Is This Rhubarb Or Weed ?

hoodat

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When I was a kid my grandfather had a farm with a lot of burdock on it. We kids used to gather the burrs and stick them to one another using them sort of like Leggo blocks.
 

hoodat

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when being milked by hand cows have a habit of swinging their tails. when the tail is full of burdocks it can knock you right off the milking stool.:hide
 

journey11

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It looks like it is about to send a flower stalk up the middle from the base of the rosette. If it's burdock, you'll get this:
burdock-flower.jpg


If it's yellow dock, you'll get this:
Rumexcrispus_flower2.jpg


Any of the docks are going to reseed like crazy. Burdock and yellow dock are both biennial and will flower in the second year. What you may have is Bitter Dock or "broadleaf dock" (R. obtusifolius), which is perennial and comes back in the same spot indefinitely according to this site. There are a lot of docks and sorrels in the Rumex genus and I figure it's one of those. Burdock is Arctium genus. You'll know for sure which one when it flowers.

Thistle has a good point, if burdock, it's going to spread everywhere. Someone had a thread asking how to get it out of their pasture... Very invasive. Docks are too, but not quite as much.
 
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journey11

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When I was a kid my grandfather had a farm with a lot of burdock on it. We kids used to gather the burrs and stick them to one another using them sort of like Leggo blocks.

We did that too, made all kinds of sculptures out of them. Tried to see who could form the longest chain of them. Hours of fun. :D
 

digitS'

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Bohemian? Japanese?

It might be like that "Spanish" flu of a century ago. Turned out that the best guess was that it would have better been named WW1 American Doughboy flu ... But, I'm no expert on flu or knotweed.

Maybe, if I could name the stuff I see around, I'd call it Playground Boy weed. At the trampled dirt entrance to every playground I've crossed is knotweed. Grows in cracks in asphalt, too.

If you leave out the "k's" - knotweed reminds me of another weed name, knapweed. We shouldn't dare name one snoozeweed.

Steve
 

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