Day 313: Just call me "Queen of Weeds." Yep, got another one. However, you might notice that these photos were shot using my velvet "studio background" as opposed to in a natural setting. Nevertheless, the plant was alive at the time. Punchline? It was in my yard. It popped up under one of my bird feeders one day, close enough to my flower bed that I only glanced at the foliage and assumed it to be a stray Cosmos, but as the plant grew taller and a few Cosmos volunteers started appearing in the garden, I was less convinced. I decided I'd let it stay until I could identify it, thinking to do so from its flowers. At three feet tall (still paralleling the Cosmos), cone-shaped heads began to form. "Nope, that is definitely not a Cosmos," said I, and set to work to put a name on it. As luck would have it, it turned out to be Common Ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), a weed whose pollen causes allergic reactions in a large number of people. I suspect that it was inadvertently included in commercial bird seed and subsequently rejected by a discriminating diner. And to think I'd been so tenderly cultivating it! At least I managed to dig it out before it bloomed and set seed.
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