Warm-Season Weeds

This spiny weed is a familiar face along roadsides, and if it pops up in your yard, you’ll be dealing with a prickly problem. Spines cover leaves and stems, which are topped with eye-catching lavender blooms. Grab your leather gloves and deal with this weed as soon as you spot it.

A cousin of tomatoes, bittersweet nightshade sports purple flowers that fade to form red berry-like fruits. This perennial weed thrives in moist soil and shady spots. In cold regions, plants die to the ground with frost and resprout from roots in spring. In warmer zones, plants linger year-round, forming thick woody stems.

Known most often by the name Queen Anne’s lace, wild carrot forms a deep taproot and is actually a wild ancestor of carrots grown in garden today. Lacy blossoms appear on two-year-old plants. Use care allowing queen anne’s lace to grow in your yard. If plants set seed, you could be in for an invasion.

Succulent, fleshy leaves and stems indicate that this weed can thrive with little water. It tends to grow in cracks and crevices—anywhere it can gain a root hold. Take care to dig carefully to remove all root pieces when pulling, because any roots left behind can sprout new plants. Purslane also spreads by stems that root where they touch soil and by seeds that follow yellow flowers.