Garden Thoughts: Who Are All These Plants?

This spring I've been gardening daily. My current Garden Concept is a space of native plants, that welcomes the insects that eat them and the birds that consume the insects. But I like plants, so I have no intention of digging out the peonies or lilacs, even though they support very few native insects. With that complex approach, I took a look at my garden and discovered it was even more complicated.

Its not a big yard, slightly over average for suburban lots in my area, and I have filled it with plants. 

I have many common garden plants, plants that I have loved all my life, like lilacs, peonies and iris

lilac Syringa

peony, Paeonia

iris, Iris

I have a small vegetable garden with peas, tomatoes, asparagus, and a few others.

peas, Pisum sativum

Tomatoes, Solanum lycopersicum

Asparagus, Asparagus officinalis

I have some shrubs and trees for fruit: currants, apricots and apples for example.

apricot tree, Prunus armeniaca

European black currant, Ribes nigrum

apple tree in bloom, Malus domestica

My yard also has plants I was curious about, for example bugleweed the herb (two species are called bugleweed) and the dye plant dyer's greenweed

bugleweed, Lycopus

dyer's greenweed, Genista

What would I collectively call all of those above? Domesticated plants or garden plants or wanted plants?

I have also been adding natives, showy ones like penstemons, yucca, and purple coneflower,

beardtongue, Penstemon

small soapweed, Yucca glauca

purple cone flower, Echinacea

and lately some less dramatic ones, like pussytoes and Louisiana sagewort 

pussytoes, Antennaria

Louisiana sagewort, Artemisia ludoviciana

All of those I at one time purchased. The "wanted plant" category covers a lot of plants. 

Of course my garden also has weeds, for example dandelions, bindweed, and Canada thistle,which I weed out when I find them, only to find them again.

dandelion, Taraxacum officinale

field bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis

Canada thistle, Cirsium arvense

When I finish listing purchased plants and weeds, though, I find that doesn't cover everything.

Some of the remainder are weeds, but also plants with rich histories and medicinal and food uses, so I keep a few to be able to take them when I am teaching about plants. Examples of those are salsify, purslane, and lamb's quarters, all three edible and tasty:

salsify, Tragopogon

purslane, Portulaca oleracea

 lamb's quarters, Chenopodium album

(Yes, dandelions are edible, but I don't like the taste and they are so abundant that I don't need to grow them.)

Beyond that, there are plants I didn't plant, but seem desirable, for example the oak seedling and creeping hollygrape. They arrived on their own.

volunteer oak tree, Quercus

wet volunteer creeping hollygrape, Berberis repens

And then, I find still more plants that don't fit into any of the above categories, for example toothed spurge and ground cherry, both natives, common mallow which is introduced and weedy elsewhere in North America but rare in my yard and attractive to small bees. 

toothed spurge, Euphorbia dentata

 ground cherry, Physalis

common mallow, Malva neglecta

You could call these minor weeds, but weed is a plant you don't want; these are okay with me. I don't have a name for the group. All are volunteers, maybe that term will cover them. I'm sure birds brought creeping holly grape and the oak grew from an acorn the squirrels buried. The others must have seeded in from neighboring areas or maybe arrived as stowaways in a flowerpot. In any event, these and a number of others colonized my yard on their own. 

I am increasingly happy letting the plants in my yard move around between several meadow-style flowerbeds. I hadn't noticed that there are so many different kinds of plants in the yard. 

Garden plants and weeds and volunteers...I love the diversity.

Comments and corrections welcome.

I have written about many of these plants. See, in this blog: 

apricot, Prunus armeniaca link

asparagus link

bindweed Convolvulus arvensis link

the two bugleweeds link

Canada thistle, Cirsium arvense link

coneflowers including Echinacea link

creeping hollygrape Berberis repens, Mahonia repens link

dandelion link

iris link

lilacs link 

Louisiana sagewort, Artemisia ludoviciana link

pea Pisum sativum link

peony European peonies  Asian peonies

purslane Portulaca oleracea link

tomatoes link

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist

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