fimonkey wrote:
Hi All,

I'm looknig for some help with identifying an enormous weed/plant that
grow at the bottom of my garden in thick soil under 24 hour shade of a
camelia tree.

I moved in to my new flat last August when the weed was in full bloom.
Large pink 'tissue paper' flowers on the end of large stalks that
'wafted' (i.e not as rigid as a sunflower stalk). It was bout 6-7ft
high, and had large non shiny leaves. It covered about 1m2. I pulled
most of it up and covered the ground with a groundsheet as I wanted to
use the rest of the ground for veggie growing this year.

The stuff I left behind (up against a fence so useful screening) died
down to nothing. Now it's started to grow again where I left it, very
large green leaves (larger than a hand) at this stage and it's only
about 1/2ft high so far. the leaves kind of remind me of a hand shape.

Any ideas please?

Much appreciated.






You don't really give enough to go on. In cases like this a picture or two
will make all the difference. But given your description I'd guess either
1) poppy (yes, the opium sort) although the height really seems out of
scale with anything I've seen or 2) hollyhock with the latter seeming more
likely. The only problem with my guess is that both of these plants usually
want to be in full or at least no worse than partial shade. Those are my
guesses and I'm stickin' to 'em...

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hollyhock.JPG and see if
it rings any mental bells.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com