Plants You're Sorry You Met

When I first started gardening my philosophy was the more the merrier. Well with that attitude you space things far to close and you have far too high an opinion of plants that are liable to eat you alive. The funny thing is the garden centers never tell you much about just who those plants are.

One example - Lysimachia clethroides Goosneck Loostrife. I think I will still be pulling this up in my next life. Anyone one else have any green leaved terrorists lurking in thier yard? I also have some sort of blue/purple Campanula which I didn't even plant. This one I have been pullling out for 10 years and I still find babies.

Another plant I am not happy with is the Minneature Minnesota Snowflake Mock Orange but for a different reason. Zone 4a I have three of them. I live in St. Paul, MN and it is always a sorry sight with a few blossoms here and there with prodigeous die back.

syngonium podophyllum...arrowhead vine. It's a houseplant for most but here it is an incredibly invasive, all choking vine. My next door neighbor planted it and it got loose and is now choking out everything in my front flowerbed. No matter how much I rip it out...it keeps coming and coming and coming.....It's like Kudsu (sp?), which incredibly, we don't have here!

Holly

There are a few around here. The 4 O'clocks can drive me nuts, same w/ the mexican petunia, but they can be pulled and maintained relatively easily. Well, I do have a few 4 O'clocks that may take a back hoe to get the tubers out (no joke!). Shortly after moving here (15yrs ago), I saw what I thought was a morning glory coming up in one of my flower beds. I "helped" it grow along the wire fencing I had around the flower bed. I have since learned that it was a bind weed, and needless to say, not the only one! I have tried to keep them out of the veggie garden but NOTHING works, not when you've got roots 15 ft long, and your seeds stay viable for years and years and years and....! Another dispicable plant...poison ivy. Don't get me wrong. I didn't plant it here, but the woods around us have a lot of Virginia Creeper growing and poison ivy blends in too well w/ that stuff. I basically scratch all summer!!

LEMON BALM......I hate it. pull and dig and it STILL comes back.

dogmansis...you can send your 4 o'clocks my way. I love them.


Mary

I feel much better already :). It is cathartic to read your replies. Misery loves company I guess. It is interesting to hear what weeds people are struggling with.

Air potatoes! Those vines wrap themselves around everything and choke the life out of them. Another one is what I call Wandering Jew, but I know it has another name. It has pretty clear blue flowers, but grows over everything. Plus, little orange bugs that bite you and look like lady bugs eat holes all over it. Yuck!

My parents were always really sorry they met Fallopia.....so incredibly invasive in these parts!

It grew *everywhere*.....they finally did get rid of it when they remodeled in 1992....I don't know how they did it!

My dad (rest his soul) would scowl if he knew that I was growing a pretty variegated one (in a pot with a saucer underneath!) that I wil *never* plant in-ground!!

Goutweed! Grrrrrrrrr.....it spreads like an infection!