Common/annual ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia).

And next to it (lower right, far left, upper right) with the pointed leaves, is a Persicaria, perhaps Pennsylvania smartweed. It's a weed with an attractive flower, just waiting for the opportunity to take over your yard.

cosmo is much finer leaved .. leafed ... whatever.. lol

see link

you are new to the garden.. yes??? ... no good iris grower.. would allow anything to grow inside the iris ..

which would be my first clue.. that they are all weeds ... remove at will .. everything i see but the iris is a common weed ... [not talking about the deep background plants of which i cant focus on]

iris are rather shallow rooted.. we wouldnt want the competition ... for both water and nutrients ....

or think of it this way ... the blue iris leaves are rather architectural in their presentation ... when you can see them ... and thats with or without the flower ... so why dilute that presentation.. with a bunch of green ... even if they were good plants ... july/august is not a great time to be transplanting things... and you would never dig inside the iris to save something.. cosmo or not ...

clear everything for one foot around the iris.. including inside.. and enjoy the valuable plant ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Thank you all for your ideas, opinions, criticisms, but most importantly your advice.

This garden belongs to an elderly friend, whose husband is experiencing dementia. I'm trying to help them out, but since I have never planted cosmos from seeds, I couldn't id the plant as the cosmos that were planted.

I'll send some more photos as I continue to find treasures in their garden and I can label everything.

ken_adrian,
This community isn't about making people feel bad about their level of gardening expertise. Criticizing someone in the manner you have in your post above (and in other posts of yours I've seen) makes one think you are a not nice person.
Janine

This post was edited by jaynine on Tue, Jul 8, 14 at 18:38

I interpreted what Ken wrote to mean "is this particular garden new to you?"

agathafroo, your interpretation has given me a different view of the intention of the overall message of this particular post. Thank you.

I thought Ken gave some very good advice to a new gardener. He is never deliberately mean-spirited which goes a long way in my opinion.

thx all ... it never fails to amaze me.. how the typed word can fail ..my own i mean ....

no matter how hard one tries ...

heck.. i've gone back and read my own stuff.. and sometimes wondered what the heck i was talking about ... lol ..

ken

It can be pretty easy to confuse ragweed with cosmos sulphureus....done it myself when they were seedlings and was pretty embarrassed when it bloomed. I do believe it is ragweed, and even if it were those big, honking old fashioned cosmos you do, as Ken says, want to keep it away from an iris planting. They want their rhizomes up and airy and not buried under anything. That being said...........if they do have cosmos planted and it does reseed wonderfully...........you don't want to weed the young ones out thinking they are ragweed. I've done that too. LOL. The link below shows how similar they can look.

Here is a link that might be useful: cosmos

stumbled across this Cosmos question,
I read through,

not sure, how is the vote, do you really think that this is Ambrosia?

I think the branching pattern is more typical for Cosmos sulphureus,

and according to the website attached, Ambrosia has hairy stems.

The aspect about the Iris is definitely valid, I am just not convinced about the Ambrosia

well, just curious, bye, Lin

Here is a link that might be useful: detailed pics of Ambrosia

and I just found this
not sure, seems to be a meta web site, collecting a large A-Z of all Asteraceae-pic (daysie-like plants), and probably other plant families, if you digg deeper.

quality seems to vary, but still, quite amazing,

and yes, if you bother to scroll, there are links to pics of Ambrosia arthemisifolia and Cosmos sulphureus

Here is a link that might be useful: Vascular Plant Image Library (quite posh, isn`t itâ¦)