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And the side view. The big stalks in the back are jumbo sunflowers.

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It looks like a pot-scrubber pad. :)

Wow. That is supercool! If you ever find out the name I hope you post it here. I would love to have that in a garden.

I think you should mow over it.

That's an awesome plant, chewie. I have absolutely no idea what it is. Do you? I bet weretable would know.

A couple years ago, I had a weird fungus in the driveway. It's called Pisolithus tinctorius, or the dyemaker's puffball, but its common name is "dog turd fungus." Guess why:

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Some people from the university identified it and wanted to collect it, but I told them no -- I really wanted to see what it was going to do over the course of its life.

Then the next-door neighbor kid, in a fit of generosity, put my trash cans out one night when I was away. He ran over the thing. I was so sad.

I miss my dog turd fungus.

OK, sci: you are officially not allowed anywhere near my garden.

My sidewalk find isn't quite as gorgeous. It's a rose mallow of some sort, with lovely violet flowers. I found it two summers ago coming out of a crack in a concrete slab on our rental property, and tried and tried to propagate it in a safer location. I moved one sibling, I tried cuttings, I tried planting the seed balls.

Last year I was spraying weeds and managed to get too close and it died.

This year, though, two fresh plants grew a short distance away. One was actually in grass and liable to be mowed, so I felt I was losing nothing by putting it in a pot, and surprisingly this time it worked. It doesn't flower the first year, they say, but it looks reasonably healthy, after a couple of dicey weeks when it seemed to fall over limp every time it got a little sun.

The one that's still in the sidewalk, which isn't the orginal, has a very rough swamp-mallow appearance and the flowers aren't quite as lovely as that first one. It really is a plant only a wildflower lover could love.

(ppst, chewie - that's a weed. A pretty weed, but still totally a weed. Of course, I've never been one to advocate the senseless destruction of pretty things.)

Not to quibble, but a weed is anything that grows where you don't want it to. This one seems welcome. :)

*is on a mission to stem egregious uses of the word "weed"*

*just learned that a "weed" is also a name for black mourning armbands or hat bands, finds this fascinating*

No idea what it is - someone said it's a proteus which I guess is some kind of plant native to tropical climes. Here's a link.

Sure they didn't mean Protea? It isn't one of those. I don't think it's a Protea, either.

It's not a weed unless it is growing somewhere it's not wanted, as mudpuppie pointed out.

My grandfather called me Weed :) [Because my name is Heather, which is a weed to some people]

Looks like a rambutan. I know it's not, but it looks like one.

The leaves look like a zinnia, although I have never seen one with a flower that looked like that. Although there are thousands of them, so who knows.