People find it odd that, in contrast to my well-known hobbies of industrial decay, angry loud music, and booze, I'm also very devoted to several forms of botany -- mainly, gardening, and the identification of wild plants. It's difficult to explain why spending several hours learning the scientific names of common houseplants floats my boat, but I believe it all started when I moved to Ohio, and suddenly, I was surrounded with groves of completely unfamiliar trees. Washington is called the Evergreen State for a reason -- 90% of the trees are Douglas Firs, and deciduous trees are few and far between. As with most of my other interests, rather than remain oblivious and indifferent, or satisfy myself with being able to tell a maple from an oak, I had to learn and memorize every single last thing I could about trees -- and, in conjuction, plants in general. Having moved into a fairly nice apartment and having my own little patch of land for the first time, I also decided to devote much of the summer months to gardening. Originally, it was an extension of my interest in DIY and an anticapitalist lifestyle -- obviously, food is something you need, so why not grow some of your own? -- but I soon started to forget about all the ethics and just plain enjoy fussing around with dirt and plants.

Anyway, I like to pride myself on being able to identify all the plants growing in my backyard. Living in the residential denseness of Lakewood, I can't say there's a huge amount of diversity, but there's enough to keep me referring back to my plant guides when something new sprouts up. Sometime after what became officially the snowiest winter on record in Cleveland, and what unofficially seemed like the longest winter ever, I noticed this plant.

Young Mystery Plant, 27 April 2005

I think it came out in mid-April, before the last frost, but after the snow melt. At first the leaves were curled up into cone shapes, but they expanded into the heart-shape ones you see in the picture above. I had no clue what this plant was, so I took a picture and sent it to a few friends who know their gardening stuff -- but no one had any idea what it was. I speculated that it could be a young form of amaranth, as there is an awful lot of amaranth to be found in my yard, and I wasn't sure what it looked like young -- but then I spotted something I knew to be amaranth and it looked nothing at all like it (even young amaranth has huge leaves). Now that it has flowers, I'm 100% certain it's nothing even close to amaranth -- but other than that, I have little idea what it could be. It sort of has a mustard/cabbage family-ness to my untrained eye, but it doesn't smell like anything, and I'm not about to try to eat it. I'm putting it in Rust n Brique in hopes that someone out there recognizes it. I'll even take uneducated guesses. I'm planning on printing the results in the next Rust n Brique, so let's hope that even if I don't find out what it is, that the guesses are entertaining.

Mystery Plant, 18 May 2005