen on my vine look rather white.
But they don't exactly look ready.

I have tried in vein to get a picture of this.
I'm hoping the stamen get a little more developed And then maybe take out the tripod if the weather cooperates.


...........


# 3

As I suspected it to be a honeysuckle. We have what I think might be "weedy Lonicera" on the opposite end of the yard, in the back, growing in a corner of the property line that borders field (open sparse meadow, reclaimed industrial site), adjacent to a woodsy area that borders our back yard.

Here's a picture of it in bloom (last year), when the entire area of the back yard smells absolutely wonderful! LOL And the hummingbirds have a field day back there! (And so I'm not inclined to do anything more than just cut it back from the lawn!)



This is probably +/- 90ft away from where I took picture #3.

Thing is, where the #3 picture was taken, is only just about 20ft away from this honeysuckle:






Honeysuckle (pink) being the bush on the trellis in the left side of this picture.
Just to the right of this picture is a tree, and on the other side of that tree is where I took picture #3.

(Sorry if this is getting confusing. LOL )

...........

#6

Sure does look strawberry-ish.
The stuff in #6 has no thorns.
It could've been a hitchhiker with the lamium my MIL gave me (because I really like it), and she said she has some "wild strawberry" in her gardens.
Is this the same or related to Duchesnea indica, mock strawberry?

This is the lamium that you see in the edge of the picture:

(You can see pulmonaria and wild violet as well in this pic.)

OH, and yes, I believe that's some kind of vinca. I have 2 different things that are supposedly vinca.
My friend pointed out last year that this vinca in the #6 pic, she's had in hanging baskets. I believe it's a cultivated variety that one would ordinarily see in hanging baskets or window boxes or wall top plantings.

..............

RE: Galium, lower left, first #7 pic.

Is that a nasty weedy sticky creeping vine that likes to get up and over other plants?
If so, yes, I have a problem with that stuff in 2 flowerbeds on either end of the yard.

But that's NOT the same as the stuff in #5 pic. That stuff behaves quite differently. (And it's in a different bed, where I've never seen the sticky stuff.)

[applestar]

Mock strawberries -- I was just showing my kids how to tell them apart from edible strawberries because I have some that hitched its way in with a volunteer nandina from my Mom's garden. It's growing huge in rich soil and the brighter red berries are tempting next to regular strawberries.

It's from yesterday and getting old, but you can see the berry is rounded and has different kind of bracts than the bracts of culinary strawberries. The kids said they can also tell by the way the seeds stick out.



The plant's stems creep along the ground and leaves grow from the stems instead of growing out of the center of rosette of the mother or daughter plants.

[purpleinopp]

Yes, Duchesnea indica would be mock strawberry, I was agreeing with Marc. Great pics, Applestar - those do NOT taste good.

When ID'ing plants, it's best to stick to the botanical epithets because some common names can refer to multiple plants, like Daisy or, as you see in your yard, honeysuckle. A weedy honeysuckle would be an exotic one (not native to north America, for us,) that spreads unintended like wildfire into natural areas. Weedy Lonicera comes in shrubs (L. mackii) and vines (L. japonica.) Knowing it's one or the other should be enough info to start pulling. I don't think any pink/red honeysuckles are noxious exotics.

Can't help you with the Campsis, IDK.

I love that Lamium too! So pretty. In company with Viola, Pulmonaria, lovely!

AFAIK, there's no such thing as a well-mannered cultivated Vinca. They start in pots, and creep to... wherever. Left unchecked, it will make a patch like that pictured below.

When in doubt, you can check the status (native vs. introduced) at the USDA website, for almost any plant.
http://plants.usda.gov/java/
If it's noxious/invasive, there will be info about that at the bottom of the page, like the entry for Vinca major:
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=VIMA
and Vinca minor:
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=VIMI2

Absolutely not all introduced plants are noxious. Most are well-behaved, desirable garden plants... but those generally don't show up voluntarily.

Agreed, Galium is an unpleasant weed, like velcro. If you can get them up before they drop seeds, you should have a lot less next year. If you are able to, regarding other nearby plants, Galium can be pulled up with a flexible, plastic leaf rake fairly easily

Sorry, I have no idea what #5 above might be. Are you saying it has a sticky feel to it also?

[watermelonpunch]

RE: vinca
I have the kind too that you have pictured.
Frankly that picture doesn't look very invasive.
Of course I have no idea what kind of work is invested in that area.
I've been told that kind doesn't overwinter very well here.

