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Out of curiosity I let this really fast growing plant continue growing - even though I was pretty sure it was a bad weed. I was too curious for my own good - perhaps I was a cat in another lifetime.

Anyway, this 10 foot tall plant is a giant. Some of the leaves are the size of a dinner plate. The leaves are not all the same shape, some have one lobe, others have two or three lobes. All leaves are shallowly toothed, hairy, and have pointed tips. This, plus the fact that there is no woody stem, differentiates Giant Ragweed from Sassafras.

Sandwiched between Echinacea on the left and Fennel on the right, Giant Ragweed grew as tall as the door.

Giant Ragweed reaches over three feet wide and 10 feet tall.

Giant Ragweed or Great Ragweed, Ambrosia trifida, is unmistakable once you see its size and those spikes of sneeze-producing, pollen-filled flower heads.

The flower spikes are just like those of the Common Ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, which grows along roads and in fields and waste places. The flowers are green and its parts are indistinguishable, but the yellow pollen is quite noticeable.

Common Ragweed leaves have many lobes and that differentiates it, apart from size, from the giant ragweed. Giant Ragweed has single-, double- or triple-lobed leaves. The tri-lobed leaf is the most recognizable as belonging to the Great Ragweed plant.

Tri-lobed leaf of Giant Ragweed.

So, to be a complete fool, I’ll admit I could have moved the Giant Ragweed before it got to the flowering stage as it was in a pot! Now it’s in the burn pile and since the rain has stopped, it’s toast. As it grew I had this idea that I would be sorry to have let it go for so long. Next year I hope the mint will out compete new seedlings and overtake this area. If I need to pull out seedlings, that key to the broadleaved weeds might come in handy.

If it were the Common Ragweed I could just look for the highly dissected leaves having rounded lobe tips.

Common Ragweed flower spikes.

Close up view of Common Ragweed flower spikes.

Common Ragweed leaf shape is dissected.

We have marigolds in and around the vegetable garden and often find ourselves transplanting the volunteers that pop up from seeds to other areas. Their seedings look like the seedlings of common ragweed except for the fact that ragweed seedlings have an overall rounded shape to each leaf.

Common ragweed seedling or shoot sprouting up in the lawn. Notice the rounded leaf lobes.

Ragweed seedlings can be distinguished from marigold seedlings by the leaf lobe tip shape. The highly dissected leaves of common ragweed have rounded leaf lobes while marigolds have pointed ones and toothed leaflets.

Marigold leaves are dissected, like common ragweed leaves, but marigold leaves are pointed at the tips and slightly toothed.

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As I was saying…this has been a wetter year than the previous couple of years, and so, we’re eating great bunches of wild berries and getting to see a couple plants flowering that blossom in the wet conditions. All the rain sure makes for nice gardening - no extra watering needed!

Last year I had been watching this plant grow up through the summer. Taking pictures all along I was really curious what it would develop into, but there was to be no flowering. What drew my curiosity to it was the whorled leaves. I was unfamiliar with this plant and eagerly awaited its bloom time.

It turned out that the season was too dry for me to see anything. The small flower buds simply dried up and the plant stopped growing.

The small flower head dried up after these photos were taken on 12 July 2007. You can see the whorl of large leaves quite clearly where they attach to the main stem.

This year, being a wet one, is different. The terminal cluster of flowers is still developing. As I recall, it seems like a smaller version of a plant that I have been seeing by the roadsides along country roads of Central PA.

Tall pink flowers along a Pennsylvania country road.

Coming home from town this morning I pulled over near a patch of these very tall pinkish flowers. Right away I could see the large lance-shaped leaves in whorls. Indeed, the leaves can be seen from the road, as can the cluster of pink-to-white flowers. These plants towered over my head as they stood 8-10 feet tall, but a few were reaching only about 4 feet high.

The flower parts are indistinguishable, which helps to identify this plant as being a Eupatorium species.

A close-up photo shows a couple of white stamens, but that’s about all you can see.

To further identify this plant, you’ll need to look closely at the main stem. Are there purple spots or is the stem green with a white, waxy appearance? Is it a hollow stem? The different Joe-Pye weeds are distinguished like so:

1. Sweet Joe-Pye Weed, Eupatorium purpureum, - green stem, purple at leaf joints vanilla odor of crushed leaves.
2. Spotted Joe-Pye Weed, Eupatorium maculatum, - purple or purple-spotted stems, flat flower cluster.
3. Hollow Joe-Pye Weed, Eupatorium fistulosum, - stem may have a tinge of purple, hollow stem, domed flower cluster.

Our plants are the Hollow Joe-Pye Weed, sometimes called Trumpetweed, due to the dome-shaped flower cluster, hollow stem, and no odor of vanilla. Areas that get lots of sun have the Joe-Pye weeds in full bloom and they’re very tall, too. Our smaller plants are in part shade all day long.

Interestingly enough, I found the same cohorts growing by the JoePye weed about 7 miles away, in full sun. I easily spotted Boneset, White Snakeroot, Spotted Touch-Me-Not and Blackberries - the same troupe that’s growing along our lane.

Don’t these blackberries look delicious? They’re quite large from all the rain and now they’re in my belly!

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Who’s your neighbor, Boneset?

A fault, I find, of many field guides is that the neighboring plants of the one you’re reading about are not usually mentioned. OK, maybe it’s not a fault, but it sure would make a nice addition to list some of the ‘cohorts’ or associates that may be found with a particular plant.

I suppose the lists of associated plants would become too long to be useful. The plants growing alongside Boneset here may not be in the locations where you see it. Still, I can see that if you recognize the habitat where your plant is growing, you can learn about other inhabitants of that ecosystem. Then it would be easier to recognize individuals in that community of plants in the future.

Take our perennial Boneset, for example. At three to four feet tall the clusters of white blooms really stand out. Even more recognizable are the opposite pairs of perfoliate leaves that appear to be joined at the base. Once you see those leaves as the plant is growing, there’s no mistaking it. Boneset grows up in July and flowers in August to September.

Three perennial boneset plants starting to flower.

Flowers starting to open on the Boneset.
(Photos taken 2 August 2008.)

Growing along the lane our Boneset is growing in a wet area, often near running water as rain water and runoff is funneled off of the dirt road in that location. We’ve had a relatively wet year as the spring at the lower section of the lane has not totally dried up as it often does by this time of the year. Not such an excess of rain, but often we’ve had night-time downpours.

Growing around Boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum, we have White Snakeroot, Jewelweed or Spotted Touch-Me-Not, and Blackberries. White Snakeroot, Eupatorium rugosum, and Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis, are described in the Peterson Field Guide on Eastern-Central Medicinal Plants as growing near running water.

The last two years were much drier and I don’t recall seeing Boneset flowering at all. Snakeroot did, but not with as much gusto as I’m seeing this year.

The blackberries are more aggressive and will grow in drier locations in the woods as long as they can get the sunshine they need. Plants that might be called generalists, those that can live in many places, like the berries, are not good cohort indicators. Although you have to take caution here as this wetter year has produced an abundance of huge, sweet berries in the locations near the Boneset. We’ve enjoyed the blackberries thoroughly!

WildeBerry Ice Cream, anyone?

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