My Pokeweed plants are finally coming up strong in their third year. Next spring I’ll have enough to try pokesalad. Meanwhile, the berries and stems will be quite pretty come fall.
Squink,
Since you mention edibility issues with Pokeweed, I gotta do the responsible thing by saying: poke salad is a traditional use of the spring shoots as a potherb. Don’t do this without knowledgeable guidance. Beyond early spring shoots, all parts of Phytolacca americana are considered toxic; the poke will make you puke.
Hijack, a bit, but important to note.
Right, I’m a bit of a toxic plants buff. Randomly eating green things is a very bad idea.
Yes, the supposed flowers of #6 belong to #7 - Honeysuckle - which seems to pervade most of the shrubberies on the east property line. #6 is an apparently non-flowering tall bush of some kind… though, honestly, it may be more of the Lilac that’s growing right next to it. I tried to avoid taking pictures of the Lilac, since I’d already identified it, but the blooms have gone away…
#1 has a nearby companion plant - also a rose, but much more developed and thorny, but which has yet to bloom. I’m concerned about #3 - many holes in the leaves. #4/#5 - same plant. #5 is just a closeup of the blooms. I also have a couple of Azaleas, not pictured.
Ignore the partly visible flowers in #6 - just the pervasive Honeysuckle, as noted above. Might be part of the Lilac mini-forest. #7 - Glad this is Honeysuckle, as it seems to have spread far and wide. #8 - for some reason I was thinking they were bluebells, but that might be based on some completely out of whack childhood memory. They might get cleared out, unless someone thinks they’re of value. #9 - sorry for the crappy photo. The light was against me there, and one can’t see the details of the bloom very well. It’s another one of the plants on the chopping block. (the idea being to clear out most of the stuff bordering the house itself, on the sides, and put in some landscape fabric and lava rock.)
#10 is likely to go, but it was so large and developed I thought it might not be a weed. Silly me. 
The white flowers in #11, #12, and #14 are (I think) the same plant. It is in the same stand as the one with the pink flowers pictured in #13 and some of the other shots. They’re also mixed with at least one big Lilac, and there’s a Sycamore tree in there somewhere.
#15 and #16 are right on the border of the property, so I’m not technically sure if they’re on my side or not. I think the Yucca is.
My poke plants were towering OVER MY HEAD last summer. I had no idea the buggers could get so big. I could walk under them, and reach UP to pick the berries! It was like something out of Jurassic Park. I have no idea how old they are, but they’re beautiful. I love the purple stems.
And poke berries make gorgeous red face paint in the fall. We little 'uns used to use 'em to play “Cowboys and Indians” when the world was an un-PC place. You can also use the red juice to stain your fingernails like “nail polish”. Such things are wonderful when you’re seven and Mommy won’t buy you makeup.
#8 is also known as Kennilworth Ivy. It’s an introduced species here in California, and I have lots of it here and there around the yard. It makes a nice groundcover and if you don’t like that, you could always put some in a pot and grow it as a hanging plant.
What, you don’t like all those cute little lilac-colored flowers? Have you no soul? 
6 looks like forsythia leaves to me - were there yellow flowers in the spring?
Careful when you’re getting rid of #10. As someone mentioned earlier, the ivy growning on the wall behind it looks like it might be poison ivy. Can’t tell for sure from the picture, but it’s definitely a possibility.
GT
You’re probably right, although I thought exactly that at first, then I looked it up and there appears to be a fair bit of variety - some cardoon cultivars have quite finely-cut leaves (in fact the massive grey leaves I was (mis)remembering were the closely-related globe artichoke). Probably this is a tall Thistle after all though.
No maybe about #10. That’s poison ivy behind the poke, or I’ll take down my shingle as an ecologist.
That was me and thanks for the followup. Last time I dealt with Ivy was steriod shots because of the breathing. Hate that stuff.
And let me do my happy dance as I got both the weeds.
No points for weeds?
Oh well…
Yep, definitely poison ivy behind the poke. So have caution in pulling it.
Me, I’m not susceptible, for whatever reason, prolly arch crankiness. I delight in seeing poke and Rhus ivy crop up in defiance of proper behavior.
Don’t want folks to be itchin’, tho, either. Crankiness battles compassion. Sigh.
Not as early as April, when I first came into possession of the house. Forsythia I’m pretty familiar with - my parents have a line of it next to their house. Still, anything’s possible.
Oh, and thanks for the warning, everyone, about the Poison Ivy near #10. We sprayed some Ortho stuff around other likely Poison Ivy plants, but I don’t think we did that one.
Be vewwwwy, vewwwy careful when you’re hunting poison ivy – even when the plant is dead, the oil that causes the problem is still there. (Don’t burn it – the oil is conveyed through smoke and you can end up with poison ivy in your lungs. :eek: ) Treat it like dogshit – do the plastic-bag-reversal thing – and wash down with cold water if any of it touches your skin.
What’s the world record for Dandelion height? Because I took down a six-footer last Sunday…
Mmmmm, salad. A little Italian dressing, and that’s lunch.
6 feet sounds like a contender to me… Tallest ones that ever sneak past me are about 4 feet.
GT
It might have looked like a dandelion, but it wasn’t. Dandelion’s only grow out of basal rosettes, so will never grow taller than the leaves. Methinks what you had was a wild lettuce, which looks almost like dandelion, but the leaves grow off a central stalk that can certainly get 6 feet high. The other marker is that most wild lettuces have little teeth on the underside of the rib on each leaf.
While it’s a diuretic like dandelion, it’s also a mild hallucinogen, so don’t go eatin’ it all at once!