When I think of invasive & ill-behaved, I think creeping charlie. Creeping charlie is EVERYWHERE in our yard. It invades under every bush, into nearly every flowerbed, along every border, and into the lawn.
Last Sunday I spent 4+ hours pulling it, solid, from under bushes and from the lawn before my husband mowed, in a desperate attempt to keep it from spreading any further.
That's what I call invasive.

We do have an abandoned property a few blocks away in our neighborhood. It was, I'm told, at one time a grand city estate property with very rich inhabitants. But this was years & years ago.
I should take a picture of it, because it's the epitome of a "fancy cultured garden turned invasive menace".
There are some obviously beautiful infrastructure of a very lovely garden... and remnant bushes that look like given more light & some care would actually be very desirable.
But the house itself is falling apart with broken windows... and the entire place is taken over with English Ivy. It's actually quite frightening. It covers all the sidewalks around the house, climbs up the house and several out buildings, and has engulfed several tall fir trees to the point where they only have branches & needles at the very tops.
The entire place is surrounded by a bit of woods, contained by chain link fences, so I'm assuming that's why nothing's ever been done about it. Out of sight, out of mind. :/
Anyway, I wouldn't even keep english ivy as a house plant frankly. It looks menacing.

And yes, we have a lot less of that galium this year than we did last spring.
But it's still very annoying.
Velcro is a very good metaphor for it! When I was trying to explain it to my MIL, I was saying it adhered like a gecko feet... ha ha Which is fairly the same engineering concept. But not a very universal way to explain it unless someone's like me & watched a lot of David Attenborough specials. LOL

RE: honeysuckle like stuff

No matter how invasive that honeysuckle stuff might be, I won't be pulling it that's for sure.
Cutting it back? Yes. Uprooting it? Unlikely to ever be feasible for us.
Worse, where the honeysuckle is growing, I could see underneath it in the winter that down the slope into the field, it's growing over abandoned dumped industrial type equipment.
This is in the field, which is a reclaimed previous industrial site that borders our yard.
For those looking for a depressing read... just google Scranton, PA. Enough said about that. :/

In this picture, that white/yellow honeysuckle is growing in the upper left. (It's not blooming yet and this picture was taken today.)

Below is a satellite photo of the area from last year. (I know it was taken last year because I can see my pea vines... we put in that vegetable plot (10x10) last May, it didn't exist before then.)
The picture above was taken with that white shed to just the right of me.

[purpleinopp]

In the technical sense of the word, invasive isn't for each gardener to decide, it's used to indicate plants that will escape the garden spread into natural areas - like the Japanese honeysuckles. Although a certain plant may be well behaved in certain locations, it's still an exotic invasive in general, in the technical sense of the word.

In the pic above of my Mom's Vinca, she put 2 little sprigs of Vinca there 7 or 8 years ago. It took a few years to really get going, then WOW. Since last year, it's almost twice as big in area, and definitely twice as thick. In the meantime, I pull and fill storage tubs of it out several times per year, and when I'm finished, it looks exactly the same. That's why it has the defined edge but no border separating it from the whole bed. I've been trying to keep it away from her baby Azaleas, ferns, and Hydrangeas but there are already some that have been usurped by this patch. A few months ago, it was all under 4-6" of oak leaves put over the area as mulch. Didn't bother the Vinca a bit.

She did this in OH too, and after about 5 years, a pretty healthy patch was starting to gain serious real estate. Not evergreen up there as it is here, but should be hardy in Z5. If I didn't think it was so pretty too, I'd have the fortitude to rip it all out while she's not around. So pretty, of course that's why it's here.

I'm sorry for the awkward phrasing about pulling the honeysuckle. You're right, humans can't pull mature specimens out of the ground. Was just giving you a heads-up that if you see any honeysuckle sprouts in cultivated areas, it's extremely unlikely it's a desirable one. You'll probably become intimately familiar with the sprouts soon. Until they do get big, they are easy to pull. Battling honeysuckle on behalf of the greater good is a lost cause though, if you ask me, and wouldn't make a bit of difference in the big picture. I wouldn't bother either except pulling the babies out of flower beds, mowing where possible. You must have thought I was crazy! Sorry!

I have relatives in Scranton and have been there a few times, small world!

We have have abandoned property next door too. The yard hasn't been mowed for 3 years, and most stuff is evergreen here, never pauses for winter. Yikes! The wind blows all kinds of "goodies" over here. Like you said, it's about priorities and your available time. I pull sprouts of unwanted's out of the beds, mow the lawn area, and then just enjoy the "good plants!"

