The mystery is solved, aka How a California wildflower ended up in my Wisconsin garden

Before I left a couple weeks ago an exciting mystery was solved. Reader Carol Y identified the mystery plant!

To back up a little, you might recall that I found three mystery plants, planted in about a triangle as though they were put there purposely, in the garden this spring. Since I had a vague recollection that that was where I planted some Agastache last year, I let them grow. But as they continued to grow taller and taller, and then ultimately bloomed, it became clear it was nothing I had put there purposely.

I thought I had been through every weed and wildflower identifier there was. I studied just about every kind of plant you might find in southeastern Wisconsin.

Well it's a darn good thing that Carol came along, but otherwise this mystery might have never been solved. Turns out I was looking for plants from the wrong state. I should have been looking for something from California.

I know you are totally perplexed now, but fortunately Carol was good enough to even send me a link to a "Guide to Wildflowers of San Francisco." Not exactly the first place I would have looked.

Turns out my mystery plant was Scrophularia californica, aka Bee Plant and California figwort.

Here's what various websites have to say about it:

"Rank perennial 3-6' tall. Foliage attracts more attention than the many, tiny maroon flowers that bees like. Flowers have fused petals forming a cup with the 2 upper lips extending outward. Leaves are opposite, 2-4" long, toothed and grow along a square stem. Moist areas in brush and woods; many communities February-July."

"Scrophularia californica, a dicot, is a perennial herb that is native to California and is found only slightly beyond California borders."

OK, I know you're thinking that Carol and I have lost our noodles, because clearly this plant has no business being outside of California, much less half a country away in Wisconsin.

But check out the photos.

These are photos from the web of Scrophularia californica.

Stanford University / Ken Gardiner photo

Wildflowers in Santa Barbara photo

UC Santa Cruz photo

And here are photos of my mystery plant.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is the same plant. Once Carol figured out what it was, it didn't take me too long to figure out how a wildflower from California ended up in my garden.

Remember the great 'Family Jewels' plant from last year? I bought that and some Verbena bonariensis from the only online nursery I could find them at: Annie's Annuals. Located in ... Richmond, California.

I planted both those plants in that garden, just feet away from where the mystery plant popped up, so I'm certain there was a rider that came with them. Hence how Scrophularia californica ended up in my Wisconsin garden.

Case closed.

You're no friend of mine

Well, the friend or foe mystery is, I guess, solved. The mystery plant has bloomed and it's not one I'm familiar with.

It has these insignificant maroon-colored, cup-shaped flowers and, well, that's about it.

I STILL haven't dug it out of the garden but I blame that more on running out of time to do everything this weekend than anything else. Still, I guess it's time for it to go.

By the way, I still have not been able to identify is, so if you recognize this weed/plant, I'd love to know what you think it is.

Here are the defining characteristics:

• 4-5 feet tall
• Toothed leaves, set opposite one another
• Square stem
• Insignificant maroon flowers

 That's about all I can tell you. Now, my shovel and I have a date with a few mystery plants.

Friend or foe?

I have a confession. I might be growing huge weeds in my garden on purpose. Well, sort of on purpose.

Gardening guru Margaret Roach likes to identify her weeds and her reasoning makes sense: If you know what it is, you will know how to get rid of it. And I can safely say that I know most of the common weeds in my yard very well. (As for how to get rid of them, the answer seems to be the same for all of them: pull them out one by one, by the root and try like heck to keep them from coming back.) But I don't know all of them and frankly, I guess I don't really want to know at this point.

This spring the garden was is a big mess. We've had cooler temperatures and oodles of rain, which apparently is the perfect scenario for weed growth. I wasn't planning to mulch this year (I don't like to do it every year), but I finally gave in because I'm sick of pulling weeds from the same places repeatedly.

When I was weeding an area of the main garden I came across a trio of plants that I wasn't sure about. Friend or foe? They happened to be close to where I grew Agastache 'Blue Fortune' last year and the fact that there were three of them in sort of a clump lead me to believe these were intentionally placed there. There was no other sign of the Agastache and I thought it was a pretty hardy plant to I would be surprised if they didn't come back. I looked at the leaves and that the leaves of another Agastache I had just brought home from a plant sale and they looked, well, similar.

So I left the mysterious plants and they have grown. A lot. One of them is a full 5 feet tall, which is taller than I seem to recall the Agastache being last year, although I have found reference to it being up to 4 feet tall.

The mystery plants do have square stems, which is good sign for the "friend" column as Agastache has square stems (as part of the mint family) but as they've grown, they bear less resemblance to the new Agastaches I picked up this year.

I won't have to wait long for this mystery to be solved. The plants have buds and will bloom soon. Who is placing bets?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you don't follow The Impatient Gardener on Facebook or Instagram, you might have missed the new addition to the family. It's a temporary one, though. A robin (I'll never accuse them of being the smartest birds) built a nest in the fiscus tree spending the summer on the deck within a week of it going outside. She laid an egg a day starting Friday and now has a full clutch of four eggs (according to what I can find, this is the number robins prefer) and she'll now start incubating them. In about two weeks there should be babies. Since the nest is located a mere three feet from the patio table, it should be easy to keep an eye on what's happening.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June was a busy month and I didn't get to blog nearly as much as I wanted to (nor did I spend much time visiting my favorite blogs), but hopefully I'll do some catching up in July. I've been thinking about it, and I often talk about "keeping it real" here, yet I'm reluctant to show you much of the garden unless it's looking its best. Well no more. Sometime over the next week, I'm going to take you on a little tour of the garden, however it is looking when I do it. I'm not sure if it will be photographic tour or a video tour (the downside is that then you have to listen to my Midwestern twang), but I'm going to do it, weeds and all. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Garden Appreciation Society is going so great and I'm having so much fun with it. Look for this week's link-up tonight or tomorrow morning.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And, lastly, today marks the day that Google Reader went away. Hopefully you're still finding the blog, but to make sure you don't miss any posts, either subscribe to receive it by email (at right), or check out a new feed service. I've been using both Feedly (which didn't work this morning thanks to the huge hit it took from Google Reader shutting down) and Bloglovin, which you will go to automatically if you hit the "Subscribe" link up there on the right.