Mystery Plant

About a month ago I got some trees taken down in my yard. Within the last couple of weeks we have noticed this mystery plant growing. I'm not sure what it is, maybe you guys can help

https://picasaweb.google.com/turrash/MysteryPlant?authuser=0&feat=directlink

I have to actually start doing some chores today (stupid Dungeons of Dredmor sucking up my morning) so can post pics later. For now I hope the link works.

I've known about this site for a while and envisioned a day where someone would post a message along the lines of "Can anyone help me identify this plant?"

That day has come.

http://www.myplantid.com/advancedsea...

Enter the leaf/plant characteristics and your zip code. (I filled out as much as I could but don't know where you live.) I'm really interested to know if it works!

Looks like hollyhock to me.

(A couple of months ago my kids were raising painted lady butterflies. We fed the caterpillars on a hollyhock plant.)

That's clearly the beginning of a shoggoth ... or marijuana. Clearly.

Hmm, how much it would be awesome to sprout out as a huge, evil overlord ... I'm not holding my breath

It is kinda spiky too, not prickers but all over the stalks. Maybe it's the overlord's armor?

I was going to say that it looked like something in the gourd/pumpkin/melon family. When the killer plants attack, I fear I'm going to be among the first victims.

DeThroned wrote:

Hmm, how much it would be awesome to sprout out as a huge, evil overlord ... I'm not holding my breath

It is kinda spiky too, not prickers but all over the stalks. Maybe it's the overlord's armor?

Like this kind?

LouZiffer wrote:
DeThroned wrote:

Hmm, how much it would be awesome to sprout out as a huge, evil overlord ... I'm not holding my breath

It is kinda spiky too, not prickers but all over the stalks. Maybe it's the overlord's armor?

Like this kind?

AHA! I was wondering what that plant was. We have one that's easily at the 8' mark. It had huge red flowers.

Wow, you guys nailed it! Overlord Hollyhock is slowly coming to be! Those flowers look awesome although I'm still puzzled as to where it came from. We have never had any Hollyhocks in the yard and only noticed it after the trees were cut down.

Regardless, I'm gonna think up a good name for my new plant friend and take pictures every week until

1) She dies (because flirting with a male Hollyhock would just be weird)
2) She grows into something awesome

Edit: I live in CT which was mentioned in the article as a place these things are found. The pictures are so close I can't imagine it would be anything else. Funny thing is, I wanted something in the middle of the yard as it looks amazingly bare since the trees have been removed. This thing at 8-10 feet tall would be perfect, and free!

DeThroned wrote:

Wow, you guys nailed it! Overlord Hollyhock is slowly coming to be! Those flowers look awesome although I'm still puzzled as to where it came from. We have never had any Hollyhocks in the yard and only noticed it after the trees were cut down.

Regardless, I'm gonna think up a good name for my new plant friend and take pictures every week until

1) She dies (because flirting with a male Hollyhock would just be weird)
2) She grows into something awesome

Edit: I live in CT which was mentioned in the article as a place these things are found. The pictures are so close I can't imagine it would be anything else. Funny thing is, I wanted something in the middle of the yard as it looks amazingly bare since the trees have been removed. This thing at 8-10 feet tall would be perfect, and free!

Didn't read up on it, but how does hollyhock propagate and spread itself? it looks like it could be clingy, so it could have hitched a ride with the tree removers.

I've got one of these growing up in the middle of the fence between the neighbors and my yard. It's a huge pain as it keeps spreading seeds everywhere. I'm basically on a mission to uproot them every time I see one sprouting and digging out its root structure whenever possible. I've filled my trash bin (96 gallon) full doing that on a couple occassions this year. It seems to be working since I yanked out a root structure in one area that covered nearly a 12x8 area, criss crossing in a couple spots.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Didn't read up on it, but how does hollyhock propagate and spread itself? it looks like it could be clingy, so it could have hitched a ride with the tree removers.

Its flowers attract insects, and it makes seeds which drop wherever it is. In that way hollyhock is boring, but that makes its discovery in his lawn more interesting. It does like to grow in recently disturbed ground, so maybe a seed was hanging around out there until things got stirred up and it had the right conditions to sprout.

I was going to say gourd, too. If you do a google image search you'll see that they're virtually identical, right down to the hairy/thorny stem.

IMAGE(http://farm1.static.flickr.com/82/212959760_5305e3965c.jpg)

garion333 wrote:

That's clearly the beginning of a shoggoth ... or marijuana. Clearly.

Yes, I was totally rooting for it to be a Shoggoth. How cool would it be to have one in your backyard?

I'm now not sure it's a Hollyhock. Here's some new pictures of my leafy friend

IMAGE(http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/5303/plant3j.jpg)
IMAGE(http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/5980/plant2.jpg)
IMAGE(http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/2702/plant1g.jpg)

It is a pumpkin or squash of some kind. Perhaps even a cucumber. I bet that was where you had a pumpkin last October. Enjoy what it grows.

I'm no botanist, but that looks to me like a gourd of some kind.

So, maybe LobsterMobster and I were right all along.

It'll take until the fruit has developed a bit to tell what exactly it is.

Has there been a recent to-tal e-clipse of the sun?

Yeah, the very first thing I thought when I saw the leaves in your initial post was "squash". Then when everyone said it was a hollyhock, I figured I was wrong, and didn't post anything. But that fruit sure looks like a squash of some kind to me.

Take care of your new friend, and you might get a dinner out of it.

edit: here's a picture of a squash plant. It looks pretty close.

Probably a pumkin.
Have you spread compost?

A friend of mine plants a garden. He tilled compost in the with the soil. He ended up with a pumpkin vine and cucumber vine. He didn't plan either.

It's also not uncommon to see mushrooms pop up. Some local mushroom farms sell off their spent compost in the Toys R Us parking lot. People take it home to overseed the lawn or for the flower beds and occasionally you get the odd mushroom.

yeah, take a look at the part immediately under the flower. Does it look like a really small squash or gourd or something?

All wrong.

IMAGE(http://i51.tinypic.com/4s1wsx.jpg)

Yeah... it's definitely looking different from Hollyhock now. The central stem should be growing taller, and that flower looks like some kind of gourd to me. Way to go, LobsterMobster and misplacedbravado!

All I did was spread some grass seed after the 2 trees were taken down in the front yard. I did nothing to water the lawn and a lot of it died within a couple days (whoops!). Grass seed and the sprinkler are the only things that have touched the front yard recently. We've owned the house since October 2009, it was vacant for about 6 months before that. Never had pumpkins or anything in the front yard.

Even if it's not an overlord or something cool, I'm still pretty excited about it

Mixed seed is possible. Or Raccoon sh*t. That seems to be how seeds were designed.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

Has there been a recent to-tal e-clipse of the sun?

clever id wrote:

All wrong.

IMAGE(http://i51.tinypic.com/4s1wsx.jpg)

This was the first thing I thought when I saw the new pictures.

If anyone still cares, here what it looked like this morning. I probably could look it up and figure out what this thing is but it's much more fun seeing what you guys say

IMAGE(http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/4931/flowerk.jpg)

Heracleum mantegazzianum maybe?

Actually, it does look like a squash/pumpkin plant, there is one on my garden as well right now, I may post a pic later on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin

your flower is almost a 1-1 for their flower shot.

Mmm, pie.