Plant ID

[welliewarmer]

I'm volunteering b in a garden and been tasked with weeding a bed - nobody know what these are, coming up amongst the lily type foliage and goosegrass. Anyone know?

Don't know, but weed.

Can’t really tell from what I can see in the picture - lanceolate/ovate leaves, in pairs, with short stiff hairs and a broad central vein. It looks like it’s heading rapidly towards flowering, so I would leave it until it flowers and is easier to identify. It’s not something obvious like a nettle or dandelion that the casual passerby would see as a weed.

I think thats Sapponaria officinalis - Soapwort?

No, not Saponaria - Saponaria does have lanceolate leaves in pairs, but it doesn't have hairs on the leaves, and it has very obvious parallel veins running the length of the leaf, rather than that single broad central vein.. It also flowers late in the season so it wouldn't have those stems at this time of year.

might it be a loosestrife, opposite leaves, though I'm not sure about the hairy stem

Leaves didn’t say loosestrife to me. Too narrow for Lysimachia (yellow loosestrife) and didn't look right for Lythrum (purple loosestrife)

Too early for loosestrife I think, or certainly the yellow kind. Thanks for trying - I'm back there in a fortnight, if it hasn't been pulled out by somebody else I'll let you know what it turned out to be.