Plant ID please

[Dilbertian]

Weed or nice?

Thanks

Nice weed. Not sure the name, long tap route like a dandy lion. Good ground cover and does well on poor soil. Your choice on keeping it.

Hmmm... it has planted itself along the margin of a new shrubbery, exactly where I want to underplay with bulbs this autumn. If it won't disturb the bulbs, perhaps it is worth leaving to provide something after the bulbs have finished?

Another plant I've discovered in my new shrubbery:

You can get plant recognition Apps. I don't have a recommendation but several are free.

Have a look locally, you will probably see if they are local.

I have had no luck with apps. They occasionally identify the plant behind the one I'm interested in. I far prefer to ask the wise women of Mumsnet.

First plant is garlic mustard, a common wild herb. Not sure about the second. Google suggests it's spinach...

QED - plant recognition is better done by humans. I'm 100% certain the third plant is not spinach.

(I'm not 100% certain that both plants in the OP are the same.)

First one looks like garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), a member of the mustard/cabbage family, self seeds everywhere, but can be eaten and is the principal food source for caterpillars of the Orange Tip butterfly.

Second one looks very like Honesty ( Lunaria annua), again a member of the cabbage family.

Only you can decide whether you consider them to be desirable or not! In my view there is no such thing as a 'weed', only wild flowers, many of which are as beautiful, if not more so, than deliberately grown cultivars. And please consider the wildlife benefits, particularly for pollinating insects!

I agree with you about identification techniques OP - many people place too much reliance on 'plant finder' Apps, which are hugely unreliable and frequently lead to some appalling and laughable misidentification.

Aha! That end of the garden has been a bit of a jungle, with all sorts of uncultivated plants doing their thing. Jack-by-the-Hedge and Purple Honesty both grew freely there, but I never twigged that they had different Y1 and Y2 forms. This year I cleared the ground there, so saw the Y1 forms alone for the first time. I shall leave them for the time being. They're not problem plants IME.

What about the third plant - any clue?

Thanks!

I agree the first one looks like Jack by the Hedge, but there’s something slightly different which stopped me suggesting it. But if you already have it in abundance, that’s probably what it is. Agree Honesty for the second. Not a clue on the third, worth keeping if only to find out what it is. I’ve always made a practice of never pulling up something I can’t identify. It’s been a good discipline- I now have little problem identifying all the random seedlings that appear in my garden.

Third one looks a bit like digitalis/foxglove, in its first year (so no flowers spike)

I could believe it's a foxglove. Another beautiful plant, and it's come up in a perfect location to leave it there. Hmm, not sure whether to leave or remove. My dc are old enough for me not to worry about poison, but we have a cat. I wonder how risky it would be for MrCat. Is it contact contamination then ingested through grooming, like lilies?

?lavatera
Second don't know
Third rats tail plantain

Don’t think the third one’s foxglove, certainly not a plantain, wrong venation, plantain has parallel veins

Gardeners at Alnwick Poison Garden think the last one is probably mullein verbascum (mildly hallucinogenic).

is it a seedling Hollyhock?