[watermelonpunch]

That looks like maybe virginia creeper on that fence??
Now that's really standing out to me everywhere! ha ha

Well I didn't think you were nuts, so much as not understanding the situation this honeysuckle is in...
I certainly won't encourage it to grow in a flowerbed.... Well where it's growing is not appropriate for any vine, even a desirable one.

The vine in the picture for Exhibit #3 ... I was unable to uproot it last year. So I cut it at below the surface of the soil. And that's just that little thing.
Even the idea of pulling any other established ones... OMG I would wind up in the hospital or something.

It's probably also relevant to my gardening disposition that we're renters. But it's not an ordinary renting situation. We rent a house with a yard, and we're responsible for the grounds. We rent off my MIL's friend - and they met in a gardening group of some type initially! (They both have extensive gardens.)
So when someone says "start pulling"... I feel like a 12 year old being given a chore. LOL
And indeed, both of them have come here and said, "Those are weeds you need to pull". ha ha
It's a lot of pressure!

But one issue I've run into here is that there's LOTS of nice things that do come up that I didn't plant here, but were planted purposefully before we moved here last year. And many things were planted by the avid gardener landlady... several years ago. But not maintained so hot by previous occupants.

So it's not quite the same as someone who's living somewhere for several years, and something new appears as "a volunteer".
They all seem like "volunteers" to me, if I didn't plant them last year or this.

That's why I've made a point this year to really document what's here. Know what it is. And keep track.
I find identifying stuff kind of a fun game.
But it is overwhelming.
I was so overwhelmed last year, not really knowing what I was doing, that I didn't get pictures of things, didn't document, and my memory isn't good enough to remember stuff I looked up... unless I have photos of it labeled.

There are 11 distinct garden beds here. I count them by area, and some separating features in some cases. I say garden bed to refer to what's not lawn nor structure, and has stuff growing in it.
We also have the border of the field which is almost like another bed. And then the woodsy border... it's also bordering the field (not someone's yard) but on one end there's taller trees, and it's just like a woodsy setting if that makes sense.
We also have 2 easement unpaved grassy paths running on 2 sides of our yard. We have to maintain them, and they're used lightly, but regularly people in the neighborhood. Though mostly dog walkers and youths.

So it's rather a big space to maintain for someone who's lived in apartments and visited parks for 20 years where I looked at plants and never had to think about whether they belonged there or not. ha ha.

Oh, and on top of this... My family has a cottage in the woods. And I also have to go there & mow the lawn and weed & such as well. But there's no cultivated gardens there of any type anymore. The entire area was flooded a few years ago. And boy oh boy... you want to know about weeds. Things grow like NUTS in the years after flooding, and I would rather not think too hard about why.

Anyhoo...

It seems in gardening lingo "invasive" means that something "takes over" or reproduces aggressively.
Technically, in the science community, "invasive" means something that was foreign to a given area, and has spread into the detriment of native species or the overall ecology.
I've read about "invasive species" for years... though mostly the animal, bird, insect kind.

Confusion really gets better when there are various issues involved in why one gardener or another doesn't like something. Depending on the situation.

I don't think any plants are actually "well behaved". well, unless they're a completely non-winter hardy warm climate annual that has seeds that can't take our snowy freezing weather. (Although I had nasturtium seeds sprout that I planted last year & overwintered in the soil in a flowerbed!!! I'm 99% sure I planted them there last year, and not this year.)

And even the ones that don't seed... think of the Impatiens thing with the mildew!
I had a bunch of store bought impatiens die last year in a flowerbed... but it's under a black walnut tree, and they died soon after a deer had come through & trampled the bed.. so who knows which reason they died.

MY MIL says all of gardening is like working a losing battle. LOL
But obviously some things spread more easily than others, depending on the situation. And some things, if they spread, might be undesirable or unattractive... but then other things if they spread could actually be really harmful in some situations on top of being unattractive. Like that english ivy at that abandoned property

Of course I want to know if something is potentially harmful or dangerous in some way. So I appreciate being warned about things that might kill other things, or things that might be poisonous, that sort of thing.

And on that bombshell...
AT LEAST I am NOT allergic to poison ivy! LOL (I just don't get the reaction other people do... not sure I get any reaction at all.)

[Mr_bobo_]

Exhibit #3 = Convolvulus arvensis
Exhibit #3-2 with small heart leaves = Oxalis europaea

Exhibit #4 = Alliaria officinalis

Exhibit #6 = wild strawberry = Fragaria vesca

Exhibit #7 = Partenocisus quinquifolia