These look a lot like... chamomile?
I’ve had this mystery plant growing in my garden for what must be several months. It is growing in this big pot along with some salad greens I started last winter and then totally neglected. I don’t even recall watering them–they just languished on my front porch through the winter and perked up and started growing like weeds as soon as I started watering them regularly this spring. I recognized the big leafy things in the background as some kind of lettuce (buying a mescalin seed mix isn’t always a good idea if you don’t know your salad greens–I’ve concluded that the more delicate varieties died out while the bitter, hardy ones hunkered down for the winter). I assumed that the increasingly tall leafy things were just another kind of salad green. Within the past few days several little buds have come up, and every time I’ve walked past I’ve thought to myself, “I’m going to f ind out what those things are.”
Well, I figured it out today! I was looking at the new little blooms and thinking, “Hey, these are pretty cute. I’m glad I let them grow even though I didn’t know what they were.” And STILL, it wasn’t until later in the day when I was watering my tiny little chamomile seedlings that I noticed the leaves.
Those spindly leaves! How could I have missed it?!
I’ve tried to grow chamomile several times in the past couple of years. One time the seeds never sprouted. Another time the cold killed them when they were still tiny. In all my dreaming about growing beautiful chamomile I had never actually seen a chamomile plant (tea doesn’t count), and I had absolutely no clue how leggy they are. Gangly might be a better word.
Yes, my porch rail is so broken.
Those lettuces are bitter and inedible (at least the last time I checked), but I’m leaving them because I like the way they look.
how adorable are the those little chamomile flowers?
I love them so much! They’re a little like what I imagine echinacea looks like–another plant I’ve tried to grow a couple times and totally failed at. Who knows? I could have one somewhere in my garden and not know what it is.