Plant ID help?

[OlafsTwig]

Can someone ID the first photo? Guessing it's a weed but how bad is it?

Second I think is a hardy geranium? In which case, is the third a geranium seedling? Or something else?

The first one is Enchanter's nightshade - Circaea lutetiana. Yes, it's a weed which spreads by underground stolons, thick fleshy white roots. Best to dig out as much as you can, as it's a spreader ( I have it in my garden).
The second one does look like a hardy geranium, but wait for flowers to be sure.
The third one isn't a geranium, but I'm not sure what it is, probably a weed.

Weed, geranium, weed

Thank you! You may have noticed the bindweed mixed in with the enchanters nightshade - I'm becoming a dab hand at fleshy roots!

Geraniums self-seed like mad, right? As do aquilegia. Trying to identify both of those - reckon I must have missed them this year.

The first one looks more like Pellitory to me, otherwise known as Asthma Weed.

I think the geranium is Geranium phaem. Does fine in dry shade, tall stems with small flowers in dark purple or sometimes white.

I'm really impressed that you can id the geranium!

I agree. Weed, geranium, weed. I want to say self heal for the third, but not sure.

To be honest, I don't need much more than weed, geranium, weed!

More specifically, I'm now on perennial weed that I want to get on top of, geranium of some sort - possibly phaem but in full sun, annual weed that I can worry about less.

I agree with the suggestion weed - geranium phaeum (if you look closely you can see the dark spots on the leaves) - weed!

Pellitory has alternate leaves and flowers clustered around the leaf axils. OP's plant has leaves in opposite pairs and seems to be developing terminal flower spikes, so I think Nan is right with Enchanter's Nightshade. It is a spreader, and can grow in deep shade, but not quite so capable of suppressing other plants as ground elder or bindweed.

The Geranium could be G. phaeum, although the dark blotches on the leaves are usually a little more obvious. There are other Geraniums with the same leaf shape, though I can't think of any others with dark blotches on the leaves. I'd expect G. phaeum to have already flowered - it's quite early.

The third is something in the dead nettle/mint/oregano family. Possibly ground ivy if the leaves stay that shape, otherwise hedge woundwort or white dead nettle are possibilities.

Feel really sad that a large proportion of the UKs wild flora is being lumped together as "weed". Last year the facebook Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland was full of close-up pics of Enchanter's nightshade flowers and comments of "how lovely! I've never seen that plant!"

An increasing number of people feel that we are trashing the Earth, and agree in principle with trying to maintain of increase diversity. But how do you obtain support for this when to so many people what you are doing is encouraging weeds? It doesn't help that so many of the "wildflower" seed mixes that are sown are a mixture of garden varieties and flowers that are wild only in other countries. So I care when people look at wild flowers and see nothing more than "weed".

That's kind of why I asked. I'd like my garden not to be just bindweed and brambles. I've got all the snowberry that I know about out, and there's a large bed full of hypericum calycinum which is contained but has taken over what it can.

I'd love to have some native wildflowers as well as the showy stuff (I've left the foxglove seedling to grow), but don't want any one to take over.

I've got another patch of the first plant in another part of my garden, where I'm inclined to let it grow.

Oh and re the geranium flowering - I went at this bed and stripped it pretty much bare in March (it was full of aforementioned brambles, bindweed, snowberry). The geranium and the aquilegia behind it were basically under a pile of snowberry - the aquilegia was already in flower and poking through when I uncovered it, but I suspect I razed the geranium to the ground - can't really remember.

Dint - I hear what you're saying about "weeds". You might like Jack Wallington's book Wild About Weeds (I follow him on Twitter). In that spirit, I'm letting the herb Robert flourish in my garden. After all, it's just another geranium.

I've found with geranium phaeum that the size and definition of the dark splodges varies hugely. In the named cultivars like Samobar they're quite pronounced, but in the seedlings (it self-seeds prolifically, as we all know) they're quite variable.

I'm letting the herb Robert flourish in my garden You know there's a white flowered variety? In theory less enthusiastic than the pink, but not really so's you'd notice.

I also grow Geranium maderense which comes back from seeds each year. It's like a huge Herb Robert without the smell, and it's really difficult to tell apart at seedling stage.

Yes, but the pink one just appeared here randomly and I don't think I'd go to the trouble of acquiring the white one. Geranium maderense is a very lovely thing, as so many of the species are.

Oooo this is a bit exciting. Well, for me anyway.

I see Aquilegia in the background of that photo too, it’s still there

For something that is (I think - it's also all over our local nature reserve) native, I have a small patch of cranesbill (another geranium) in my garden and it's quite lovely and keeps itself to itself in a pretty little mound.

There are also little spikes of toadflax that come through. The bees go mad for them.

Yeah, they're the two that I'd like to be able to identify the seedlings of so I don't rip them out! That's next year's plan.

Our aquilegia all got dug up as it wasixed in with some rather rampant, ant ridden, forgetmenots.

PickAChew Is that the maroon coloured Bloody Cranesbill - G sanguineum? It makes a neat mound and has a long flowering season.

I know a limestone pavement nature reserve which has, amongst other lovelies, masses of bloody cranesbill and lily of the valley.

It's pink

While you're here any idea what this seedling might be?

Geranium endressii possibly.

Seedling: It's a dicot! . You have the two seed leaves there, and they're not a particularly characteristic shape (I can tell you it's not a carrot or anything in that family nor is it a beech tree or sycamore). Wait until it's grown a couple of true leaves, then ask us again.

Yeah, I did think that might be a bit of a stretch

It's huge (see night-scented stock seedlings also in image) and quite thick and shiny. In case any of that helps. There are several of them in amongst the stocks.

I googled

Well, I'll be pulling all those out, now I've identified them